by Simon Parke
Charles looked at Bishop Juxon, who had remained in the room, smiling on this family scene. He asked the priest to leave.
‘Leave, please, Bishop.’
‘Your majesty?’
‘Leave us.’
And he did, with a surprised rustle of robes. Charles then indicated to the guard in the doorway that he should also withdraw; after some hesitation he obeyed. The door closed and alone with his children, Charles spoke.
‘We have not long, my darlings, not long. So you must listen well, for we’ll not speak again. And if I am not sad – and I am not, not sad at all – then you must promise me that you will not be sad either. Can you follow your father in this way?’
‘We can, Father,’ said Elizabeth, the leader of the two and assured beyond her thirteen difficult years.
‘Now, Elizabeth,’ said Charles, ‘I speak first with you and in awkward words.’
She did not wish to hear awkward words, for most of the words she had heard in her life had been so.
‘Tomorrow I will die,’ he said. ‘I know that now; it is to be tomorrow, and I wish it to be so.’ Elizabeth stared at him. ‘But I do not want you to be in grief or torment, my princess, for I die a glorious death.’ Elizabeth continued to stare – these words were nonsensical. ‘I die for the laws and liberties of this land, you see. Do you understand? I die to protect the laws and liberties of this land.’
‘Yes, Father,’ she said before starting to sob, which was not what she wished at all, as she must look after her brother.
‘You must not cry.’
‘I see nothing glorious,’ she said, anger rising inside. ‘You are the king.’
Passed around from family to family since the end of the civil war – endured rather than cherished by her reluctant hosts – her father had been her safety, distant but sure. He would come for them one day; this she had always believed. Only now, that would not be so. Her belief was mistaken. He was to leave her again and for always, and there was no glory here.
‘I die to maintain the true religion,’ continued her father. ‘That is, the Protestant religion. So you must read wisely.’
‘I will so do, Father.’
She read a great deal and not always in English. She could read and write in Hebrew, Greek, Italian, Latin and French as well, and spiritual reading was her favourite.
‘Bishop Andrewes’ sermons are good,’ continued her father. ‘You will enjoy those; and Archbishop Laud’s book against Fisher is strong against popery.’
Elizabeth nodded.
‘We are not against Mary.’ The girl looked confused. ‘I mean the Virgin Mary – we are not against veneration.’
‘No, Father.’
‘But we do not pray to her; that is the parting with Rome. We do not ask her to intercede on our behalf. That doctrine is an accretion, not there in the early Church Fathers.’
‘I have read the Fathers, Father.’
‘And we must attend to our buildings. We must repair and beautify our churches. Presbyterians know nothing of this; they would speak psalms in a cowshed. But outward beauty speaks of inner zeal.’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘You look sad.’
‘They say that you could save your life – if you agreed to the end of bishops.’
Charles paused.
‘I will not save my life for their loss, Elizabeth – no, for that would be a price too high. It would be as if I ate the Eden apple all over again. Do you understand?’ Elizabeth nodded. ‘As for me, dear daughter, I am at peace.’
‘I am happy for you, Father.’ There was no peace inside her young body.
‘I have forgiven all my enemies,’ he explained, ‘and I hope God will forgive them also. We cannot be sure of these things, but I hope he shall. And you must tell your mother, when you see her – and I am sure you will – you must tell her that my thoughts never strayed from her, not once; and that my love shall remain the same to the last, even to the falling axe.’
Elizabeth, crying, took herself to the window. Charles could hardly attend to her, for he now reached out to young Henry and pulled him on to his lap: a heavier boy these days.
‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ‘they will cut off your father’s head tomorrow – they will do this.’
Elizabeth yelped; Henry was wide-eyed.
‘And then perhaps – this might be their plan – they will make a king of you. They may do this . . . a tame king is what they want, unlike me . . . one they can control.’
The young duke nodded, he wouldn’t cry like his sister.
‘But mark what I say, Henry: you must not be a king while your brothers Charles and James live. You understand?’
‘I understand.’ He didn’t understand.
‘For be sure of this: they will cut off your brothers’ heads when they catch them; they will do this. And then cut off yours too at the last, for this is how they are. So I charge you: do not be made a king by them, you understand me? Do not be made a king.’
‘I will be torn to pieces first,’ declared the duke on the king’s lap.
‘Well, you speak most admirably!’ said Charles, delighted at such spirit, and in so young a child. ‘And so you must look to the welfare of your soul, keep your religion and fear God, who will provide you with all you need. But though you must forgive – we must all forgive – never trust. Never trust anyone, for all these people want is power for themselves; and no grieving, Henry, no sad eyes – for much happiness awaits us all in another kingdom!’
He looked across at his daughter and picked up a Bible.
‘Elizabeth, come now, join us here and take this Bible as my gift to you, for you are a fine reader, I have been told.’
Elizabeth received the book as the door opened again and a guard entered. Charles looked up, disappointed at this interruption.
‘And now you dear things must go, before more louts come and interrupt this family with their orders and their swords. That’s no way to treat a Christian family, is it?’ Elizabeth looked at him. ‘Not at all, not at all. So give your father a kiss, for that is the finest gift this king could now receive; the finest gift by far.’
They kissed beneath the soldier’s gaze and then the door was opened and without a look back – or only a brief one – Elizabeth and Henry left.
Charles asked to be left alone. It was time to open the king’s case, take out the letters it held, and commit them to the flames.
These letters must not see tomorrow.
*
Cromwell’s parlour seemed smaller tonight, with Ireton restless and Elizabeth sitting rather than serving. Together and separately, they pondered the morrow.
‘Will the people riot?’ asked Elizabeth. ‘I imagine they will riot; they will be very angry.’
‘Angrier even than you?’
‘I am not angry, Oliver.’
‘Anger creeps from your pores, dear wife, whether you name it or not. Your mood could sink a fleet.’
‘You do what you do, I have always said.’
‘I grant you, Mother, there are not many who wish him to die,’ said Ireton. Elizabeth said nothing. She wouldn’t be cajoled or lectured by Henry. ‘But then those who wish him alive are not so plentiful either,’ he added.
He drank a little ale. Bridget had taught him not to fear his mother-in-law and her locked-jaw silences.
‘Perhaps they are frightened of the soldiery who chew tobacco and lean on their pikes around London,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Perhaps that is why they are quiet.’
‘Or perhaps the English are in greater love with the idea of a king than with the king himself. He scarcely impresses as a man.’
‘I am told he performed well at the trial.’
A short pause.
‘Who told you?’ asked Oliver.
‘Everyone says it.’
> ‘He had his moments,’ said Ireton, ‘as does any ship a-sinking.’
‘I am told Mr Shakespeare might have written his lines.’
‘That goes a little far,’ said Henry.
‘He played us all very well,’ agreed Oliver. ‘But then he does play people well; that makes him neither good nor right.’
‘And his fine playing – it does him little service in the end,’ added his son-in-law. ‘He dies tomorrow. That’s where his foolish cunning has brought him.’
There was further silence as the fire burned, a necessary warmth on this cold January night. Oliver threw another log into the hungry flame.
‘It did win him friends, Henry,’ said Oliver. ‘The trial, I mean.’
‘As I said it would. Though for myself, I would set life over friends. He’ll not live long to enjoy his new coterie.’
‘And in the long game?’ said Oliver, looking gloomily down the years that lay ahead. ‘His family – we cannot kill them all.’
‘It is over for his family. They gather dust abroad.’
‘Not his youngest two, Elizabeth and Henry,’ said Elizabeth.
‘His youngest are taught how things are. They have watched their father’s foolishness at close hand and will not copy his mistakes.’
‘Did they see him?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘Who?’
‘His children. Did they see their father?’
‘They saw him.’
‘For how long?’
‘Long enough. He did not have long to give them . . . too busy preparing for martyrdom.’
‘Do you see good in anyone, Henry?’ Elizabeth did find him exasperating sometimes.
‘Where it exists.’
Elizabeth thought that the king had been a kinder father than she herself had known; though one mustn’t think ill of the dead.
‘He does care for them,’ she said.
‘If he cared for them, Mother, he would have stayed at Hampton Court; you know this.’
‘He’s seen more of his children than I’ve seen of mine,’ said Oliver.
‘That’s because you fight,’ said Elizabeth.
‘So I am to blame?’
And then a knock at the door.
‘You expect someone, Oliver?’
‘No, but I will see.’
‘Be careful,’ said Elizabeth, who feared for her door tonight.
Cromwell peered through the window. ‘The guards stand firm. It is only a woman.’
He lifted the latch in the small hallway, opened the door and stepped out into a dark Drury Lane.
‘A lady to see you, sir,’ said John Shanks of Cromwell’s former cavalry regiment. ‘Won’t be turned away.’
‘A name?’
‘She wouldn’t give her name.’
Cromwell looked into the fog as a tall, waif-like figure in a linen undercap pushed herself forward. Shanks made to restrain her, and a small scuffle ensued as Cromwell reached for his knife, but there was no need. She was holding her hands in the air, saying she came in peace.
‘You come late for peace,’ Cromwell said.
‘The hour I cannot help.’
‘So what brings you?’
‘I come from the king.’
‘From the king?’
‘Yes. Or rather, for the king. I speak for him.’
‘A royal mouthpiece.’
‘He cannot die.’
Cromwell felt strangely vulnerable to this line. ‘Do you have a name?’ he asked.
‘My name does not matter.’
‘It matters to me. I wish to know the name of the king’s mouthpiece and who I talk to now.’
‘My name is Mrs Whorwood.’ There was nothing now to lose.
‘Mrs Whorwood from Holton Hall?’
‘And if I am?’
So they met again; almost a ghost-like figure at Bridget’s wedding, but no ghost now, her warm breath a thick cloud in the cold night air.
‘Go back to your family, Mrs Whorwood. Go back to your children.’
‘And that is all you can say?’
‘They’re kind words for one who so disdains me – and disturbs my home at night.’
‘And tomorrow will be worse than disdain. Tomorrow will be judgement, for you’ll have blood on your hands – royal blood!’ She held out her hands, imagining blood, and the guard looked uncomfortable. ‘You think it will help if I go home – home to my dog of a husband – when I have no home but the king’s preservation?’
‘Then tomorrow, madam, you will be homeless again.’ He sounded surer than he felt.
‘I walked past you at the siege of Oxford. I walked through your lines and into the city with the money that sent our dear Queen Henrietta to France.’
‘Then you blessed us.’
‘No, I cursed you. I always cursed you to the king.’
‘The queen was not good for the king. She rather governed him, making her husband fresh enemies every day . . . and perhaps you have followed her in that.’
‘I merely point him to those with a true heart.’
‘And away from reconciliation and unity. We might have been friends, the king and I.’
‘He called you “the farmer” and thought you dribbled in awe.’
‘Goodnight, lady.’
He turned to go but she grabbed at his shoulder and he span round with force in his eyes, as though to hit her.
‘There will be an uprising tomorrow,’ she said, face close to face. ‘And the king will be freed; this I know. Whitehall will riot and you’ll be unable to control such numbers. Better to make plans for peace now.’
‘Believe me, I tried.’
‘He will not be executed. I know this – it is in the stars!’
Cromwell stepped back, the rage spent. ‘You consult an astrologer? Hah! Believe me, the king executes himself, Mrs Whorwood; he insists upon it. The night sky can do little about that. And sadly – and this is grievous – you helped him down this dismal path, filling him with vacuous dreams.’
‘I call it hope!’
‘And I name it treason, for the dreams were just dreams, and they bent his mind against healing.’
‘Tomorrow, it will be you in fear of your life.’
Cromwell smiled with sadness at her desperate words. ‘And a soldier knows that feeling well. I have never forgotten it. I bid you goodnight, Mrs Whorwood.’
‘And I bid you an eternity in hell!’
As the guard took hold of her he moved back inside.
‘Do not harm her – but send her on her way,’ he said, closing the door on Drury Lane.
‘Who was that?’ asked Elizabeth as he returned to the parlour, shaken.
‘No one,’ said Oliver. ‘No one important.’
30 January 1649
The boys from Westminster School were locked in for the day. But pupils at St Paul’s were there in Whitehall early – those with a heart for it – joining the milling crowd and eating ‘execution pies’, as the vendor had named them, though not all had an appetite. Young Pepys shocked his friends when he called this ‘judgement day’.
‘This is judgement day and we need to be near the front.’
‘Will we see brimstone?’
‘We will see blood, if we get near enough. When the head falls, it spurts out everywhere. It spurted everywhere with Stafford, they say.’
‘Kings’ blood is different.’
‘How so?’
‘It’s a different colour!’
‘And I say it’s the same – it just spurts further and more royally!’
His guards walked Charles and his dogs across St James’s Park at ten in the morning. He had always liked this park; he would walk here with Henrietta in the spring, particularly in the later and happier days, when she ha
d stopped fighting her adopted nation. A good wife in many respects, they had grown together over time – and now suddenly, here was Jane seeking his attention. What was she doing here? What in God’s name was the woman doing? He did not wish for this.
‘Good morning, your majesty,’ she said, curtseying.
‘Good morning, Mrs Whorwood.’
Charles asked his guards if he might speak discreetly to her, explaining she was a poor woman whose family he once helped. They gave him a few yards’ grace, not wishing to lose him now. But it was only a desperate woman and what harm could she do?
‘You must leave me now, Mrs Whorwood,’ he said with quiet insistence.
‘There are two riders, Charles, and a spare horse across the way from here. Do you see them?’
Charles could see figures in the distance as he raised his eyes . . . a horse, waiting.
‘I have no need of a horse.’
‘This is your last chance, your majesty.’
‘You must go home, Mrs Whorwood.’
‘I have no home.’
‘But I do not know you now. Do you hear me, seven-one-five?’
Her heart sang; his eyes shared a secret.
‘I have kept the letters,’ she said, smiling.
‘I have burned all mine,’ he said, casually. ‘I burned them last night, watched them consumed by fire. You should follow my example. They are gone.’
‘I understand, I understand.’ She understood, of course she did. ‘But your horses await you, your majesty. You will thank me when you are free; you must run now and all will be well.’
‘It is my dear wife I think of as I walk,’ he said accusingly.
‘I think of her as well, your majesty!’
‘I remember that she and I strolled here together and how great our love was, and I wish to remember her now.’
‘Our most excellent queen.’
‘And you intrude upon my remembering, Mrs Whorwood, so go back to your husband and leave me, please.’
