Treason's Daughter

by Antonia Senior

  ‘Thank you. I will think on it.’

  They are silent a while, Ned eating slowly now. Picking at food because he can, not because he is hungry.

  ‘I’m not much of a soldier.’

  ‘You’re lucky, Ned. Twice you’ve cheated death. The only good soldier is a lucky one.’

  ‘I keep thinking about the Cavalier who held the sword to my throat. All that I am, all that I feel – he had it in his power to end it all. And yet…’

  ‘He didn’t. Be thankful. The Lord’s hand was in it.’

  ‘But Father, do you see? He had the power to kill me, and he chose not to. On a whim? Because he liked my face? Because he didn’t? The randomness of it, it terrifies me. Perhaps he had a letter from his mistress, or he has a boy my age and it’s his birthday. Chalk dead, me alive. A toss of a coin between us.’

  Challoner puts a hand on Ned’s shoulder.

  ‘Not a coin, lad. Providence. My poor boy. Soldiering does play with a man’s mind. My time in Europe brought me to Arminius.’

  ‘How so?’

  Challoner pauses before he speaks, weighing his words. Ned recognizes his father’s fear of causing an argument between them here, now.

  ‘Please tell me, Father,’ he says.

  ‘Well, then. I saw a man, one I knew, pick up a newborn baby. It mewled in that way they have, like a blasted kitten. He took it by its ankles and smashed its head against a wall. Its brains splattered – some landed here.’ He points to his forehead and rubs it, as if to wipe out some ancient stain.

  ‘I saw so many things, but that I could not forget. It made me question what I believed. If God is shaping our destinies, is He a God who guides a man’s hands to crush a baby? If it is all predestined, the baby-killer could stand side by side with the saints in God’s grace, while the baby sinks into damnation. I know –’ he waves his hand as Ned opens his mouth to speak – ‘the chosen have a responsibility to deserve God’s choice. But I found the argument hollow.

  ‘Then I read of Arminius’ teachings, and it felt right for me. That man had free will. He chose to kill that baby, without God’s goading. Yet, if Arminius is right, there will be a reckoning. How can there not be? He will be weighed and judged. We will be weighed and judged.’

  They are silent, for a space. Ned can’t think of a riposte, not now. It is all too abstract. Only his full belly, and the fear churning it into a nauseous mess, is real to him. The coming battle hovers at the edge of his mind, like a malevolent raven.

  ‘We will have this argument for all our lives, Father,’ he says.

  ‘One of us will prove the other wrong, at the end. Pray God I find out first, my Ned.’

  ‘I must go back.’ It is fully light now. They can just make out the king’s army ranged up across the flat marshy fields. All around them, the chatter of the crowd grows, and the screech of sharpening steel rings across the grass. Ned wants to stay, to rest his head in his father’s lap, and wrap himself in his heavy cloak.

  ‘I’ll look for you after,’ says Challoner.

  ‘You should go home. Look to Henrietta and Sam. We might lose.’ Ned smiles, as he recognizes the irony of that ‘we’.

  He turns, and walks back to Taffy and Holy Joe, the last of the boys who set out by his side from the Artillery Ground that summer.

  In Fetter Lane, Hen paces in the hall. She feels like one of the lions in the Tower, measuring out time and space in an endless, pointless prowling. The house is echoing and empty. Sam has gone. He came to her room in the darkness, and told her he was heading out of the City to Turnham Green. She knew that with the battle so close to home, with his friends all ranged up against the king’s troops, that Sam was beyond reach. So she kissed him goodbye, and waited until the door closed shut before crying.

  Harmsworth has gone too; bitter, pinched Harmsworth. Perhaps he will curdle the Cavaliers to death with his sourness. Some apprentices she didn’t know knocked for Cheese. He left with them, white-faced and silent. A sure beating if he didn’t go, a chance of death if he did. Poor Cheese. Not all men are born heroes.

  Nurse is still in Oxford, please God to stay for ever. Sally, the cook, after they finished baking, asked if she could go to her sister, whose three boys were all standing against the king. Hen kissed her and blessed her, and she bustled off into the darkness, taking little Milly, the maid, with her. Only Hen and her grandmother were left now, in the rattling old house.

  Hen has heard of the sack of Brentford – who has not? She has divided the mountains of pamphlets into royalist and radical. The royalist ones are in the hall, ready to be strewn about, to prove loyalties if such a thing becomes necessary. The radical are buried in a chest in the garden, with her father’s best claret, the silver plate and the jewellery her mother left her. Her father, before he left to find Ned, was downstairs in the counting house for the evening; he too buried a full chest under the hawthorn tree.

  Hen walks through to the library to look out into the garden. She has scattered dead leaves over the freshly dug soil. The garden looks unkempt, but at least not suspicious. I am the only thing worth plundering now, she thinks. Like Cheese, I face fates I cannot influence.

  She goes upstairs to Grandmother, who is lying in bed with the blankets pulled up to her nose.

  ‘Will you come downstairs?’ says Henrietta. ‘We should be together.’

  The old lady nods. When was the last time she left her room? Hen wonders. The summer? The spring, even.

  At the threshold of her room, the old lady clings to Hen. With huge frightened eyes, she croaks: ‘I can’t, can’t.’

  ‘Why not? Come, Grandmother. What could happen? Just the stairs.’

  But there is a frenzied fear building in the old woman now. ‘Can’t, Hen. Don’t make me. I want to stay here. Safe here.’

  Hen is exasperated, furious. She wants to shake the trembling woman, to pick her up, carry her down and shout: ‘See! Nothing! No demons, no evil.’

  She fights to sound patient. ‘Come, Grandmother. Please.’

  The old lady pulls herself away from Hen. With surprising agility she pulls back the blankets and leaps into her bed.

  With Milly away, no one has emptied the pot, and the room smells high. Hen gives in and pulls the blanket round her grandmother’s chin. She opens the window and a rush of cold air smacks her face. The City is eerily quiet; preposterously empty. Will, she thinks suddenly. Did Will go to Turnham Green? Is he there now? Everyone I hold in my heart is miles away, facing guns and pikes and death in all its guises.

  She picks up the chamber pot and flings the contents onto the street below. She cannot stir herself to take it outside. Anyway, even the night-soil man is probably at the Green.

  Behind her, her grandmother is whimpering. She is becoming ever weaker and more diminished. The flashes of fire that survived her descent into despair have been dampened by time. She is turning childlike. Reduced to the sum of her appetites and excretions. What is it Jaques says in As You Like It?

  Last scene of all,

  That ends this strange eventful history,

  Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

  Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

  A miserable sod, though, Jaques, she thinks. Her father always liked him. She smiles to think of it.

  She closes the window and walks back to the bed. She pulls a chair and sits next to her grandmother, pushing the old lady’s grey hair back from her forehead. I could get a book, she thinks. But what book can I read with my life in the balance? She lays her forehead on the blanket and closes her eyes. They are stinging; she has not slept. Up all night making pies for Ned, in case her father finds him. She knows they were not very good. Mrs Birch and Nurse are right, she thinks. Who will want me to keep their house? What use am I to Father, to Sam or Ned? I am steeped in all things useless and empty where it matters.

  If they survive this, Lord, I will learn to cook, to manage a house. I will become a better servant, oh Lord.


  ‘Grandmother,’ she says quietly. ‘Will we pray?’

  The old lady nods. Hen kneels by her bed and grasps her hand. The familiar words wash over her like a charm, and she feels calmer.

  Our Father, who art in heaven,

  hallowed be thy name.

  thy kingdom come,

  thy will be done,

  on earth as it is in heaven.

  Hen thinks of her father, choosing to conjure his irrepressible smile in her mind. She sees Ned, serious and earnest, striving to find his adult self. She imagines Sam, hailing his friends in the crowd, treating the battle as an enormous, elaborate jape. And she thinks of Will, as she saw him last: mud-spattered and forlorn.

  She thinks of Chalk and Cheese, and the Birch boys. And Oliver Chettle; he must be there somewhere too. Is he as good with a sword as with a pen? she wonders.

  She kneels next to Grandmother’s bed and tries not to bargain with the Lord. Take Robert Birch, but spare Sam. Take Chalk, but spare poor Cheese. Stop, she tells herself. Stop. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Thy will be done.

  ‘For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.’

  Even Taffy joins in.

  Beside them, the remains of the food lie strewn on the wet grass. There’s not much left.

  ‘We should save some for after,’ Ned says, when the prayers are done, and the waiting starts again.

  ‘There might not be an after.’ Taffy reaches for a slice of heavy plum pudding.

  ‘There will be manna in heaven,’ Joe says, eyes raised upwards.

  ‘Couldn’t taste better than that pudding,’ Ned replies, without thinking. He looks up to find Taffy looking at him, a wide grin on his foxy face.

  ‘Pox take you, Taf,’ he says, before grinning back.

  A captain nearby shouts, and the men around them draw themselves up into a semblance of rank. Ned, Taffy and Joe are the ragtag hangers-on now; their regiment broken at Brentford, they and the other survivors have attached themselves to Philip Skippon’s trained bands. Many of their fellow soldiers are unwilling conscripts, pulled away from their small businesses and their families to face death on a pike’s edge. Some are substitutes, paid for by the City’s wealthier citizens to avoid taking their allotted place in the line.

  And here is Skippon himself, riding past, inspecting his troops. He stops at Ned’s cluster.

  ‘You were Holles’ men,’ he says.

  They nod and murmur.

  ‘You shall have a chance to serve your fellows out today, I think.’

  Skippon is about to ride away when he stops, and stares at Ned.

  ‘Ned Challoner?’ he asks uncertainly. Ned’s father served with Skippon under Sir Horace Vere in Bohemia, and Ned had met his new commander in London, before the war.

  Ned bows. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You here? I would not have thought it.’

  Ned nods. ‘And proud to be so, sir.’

  ‘I heard your father, my old friend, is not so keen on our cause.’

  ‘You heard right, sir. Hence . . .’ Ned gestures to his pike, and the collection of muddy rags which now passes as his uniform.

  ‘Sad times, indeed, when families are divided. But God is with us today, men,’ he says more loudly, a rhetorical flourish creeping into his voice. ‘We shall face the idolators, and the papists, and the dissipated fornicators who stand against us, and we shall march with the Lord in our hearts against the servants of Baal.’

  Quietly, against a background of muttered approval, he says to Ned: ‘See me after, boy. Come and find me.’

  As he leaves, Ned looks awkwardly at Taffy and Holy Joe.

  ‘Ned, m’boy,’ drawls Taffy, aping Sir Philip, ‘I need someone to lick my arse. I hear you have a fine, fine tongue, young man.’ He turns and waggles his arse provocatively at Ned, making Holy Joe giggle.

  ‘Thy mother,’ says Ned mildly.

  ‘And thine.’

  ‘You’ll see us right,’ says Joe. ‘Didn’t know you were such a plush fellow.’

  ‘Maybe, just maybe,’ says Taffy, ‘he might see us get paid.’

  ‘Paid! More chance of a kiss off a Cavalier than a payday.’ This from a grizzled man next to them.

  His words bring a murmuring assent from the pikemen standing by. ‘We do the Lord’s work, and what do those bastards give us? Promises, and more promises,’ says one boy.

  The grumbles are cut short by the report of a gun.

  ‘For what we are about to receive,’ says Taffy.

  ‘Will you blaspheme in hell, Taf?’

  ‘That I will, Ned, lad, as you’ll see when you’re standing there beside me.’

  Ned grips his pike, waiting for orders. A ball whistles nearby.

  ‘Look over there,’ says the grizzled man, pointing to the flank where the spectators stand – an incongruous crowd of gawpers and followers.

  Father among them, thinks Ned.

  ‘It ain’t a May Day parade we’re at,’ says Holy Joe.

  The report of the gun sends the spectators milling backwards, their panic evident, even from where Ned stands. When it is clear that the ball came nowhere near, they mill forward again.

  ‘Like sheep when a wolf’s in,’ says Taffy. ‘Stupid bastards.’

  It is a comical sight, the play of a fearful yet prurient crowd, and it cheers the boys up as they stand waiting for the off.

  ‘There they go,’ shouts Ned, as the crowd pedals backwards.

  ‘Nope, back again,’ says Taffy gleefully, as they pull forward.

  It passes the time, and they need help with that. The morning drags forward. Still no sign of a move. The boys’ feverish energy winds down a little; no one can stay so scared for so long. They’ve sung psalms, and they’ve talked chuff at the enemy, and now there is only the waiting.

  ‘I’ve had more excitement shovelling shit,’ says Taffy, to a morose silence. Noon approaches, and still no move. The king’s troops stand opposite them; far enough to be faceless, near enough to be ominous.

  ‘What’s going on, sir?’ says Ned to a passing officer, wearing the orange sash of Essex’s army. Before he joined up, Ned had not thought that you could stand in the ranks of an army, yet be blind as to its greater movements.

  The officer stops and looks at the faces turned to him.

  ‘We outnumber the papist scummers, but they’ve got us beat on horses. See there.’ He points to a small troop of the king’s horses picking its way across the ground in front of the royalist army. ‘They’re looking at the ground. Our lady friends in the cavalry tell me it’s terrible for the horse, this ground.’ He shrugs. ‘So we play chicken, boys. See who moves first.’

  A little while later, the word passes down the lines. Stay in formation, keep pikes near at hand, but tuck in. Carts appear from behind them. More food from London’s army of goodwives at their backs.

  As they obey the rare, welcome orders, more words pass down the line.

  The grizzled man comes over, a big grin sitting uncomfortably on his face. ‘Seems those papist bastards over there have no food. And they can smell us.’ A cheering rises through the parliamentary ranks. They brandish bread and meat at the enemy. They throw the half-eaten bones of birds into the bleak land between the armies. They blow the steam from the pies they crack open towards the royalists.

  Taffy laughs until he weeps at the thought of the royalist boys sitting cold, wet and hungry on the other side of the fields, while they gorge for the second time. He wipes the tears from his eyes and stands tall, waving a great pitcher of ale.

  ‘See this!’ he screams at the opposing lines. He takes a deep draft. ‘Tastes like fucking nectar, you papist cock-munchers!’

  At last, sated, they sit back, and silence settles once more.

  ‘Do you think we’ll fight, Taf?’ asks Ned, watching the winter sun begin to sink into the layer of cloud that sits obstinately above the horizon.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s getting late. Jesus wept, but
I wish the sods in the sashes would make up their minds.’

  The grizzled man cuts across him. ‘They’re on the move!’ he shouts.

  Sure enough, the pikemen opposite them are wheeling around. Above the royalist heads, a thin crimson ribbon of sky is trapped between the dark clouds and the horizon.

  ‘Jesus, they’re going. They’re going!’

  The muttering grows along the parliamentary arms. The royalists are leaving. Turning away from London, marching away. Ned can’t work out how he is feeling. Cheated? Relieved?

  He drops to his knees, and those around him follow suit. They pray and thank the Lord for their deliverance.

  When they are done, Taffy assumes the rasping bark of a sergeant. ‘Men, turn round, face back.’

  Wonderingly, those near him do as he orders.

  ‘Breeches down!’ he shouts.

  Almost to a man, they obey him. Ned grins as he pulls his down.

  ‘On three, present arses!’ screams Taf. ‘One, two, three!’

  Skippon’s trained band presents a broadside of backsides to the retreating papists, as twilight falls over Turnham Green.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘GO ON,’ WHISPERS HEN. ‘DO IT.’

  Sam looks around him nervously. At the far end of the great hall, a family wanders about quietly. Three children awed into silence by the grandeur of their surroundings. The windows are grimy, and the sun fights to find its way in. A gloomy place now. The walls are dappled dark and light, the pattern betraying where paintings once hung.

  In front of them – majestic, awful – is the king’s throne. It is bigger by far than their father’s great chair. He must have looked small in it, like a child pretending if you weren’t close enough to see his face. The wood is interlaid with gold. Hen closes her eyes and tries to imagine the room full of courtiers, Charles sitting here in state as they bow and scrape to him. But the echoing emptiness of the room defeats her imagination.

  ‘I can’t,’ whispers Sam. ‘You do it.’

  Hen grins, darts to the throne and sits down. For the longest second, it seems, she sits in it, appalled and thrilled at the same time. Then she jumps up and walks away. She feels irrepressibly naughty, as if she were a child again and has stolen a pie or broken a prized cup.