The Whispering Swarm (37 page)

—allowing Prince Rupert to lead his brightly dressed raggle-taggle army in a charge against the Parliamentarians. At his command our pistols and muskets blazed all together so that happily I never knew if I drew the blood of men I actually admired. My political sympathies were never Royalist, though romantically I enjoyed their dash. Like Confederates in the American War, they were the defeated past and a worse tyranny followed them. In this situation I had no choice save to side with the king's men. All my declared friends were for the Stuarts and my enemies represented Cromwell. I knew Clitch, Love and others to be turncoats of the most despicable kind. They had none of the best Parliamentarians' simple sense of fair play. A dangerous fanatic Jake Nixer might be, but he was driven by his convictions. There was something congenial about most of the Cavaliers. I couldn't help liking them. What's more, it is hard to see the viewpoint of the man who makes your blood run cold as he leers at you and fingers a massive, much-polished knife.

So rapid was our rush that the astonished Nixer had no time to reload his tromblon and fell back, letting the thing swing behind him on a great leather strap. He drew his broad-bladed sword. Unexpectedly outmanoeuvred, his archers and musketeers were unable to make use of their weapons and the Alsacians were good, it soon proved, at close fighting. Many more were moving in from the back streets to catch the soldiers in a perfect pincer movement.

Once I let off my ‘barker' I fell back. I had no taste or talent for hand-to-hand combat. To be honest, I took no pleasure in any kind of fighting, except as sport. I prefer my antagonisms kept to the archery field or the debating stage. I come from a long line of cowards.

I had to admit I felt the camaraderie. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Prince Rupert, on the other hand, and soon Moll Midnight and Mother Melody, the elegant Lu Wing and young Jemmy Cornwall, I almost enjoyed myself. In our exotic clothes we were a most mismatched group of individuals. Every one of my comrades clearly relished the skillful business of taking life. Their faces were flushed. Their eyes sparkled. They fought side by side like old comrades. They were ecstatic. They had new blood in their veins. I fell back as they led a little group deep into the Roundhead ranks fighting with swords and only a few pikes and pistols. I saw Moll suddenly stagger, her body blocked from my sight by Sebastian Toom's small ferocious figure. Forgetting my own uselessness, I took a grip on my cutlass and ran into the main press, cutting and defending, fighting my way to Moll's side as, gathering her strength, she continued to drive the redcoats back towards the gates. My love for her somehow gave me physical courage. I took a firmer grip on my massive cutlass and pressed forward ready to do the unthinkable if her life were threatened.

Discharging my other gun at an attacker, I reached her. Moll's wounded thigh wasn't serious but it looked as if Jemmy Cornwall's was. He lay twisted on his back, the flesh of his face pressed to one side by the cobbles, while blood oozed in a slow, steady stream from his mouth. He bore a jagged wound in his side. I was almost frozen by the sight but thought of Moll's safety kept me going. She had tripped, she said. Somehow I helped her get Jemmy back to the local doctors. They had set up a field hospital in the public bar and they were doing their best with very little. Gin was the main anaesthetic.

Those of us who were able returned to help push into the Roundhead ranks. Having expected an easy victory, the Commonwealth troops were demoralised. To my surprise, they did not concentrate their forces on the tavern's basement. The abbey was their goal. Though doubtless well indoctrinated into the nature of the Papist Beast, many had remained uncertain whether they desecrated holy ground or not, a question of great importance to such decent, upright men, volunteers in the service of their religion and respectful of Christ, if not their fellow Christians.

Eventually scowling Nixer called an order to retreat. He demanded that we let them drag their dead and wounded with them which, with great gravity, we permitted. I have since seen men wounded in grisly ways yet it surprised me even at the time why red-stained shirts and shallow cuts to face and hands seemed the most serious signs of brutal slash and thrust. The bearers came up and the bodies of the dead were arranged on stretchers. In a moment or two, led by their officers, they had marched from the square. In the silence, we counted our own losses.

 

27

COUNTING LOSSES

Very few of our men were seriously wounded and not one, it seemed, was dead. Even poor Jemmy Cornwall was able to walk without support, that great gash no longer bleeding. I was amazed people had not expired from the ferocious thrusts they had received from pikes or bayonets. Indeed, bandages very soon hid the wounds and few seemed seriously hurt. When I mentioned this to Prince Rupert, he laughed and reminded me that we fought to preserve the world's most ancient traditions, ‘as well as the sacred ground of this great, old abbey. This is where miracles are made.'

As the silence faded and we realised that we had actually fought and defeated a larger, better armed force, I heard Father Grammaticus's voice behind me offering up a short unfamiliar prayer in what I guessed was Latin.

Beside me, suddenly, Friar Isidore materialised. ‘There is too much pain in the world. They seek to remedy that but, sadly, they only increase it. They see their salvation in simplicity and purification, but the world is not simple. Nor is it easily purified. God made it complex and mysterious. They want to obey man's rules, not God's.'

I acknowledged that he spoke even if I didn't entirely understand him.

‘They sought their simplified salvation through our Treasure, which they planned to steal. We were prepared to hold our ground, in spite of the danger.' I thought I heard an unseemly slightly spiteful note in his otherwise gentle tones. ‘But our prayers were answered. You fought a brave battle.'

I said I found it sad that Christian fought Christian. He agreed with me, vigorously shaking his head. ‘Isn't that so! Sometimes I wonder why we threw in our lot with them.'

It seemed to me he excluded himself from his judgment. Surely a Christian monk had to feel empathy? Did he mean that the order was not actually Christian? He was decidedly melancholy, I thought, but in a way that set him apart from the rest of us.

Prince Rupert congratulated Duval on his tactics. ‘You always claimed it was common sense to keep mistress and steed separate from one's quarters. The worst would have come if Nixer had not been so considerately overconfident. As is often the case, the battle was won not by the perspicacity of the conquerors, but by the errors of the conquered. We had to make sure he did not reload and fire his Old Thunder! His men were leaderless while he spoke. Show me a zealot who can resist making a speech and I'll show you a dead one.'

Now I shook Captain Duval's hand. In truth, he had saved lives on both sides. The Roundheads seemed grateful for Prince Rupert's courtesies. I knew he was simply behaving according to his sense of honour. Only later would he come to understand that not all of these up-and-coming creeds fought by the same rules of chivalry. And so Jake Nixer and his bombast, his lickspittles and Old Thunder retreated down the ratholes they had made, dragging their wounded with them, and our citizens set to rebuilding and blocking new walls as fast as they could as if they feared they might let some further evil in.

Once Prince Rupert was certain his wounded friends were safe he took a few of us with him to the cellar. The way through was blocked by fallen rubble and we turned back. We had to think carefully before we went back in there. We needed expert engineers to prop it all up. To move stones at random would risk bringing the whole thing down onto the cellar and smashing forever Prince Rupert's incredible and intriguing super-orrery. As it was, we had no idea how much of the strange machine was intact. I had the impression he had worked on the thing for months.

As if in answer there came a rumbling and a shifting from below and we knew we heard more of the caverns settling, doubtless threatening any contents not already damaged.

‘It can be repaired. It can be built again.' The prince was reassuring himself. He shook his head. ‘Now we need your help more than ever, Master Michael. Will you not join our cause?'

Regretfully, I lowered my head. ‘I have responsibilities,' I told him. ‘Another cause, if you like.'

Molly touched his arm to comfort him, but he displayed an uncharacteristic reserve, nodding and patting her hand, telling her everything was splendid.

I saw the monks returning in twos and threes through the door into their abbey. Were those mysterious Jews still there? Had they been prepared to pick up arms if we seemed to be losing? I doubted it. The monks were the strangest Christians I knew! What was their purpose here? It had to be something particular. Had they been founded solely to protect that weird fish chalice, that beautiful, ancient cup used on their altar and thought by gossiping locals to possess magical powers? Their Treasure. The true object of Nixer's attack?

That last incident made me consider seriously what I was doing in the Sanctuary. I hated unanswered questions. I was sleepwalking through my life. I was missing my children pretty painfully. I saw them fairly regularly, but rarely casually. One thing that bit of violent adventure had confirmed: I could not risk my children becoming fatherless as a result of my own curiosity and relish for adventure. I disapproved of men who did that. I shared this view with Jack Allard. I had already bought far too much life insurance because of the way I chose to live. Unable to support his family, my hero Mervyn Peake was confined to hospital with Parkinson's. Other friends had died young, leaving spouses and children with next to nothing. I had seen the wives and children of other divorces and deaths having to struggle. At the moment my money was allowing me to stop time and enjoy the benefits of what amounted to a harem. It couldn't last. My girls came first.

Typical of the English petits bourgeoises, I was raised with few moral boundaries in my life. ‘Keep your nose clean and stay out of trouble' was the profoundest advice I got from my relatives. As a young man, therefore, I had to create some kind of morality for myself and I did this mostly through reading, especially the French existentialists and anarchists like Kropotkin. Kropotkinism gave me a useful moral code by which to make ordinary decisions. Of course, I never thought of passing on my ideas as moral wisdom. You had to follow your instincts. And mine were to be there at my kids' disposal. I wasn't at all alone in this. We were fathers of our times. In that sense the cycle of life seemed to follow a pretty ordinary course. Much as I hated the yuppy middle-class liberals moving into the old neighbourhoods, I still missed the cycle of normal bourgeois life. Every street and house reminded me of some event that had happened in my past. Brookgate was falling almost daily to the developers but the Grove still seemed firmly in the hands of working and creative people. We now know it was an illusion. We hadn't realised what liars our representatives were, how quietly companies were buying flats in the area. Arts execs and their businessmen and politician friends learned how convenient for work old Brookgate and Ladbroke Grove, with its trees and parks, could be. But at that point, the areas still held much of their familiar shabby atmosphere. I valued the area as I valued my kids' childhood and I knew I should take advantage of it all before the neighbourhood disappeared and the girls grew up.

I'd had enough melodrama. What on earth was I doing risking my life playing at soldiers? I was sick of all those unanswered questions. I wanted to get back to reality. I felt helpless, ineffective, and I knew I could be of little help in Alsacia.

‘Will you stay?' Molly asked when we were alone. ‘I think Prince Rupert needs your help.' She seemed unusually vulnerable and it was almost impossible for me to resist her. Helena wasn't expecting me back for at least a day or two. The wound Moll had sustained, which I had thought so bad, was no more than a scrape. I was relieved she didn't need me. ‘Please,' she said. ‘I love you with all my heart and soul.'

I badly wanted to see my children and close friends again. I had no solutions. I told Molly I was going back to the Grove. I promised I would be back soon to see her. I loved her. But at that moment, I just wanted to go home.

 

28

MY INDUCTIONS

I went back to Ladbroke Grove. I couldn't come up with a convincing explanation for what I had witnessed at the Alsacia. I told Helena I was having a bit of a struggle as I sat there in bed with her. She wore a demure white nightie and seemed in a great mood as we sipped our cocoa and watched
The Good Life.
She didn't ask how things had been at the retreat, assuming I referred to my latest book. She thought I didn't want to talk about it. She seemed content. We were a settled domestic couple again.

Helena rarely said it but I supposed she loved me. What did that really mean? Like most women she was turned on by power. She couldn't help herself. And I had the most power of anyone currently available to her. Maybe, too, I was simply her type. Our chemistry worked. The random elements which we translate into love and desire mystify us precisely because beauty has no universal standards. For most of my life I thought of myself as homely if not downright ugly but no woman I took up with—and they were all pretty good-looking—ever thought of me like that. Helena and Molly were both beauties of very different types. I don't look bad in those early pictures. Video from my twenties shows me as an aggressive, articulate, self-confident, much-travelled man of letters and the world.

On occasion both Helena and Molly loved to be my ally. What drove women to fight for men with everything they had? Not many men typically did that for women. All those novels and studies never solved the puzzle. Chemistry alone did not explain it.