Traitor's Field Read online

  She watched him a while: the flexing of the old sinews under the jacket; the steadiness.

  ‘It doesn’t seem possible that it can survive,’ she said. ‘That anything can ever be green again.’

  He looked up, nodded respectfully. ‘Oh aye, miss.’ It was agreement and reassurance, and it was all she would get from Jacob. The ancient face nodded at her again, and returned to the spade.

  ‘Nature. . . kills herself.’

  He looked up, and considered this. Then down again. ‘Knows what she’s doing.’

  She waited, but there was no more. Just the frosty rasp of Jacob’s breathing, in the wilderness. She turned and walked towards the house, dreaming of a fire and trying not to feel her own body.

  On 29th December in that year, the Army Council was visited by Elizabeth Poole of Abingdon, a woman known to speak prophecy rightly, a woman with God’s truth in her mouth.

  The Army Council, hungry variously for enlightenment or for exculpation, welcomed her with sober respect. A woman, of course, had no place in politics, and certainly no voice. One had to beware false prophets, and the Council in its experience of the gravity and grimness of the world knew the manifold deceptions and flippancies of women. But God’s providence must be sought and welcomed wherever it may be found.

  The Council had her sit on a simple chair, and stood around her, pressed close in their heavy uniforms and reverential glares. The room smelled of wet cloth, and men.

  Among them, Elizabeth Poole seemed insubstantial, almost transparent: thinner, paler, odourless. She wore grey linen, and its elusive folds and shadows inhabited a different spectrum to the tans and blues that circled her.

  She confirmed that God was at work in and through the Army. She described a vision: a strong man, capable and careful, healing a frail body. The strong men looked at the frail woman in their middle, and knew that the Army could heal England.

  Through the fogged window there was a burst of coarse argument from the riverbank, rough, unrestrained shouts and laughter. The soldiers ignored the distractions, stared harder at the fragile creature in front of them, that their concentration might harden into faith and open them more utterly to the divine.

  Elizabeth Poole murmured the rightness of their proceeding against the delegitimate King, urged them politely to fight for the liberty that God had vouchsafed them, whispered of the great test in front of them, and blessed them with the trust of God and the nation.

  Slowly, some nods, and murmurs of ‘Amen’.

  Thomas Scot had the invidious habit, or so it seemed to Cromwell, of placing himself always at the very edge of a man’s vision. Never in front, never face to face. It made him perpetually a distraction, an irritation.

  He was there now, a glimpse of complication, a promise of complaint. Cromwell turned his head to face him square, scowled, and then his eyes dropped again to the report.

  Sir, I must beg leave to report that this day, January 4, the Parliament of Scotland has in its first act of business produced the strongest possible declaration against the current proceedings towards Charles Stuart, honouring him as the rightful and inviolable King of Scotland and expressing dark concern at what is perceived as an excess of religious toleration among those forces most influential in English politics. I shall send to you the full manuscript of this declaration at the first moment I have it. The Duke of Argyll, notwithstanding his amity and hospitality to you but two months past, has placed himself in the front line of this new campaign, and will listen to no moderating counsel from myself or any other. It is clear from the thing itself and from other correspondence I have had that he considers it no more than politic to take so advanced a position. A man of his ultimate changeability may fairly be taken as bell-wether for the movements of Scottish sentiment.

  [NALSON COLLECTION 24, BODLEIAN LIBRARY]

  The mighty Cromwell nose twisted up in a big sniff of distaste, as at an acrid smell that would nonetheless not deter him from taking a full breath. He gripped the report in a slow paw, and thrust it over his shoulder towards St John, standing behind him.

  ‘How many Scottish armies am I to be obliged to fight?’ Scot’s face opened theatrically at the question, a show of wise wonder at the mysteries of life, as if Scottish armies were an unknowable emanation of divine caprice. Which, it was beginning to appear to Cromwell, might well be the case. ‘Must we inform the Parliament that this is to be a yearly phenomenon, an annual sacrifice, a celebration of harvest time?’

  Oliver St John was smoothing out the crumpled corner of the report, stroking at it like a dove in his palm. ‘The politics of it are hardly surprising, and the strength of the words a reflection of the weakness of the real threat. There is no army.’

  ‘We cannot be sure. The border with Scotland is the broken door of our house, through which cold wind and pestilence will come unless the door be bolted or the pestilence purged.’

  ‘I would counsel haste.’ Thomas Scot’s thin cracked voice, and both heads turned to him.

  Scot smiled weakly, as if embarrassed that his words had carried. ‘There is not yet an army, as Master St John wisely remarks, and there will not be one if we act quickly to remove that which would be its cause and its rallying-post – that is, Charles Stuart. But if we linger, we will permit the divisions and frailties of our weaker supporters to eat at our cause, and we will make such an army a certainty. Some preachers are speaking for the King already – for his character, and for the impossibility of trying him. The Court is dithering. I have reports’ – he laid his palm softly against his chest, as though the reports were kept there; perhaps they were – ‘of their qualms and quibbles. Downes, for example, and Love. There is a cancer of divers men, all inclined to find reasons to oppose us, and if they should have time and place to cohere. . .’ He let the threat hang, but then decided it too subtle. ‘If they should attract leadership. . . the leadership of General Fairfax, perhaps, who is of course much loved among our people, then we should scarce have an army of our own to oppose against what Scotland might throw at us.’

  There were just three of them in the room, and in the moment it seemed a small and lonely place. ‘I would counsel haste.’

  Sir,

  the trial is to proceed, regardless of disputes and doubts over the basis in law for such a proceeding. There is a grouping of men who will push it to the uttermost, even as to a threatening of the King’s life, but there is agreement that such would only be to press him to recognise the legitimacy of the proceeding and thus accept the new Parliamentary order of things, and come thereby into a more peaceful and enduring relationship with his people.

  S. V.

  [SS C/S/49/7]

  On 5th January the Army Council called back the prophesier Elizabeth Poole, to hear more of God’s intent. There was snow outside, and the heavy boots dropped slush on the floorboards, and the lattice windows fogged in the heat of the intent room.

  Frail and bold, a divine sparrow among the profane herd of cattle, she confirmed their role as stewards of the nation.

  She was more confident this time, looking around herself, making occasional darting contact with the glances of the big men. She reminded them that a steward must improve that which is in his care, but must not overreach his station. The King had betrayed his trust, and Parliament had betrayed their trust; the Army must not follow. From somewhere she produced a paper – a few less concentrated minds wondered at the workings of that whispering dress – and with it a clear instruction, which she would not weaken despite increasingly insistent and sceptical questions. The King might be tried, and convicted of breach of trust, but his person must not be harmed.

  The soldiers shifted, uncomfortable in their heavy boots and coats, swapped glances, looked darkly at the glowing woman, looked away.

  Tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public and implacable enemy of the Commonwealth of England. Thus the King of that country, brought to trial by his people.

  Every day now the Court must make some further inno
vation, of administration, of religion, or of law. The Court must move fast, to stay one day ahead of the implications of yesterday’s innovation. If you stop moving you lose your balance and fall. Today the Committee is trying the King – for treason, until someone unhelpfully points out that since treason is an act against the King you can hardly charge a King with it, can you? It is an age of elaborate theatrical, and an appropriate setting has been designed for this unprecedented spectacle.

  Westminster Hall: the stones and timbers of oldest England, a grand and solemn and austere stage. A raised platform at one end for the judges – magisterial, superior, all-seeing. A wooden bar across the Hall, to distinguish between judge and judged, right and wrong. Soldiers, because pikes and uniforms give an unchallengeable legitimacy to a proceeding, and because – well, because you never know. At the far end of the Hall two tiered wooden galleries, thirty-six hours of unbroken work for the carpenters, just pay them whatever they ask, because a spectacle must have spectators. Justice must be seen to be done.

  Unfortunately, the actors keep forgetting their lines: members of the Court disagree with each other, say the wrong thing, absent themselves; sessions are cancelled; the soldiers have to be prompted to give their cries of support to the proceeding; their Colonel threatens to fire into the crowd; members of the audience will insist on heckling.

  And in the middle of them all, tiny in his loneliness, the King. Another overweening oak chair – Have they not the wit to make a throne of becoming smallness, rather than these oppressive giants? – placed on a platform of rich ochre carpeting. From above, the highest points in the galleries, the King resembles a peculiar insect trapped in amber.

  Held as if by some aura, none of the King’s subjects may come nearer than ten feet. The carpet, the distance, the distinction: now that the King’s majesty has finally come under open challenge, those who no longer recognize it seem to be according it proper recognition at last.

  But who would wish to stand too close to this strange man, accused of all possible crimes against the state? For lifetimes the touch of a King has cured infection; now it seems that the King’s touch has become infectious, bringing defeat and chaos and guilt.

  There was a King in this realm sat in his throne and tried to hold back the sea. Perhaps I have that gift, that you hold yourselves so far from me. But your endless staring faces overwhelm me, your curiosity, your scrutiny, your scorn, and I know I cannot hold you back. Rather I would disappear, slip these heavy clothes and vanish as a spirit, become one with the yellow light that burns through the windows.

  Has any King – has any man in his station and time – had to suffer such affront to his dignity? Such insults, such unbecoming aggression, such masquerade? I am become a mummery show to the whole people, a fighting cock. I am become the jester to my own Court.

  This is unbelievable. This is unthinkable. This is not real. You speak a language of law that I do not recognize. You refuse to recognize my status or my arguments. I am merely a distant spectator of these bastard proceedings, which appear to me but dimly: an argument observed through a window; a conversation heard from another room. How far away these people are, how far England as I perceived it. This is no longer a world that I understand. I fly above it. I am a sparrow fluttering among the hammer-beams, looking down on this strangeness. I am gone, through the keyhole.

  Behind the scenes, the arguments, the persuasion, the intimidation continue.

  The Crown Inn, in Uxbridge, and Shay was sitting in a corner away from the fire when his visitor arrived. The man stepped in uneasily, looking around, saw him, looked a little sick, looked around again and approached uncomfortably, as if his clothes were wet or pinched him.

  Shay said pleasantly, ‘Sit down! Sit down!’ and when his visitor was sitting down leaned forward and murmured through a smile, ‘A discussion between companions over a drink in a good inn attracts no attention; trying to disguise your approach to a man with whom you’re about to have an intimate conversation does attract attention. Relax yourself. Smile.’

  His visitor did neither. He sat back in his chair, and then plunged forward. ‘It is signed.’

  Shay breathed in heavily, holding his expression even.

  ‘It is signed. Death. The King is to lose his head. At the last, they insisted that the charge of treason be on the warrant.’

  Shay merely nodded. Then: ‘How many? Who?’

  Another flash of nausea in the face. ‘Fifty-nine. Bradshaw first, of course. Then Grey, and Cromwell.’ A shrug. ‘Those you would expect. Ireton, Marten and Lilburne. Hutchinson. Pride. Scot.’

  ‘Hutchinson?’

  ‘On the first day. He still smarts, that he let General Langdale escape from inside his very hands at Nottingham, and so brazen. Since that day he has burned for a revenge on Royalism.’

  Shay’s eyes had narrowed. His visitor waited – and then leaned in again. ‘This is the headquarters of the Army itself! Why do we meet here?’

  ‘That is why. The most trusted, the most sure men in the realm meet in this town.’

  ‘You’re – I was here negotiating with the King in ’45, did you know that?’

  Shay said nothing. He’d known. A man had few enough opportunities to exercise his humour.

  Again his visitor’s face was thrust forward. ‘I want indemnity.’

  ‘You want what?’

  ‘Indemnity. Who can know how this will go now? No one has killed a King before. The preachers say the whole world could end. The millennium itself. We may yet see civil war worse than ever we have imagined it.’ Shay seemed to be considering the notion. ‘Who can know? But you must indemnify me – protect me if the country turns again. You must sign – or the Prince. The Prince must sign for me.’

  Shay’s mouth twisted, chewing the idea. ‘One would tend to try for such a bargain before offering one’s information.’

  A flicker of panic across his visitor’s eyes. ‘But. . . I have. . . You must!’

  Shay’s old head was stone. ‘I will speak for you when I can. For the meanwhile, I will have need of your service – from time to time. Forget us not, and perhaps you will be not forgotten.’

  A sick nod. Then, eventually, with emptiness: ‘What happens now? What will you do –afterwards?’

  Shay’s expression was open, the tone mild – the answer obvious. ‘I will create such a chaos in these lands as will make these Godly men think their world upturned, and all the torments of hell upon them.’

  His visitor stared at him, pleading for the reassurance or the joke, and then the strained face collapsed and the shoulders slumped. A breath, and then he flung himself up from the table and turned to go.

  A moment later he was there again, hands gripping the chair back and head bent low.

  ‘Thank you for not asking.’ Shay looked up. His visitor was not looking at him, head offered low for blessing or execution. Shay saw tiny droplets of water on the swaying strands of hair; it must have come on to drizzle after his own arrival. ‘Whether I signed. Thank you for not asking.’

  Shay took his hand. ‘You forgot to shake hands.’ He smiled heavily. ‘It’s getting harder to stay alive. A man must shift as best he can.’

  The Palace of St James, in London. Early in his reign, His Majesty, being a less convivial man than his father, had decreed that he would be accompanied at his most intimate proceeding by only one of his attendants. Now he crouches crimson over the pot, watched by two soldiers who are dutied to monitor him night and day, and who shuffle and flinch in their discomfort. The bringing down of majesty was not supposed to be like this.

  Below, in a kitchen storeroom, murmuring through a gloom gusting with nutmeg and cinnamon and grain of paradise, two men:

  ‘Shay, is there no chance of —’

  ‘None. Do you have what I asked?’

  A scrambling in a pocket. ‘Yes, but—’ A paper is taken firmly – scrutinized intently in the musty light and thrust into an inner pocket – and a ring.

  ‘
My duty and my respect to His Majesty. The new King will wear this, and will remember his father when he does so.’ Two pairs of eyes stare at each other through the impossible. ‘You will be safe, Seymour. I have seen to that. Are there other papers?’

  ‘Some, of course.’

  ‘Burn them, Seymour. Burn it all.’

  Whitehall is the great theatre of the British Empire, the stage for a thousand years of history. Every significant actor in British history has entered or exited through its arches. In the warren of rooms and passages behind its grand façades, anonymous and gloomy grinds and spins the machinery of state. Behind the windows – blank, reflecting other façades, and the faces of the passing spectators – as much treason is talked as government.

  What shall I say to them?

  I believe that I have a good mind, a loyal heart, and a true soul – oh God, make my soul pure, grant me but this mercy that my soul be pure – but I have no good tongue. My tongue is the traitor in this house, the Judas in this garden. My mind and heart and soul would sustain me, but I know that at the last I must turn to my tongue and that it will betray me.

  Grant that the betrayal be quick, oh Lord, grant me some last dignity. Let the kiss have something not unsweet in it.

  Today England is killing her King.

  He waits for his entrance, in the newest and finest among this complex of buildings. In this banqueting house, the King’s subjects would come to see him dine, watch him eating beasts that it was death for them to touch, birds that they had never heard of, all from platters worth more than their whole lives. This lavish chamber, now the King’s waiting room, his purgatory, had been his own creation: a light soaring escape from the mediæval that clustered around it, a defiant statement of modernity, of privilege, of divine possibility. Fate is this: that a man is instrumental in his own death; may he not at least create the scene himself? Above him the ceiling panels show his father’s ascent to heaven. Allegory is everything.