Treason's Daughter (18 page)

Challoner comes into the hall, brushing the snow from his shoulders.

‘Move your arse from the fire, Ned, boy,' he says, and Ned vacates the great chair. Challoner's eyes are shining, and his cheeks glow from the cold. He claps his hands in front of the blaze and laughs, as the snow drips into waterfalls from his cloak.

‘How I love a good snowfall. Makes the city look almost presentable,' he says, his voice booming.

Sam grins back at him. ‘Twelfth Night never seems right without the snow.'

‘Where have you been, Father? We were waiting for you to start the games.'

‘Bring them up, bring them up,' he says, deflecting the question.

Sam darts out of the room, and then returns with the rest of the household, scrubbed and poured into their Sunday best. Nurse and Cook look as if they have been at the port, while little Milly, not so little, is ramrod straight by the door, as if looking for
an escape. Harmsworth stands as if on sufferance by the wall, his face wretched. He disapproves of Christmas, and he wants them all to know it.

They gather round the wassail bowl, replenished and pungent. With great ceremony, Challoner dishes out the punch. He holds a cup to Ned.

‘Come, Ned,' says Challoner quietly. ‘You may be dead by Easter. Or I may be. When I am, boy, you can make Christmas as drab and as dull as you like. But, for now, for me, take this.'

Harmsworth watches Ned as he reaches out a hand and takes the proffered cup. ‘Serpent,' he hisses suddenly. ‘Serpent in the garden.'

In the bowl, apples bob and duck. Ned holds the cup, suddenly looking foolish and young. His eyes dart between Harmsworth and his father, both looking expectantly at him. Quickly, as if to take himself by surprise, he drinks.

Sam and Challoner cheer, and Hen smiles. Harmsworth retreats into himself, his face impassive and unreadable.

Hen drinks more of the heady spiced brew. It travels down her body, flooding her with a warmth that is compounded by the presence of her family, whole in body, and laughing together.

A knock, suddenly, at the door. Harmsworth slips out, and reappears a moment later with Edmund Waller.

‘Ah,' Waller cries. ‘The family gathers! And I, the unwelcome interloper.'

‘Not at all, not at all!' exclaims Challoner. ‘A cup for you, sir.' He fills a cup with punch and Waller drinks deeply.

‘A triumph,' Waller says. ‘Most perfectly spiced. Miss Challoner, I salute you!'

Nurse and Cook giggle, and an awkward silence threatens.

‘Apologies, Mr Waller, you don't know my eldest boy, Edward. Ned, this is Edmund Waller, poet and Member for Hastings.'

They bow, warily.

‘Ned is on Philip Skippon's staff,' says Challoner.

‘Ah, Skippon. Wish him well, my boy, when you see him. A fine fellow.'

‘He is, sir,' says Ned shortly.

‘I am come to take my leave. I travel to Oxford again next week. To open formal negotiations with His Majesty.'

‘Let us drink to peace,' says Challoner, and they raise their cups emphatically.

‘To peace!'

Ned can't help himself. ‘And the proper regard for the true church of Christ our Lord and the due respect for the prerogatives of Parliament,' he says.

‘What kind of a toast is that, boy?' roars his father. ‘Too long, too much of a mouthful.'

Waller interjects smoothly. ‘Confusion to the enemies of the king, and the Church,' he says.

They all raise their cups again. Which enemies are we drinking to? Hen wonders. Which church?

‘Now,' says Waller. ‘Loath as I am to tear you away from the very bosom of your family, I would speak with you privately.'

‘Of course,' says Challoner, filling both their cups and ushering Waller to the door.

It closes behind them.

‘What's that about?' says Ned.

‘Unctuous man,' says Hen.

‘He's always here, locked up with Father,' says Sam. ‘Talking quietly in corners. Plotting.'

Ned frowns, and the word echoes in the room.

They launch into the games with a hilarity that begins forced but soon becomes natural. The bowl is filled again from the pot bubbling on the kitchen fire, and more is spilled on its journey back to the hall.

Challoner is back when the singing starts. He is composed and merry, joining in with a booming baritone.

Bring us in no brown bread, for that is made of bran,
Nor bring us in no white bread, for therein is no grain;
But bring us in good ale
.

Bring us in no beef, for there is many bones,
But bring us in good ale, for that goes down at once;
And bring us in good ale
.

Later, as she stumbles towards bed, the word ‘plotting' ricochets around Hen's befuddled mind. She climbs under the blankets and begs the walls to stop spinning.

Ned stumbles on the stairs, and Milly comes up behind him. She offers herself as a steady-board, and together they climb up, giggling.

‘Little Milly, not so little,' he says.

‘Older than you,' she says.

‘But twice as pretty.' He attempts a bow, but finds himself, to his astonishment, kneeling on the floor instead.

‘How did I get here?' he asks her, wonderingly.

She moves to lift him up again, and he throws his arms round her waist. ‘Little Milly,' he says into her skirts. ‘Little Milly.'

She drags him to his feet, and to the door of his room. He pulls her inside and closes the door, scrabbling at her skirts as he does.

‘Master Ned,' she says. ‘No, master Ned.' But she is small and meek, and he kisses her to stop her talking. ‘Oh, little Milly,' he breathes into her ear, hot and heavy. He pulls her down onto the bed, and she goes with him, passive as he clutches at what bare flesh he can find beneath the layers. As he pushes into her, he closes his eyes so the expression on her thin white face won't distract him from this sensation, this soul-burning sense of relief.

The next morning dawns grey and confused in the Challoner house. Hen wakes to a dry mouth and a churning stomach. She lies in bed, blankets pulled to her chin, fear of the cold and thirst fighting for primacy.

In Challoner's room, Nurse, naked and pink, drools a little in her sleep. Challoner, jerked awake by his own ferocious snore, wakes to find half his body freezing and uncovered.

‘Confound the woman,' he mutters as he pulls the blankets in his direction, and turns his back to her. ‘Blasted, blasted woman,' he mumbles, as he tries to go back to sleep again.

Ned wakes, and for one precious minute is conscious yet untroubled. Then the shame floods in. Little Milly's white face, and the joy of entering her. He sits up and his head pounds. He is alone; she is gone. Lord, turn your eyes away. Perhaps he dreamed
it. No, not a dream. He falls back into bed and curls into himself.

He whispers, his head under a blanket. ‘Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.'

He is hot and cold with the shame and the agony. He has forsaken his God. He is a fornicator and a drunkard. He is possessed. Even as his mind runs over the texts, and he whispers his frantic pleas for forgiveness, he realizes to his horror that his body is betraying him. For every time the image of Milly's white face and thin thighs creeps into his mind, his prick twitches hard. He fights the urge to touch himself, to give in to the thoughts of Milly's body bucking beneath him. Satan sits on his shoulder, whispering lewd words in his ear.

He balls his palms into fists and presses them into his eyes. Aloud, he calls on Christ to forgive him, to help him resist the temptations of the flesh. For did the Lord not say: ‘If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.'

Lying there, safe in his warm bed, Ned finds himself longing for battle. For the clash of steel. For the certainties, and the knowledge of God's work in your pike thrust, and His breath in your ear. For the purity of cold, and hunger, and dedication. For the chance of a swift path to heaven, and the angels calling you into the safe embrace of His grace.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

April 1643

T
HERE IS A SMELL THAT IS ENTIRELY UNIQUE TO A SACKED
town. Ned picks his way down the main street in Reading. Smoke predominates, overlaid with the hoppy tang of the pissed soldiers, and the reek of blocked sewers and untended streets. There is an absence of other familiar smells, like bread and stewing meat. The healthy smells of lives lived quietly are only missed when they are gone, subsumed in the putrid.

He holds a kerchief to his nose. Doors swing off hinges and windows are smashed. Furniture lies confusing and incongruous on the streets; the domestic dragged outside. He steps round a broken chair, and smashed glass crunches loudly under his heels. It has been wet and grey, and the town's misery is compounded by a slick layer of slush.

Here and there are soldiers, hanging off each other in drunken comradeship. They wander, dazed, in search of new territory, of cellars left unraided, pantries untouched and chests unrifled. Ned has become too familiar with the befuddled air of soldiers on the
sack; eight parts booze to two parts bloodlust. Perhaps some retain droplets of shame, but Ned can see no evidence of it. One pair, arms linked and stumbling, round the corner and weave towards him. Their laughter seems entirely weird to Ned, as if they are clowning at a funeral. They see his officer's sash and give a cheery semblance of a salute.

The inhabitants of the town are nowhere to be seen. Yet they must have lived here once; children and mothers, old folk and petted dogs, and apple-cheeked young girls. Only the rats remain, picking over the soldiers' discarded waste. Are they here somewhere? Ned wonders. Perhaps they are hiding in holes like badgers, waiting for us to go so they can creep out and try to set their world right side up again. To start on the sweeping up of glass, and the cleaning up of the soldiers' filth. The slow job of rebuilding their shattered lives.

As he passes a tavern, packed full and raucous, the door swings open and a young lad falls out. He lies in the gutter, his cheek pressed into the cold, wet cobblestones. Ned thinks about helping him up but decides against it, just as the boy coughs up a torrent of puke. It dribbles down his beardless chin and slides across the road. Ned steps over him and turns into Broad Street. In a gesture that has become habitual, he spits towards the third house on the left. They say that Laud was born here. His house, its inhabitants long fled, has become an open sewer, flecked with the excretions of the godly soldiers. Every window is smashed, and slogans are daubed on its walls. Ned eyes the grand home's degradation with some satisfaction. Ye shall reap what ye sow, he thinks.

At the corner of the street he comes to an elegant, brick-worked town house – Walsingham House. Inside, the hall is overrun with
senior officers lounging by a large fire, idly downing wine. He is a cornet now, and attached to Major-General Skippon's staff. He assumes the languid walk of an officer. He has long realized that if you act the part, no one questions the pretence. He nods to a few he recognizes. There is an air of resignation here, of defeat snatched from victory. Shame hangs in the thick, smoky air of the room like a miasma, ricocheting off the screaming and roaring which occasionally pierce the thick walls.

Skippon is in the corner – sober, of course – and surrounded by maps. He looks tired and drawn. All the triumph of breaching Reading's defences has long since been swallowed by the despair of watching his troops run wild and unchecked through the town's streets. Ned feels a surge of protective affection towards his general, this quiet, godly man who does not understand his soldiers' need to run beserk after the strain of the siege.

Skippon is bent low over a letter, and Ned waits for him to look up. A commander beloved and respected by his troops is a rare thing; Essex does not have the knack. Yet Skippon does. They love him for his godliness, his strength and his aptitude for soldiering. In an army officered by gentlemen volunteers, Skippon's professionalism is rare, and prized by the men whose lives he directs. Yet most of all they love him for his quiet dignity. It is this quality which informed his reply to the king's command to join him at York when he raised his standard last summer.

‘I desire to honour God, not to honour men,' he had said. Ned remembers the line and smiles to himself. Amid all the wrangling and the rhetoric, is that not the simplest, sweetest summation of why they are all here?

Yet all their love and respect for their general and their God
has not stopped them going on the rampage, Ned thinks, just as Skippon looks up and sees him standing there.

‘Ned, boy. Glad to see you. Still bedlam out there?'

‘Aye, sir. Quietening a bit now, I think. The beer is running out.'

‘Sunday tomorrow; perhaps we can bring them to their senses then.'

Ned nods, non-committal.

‘I need you to ride to London. You can ride? Of course, of course. Take this chit to the quartermaster for a horse, and here's your pass.'

Ned takes them as Skippon explains. A verbal order, not to be written down. Permission sought from the Committee of Safety to execute a few of the men, to set an example. A verbal summation to the committee's clerk of the rioting and viciousness since they took Reading yesterday.

‘You know the clerk, I believe, Oliver Chettle?'

Ned nods.

‘Thought so, that's why I'm sending you. We don't want our misdemeanours here too widely shouted about in town. A quiet word with Chettle, and permission from the committee to set aside the law and deal with a few miscreants publicly and sharply. That's what I want you to come back with.'

A boy arrives with a plate of bread and cheese, and puts it down amid the chaos on the table. Skippon gestures at an empty chair.

‘Eat something before your ride, Ned.'

Awkwardly Ned sits, and takes the proffered food. There has not been much around for those sickened by the looting, and he is famished.

‘Thank you, sir,' he stammers between mouthfuls.

‘Sad business, this. Your first siege and sack, I suppose, Ned? I have seen too many now. At least we've no report of rapes or civilian deaths – not yet, anyhow. There's a spark of the godly in them still, beneath the gallons of ale.'

‘My father told me it was not so in the Low Countries.'

Skippon smiles ruefully. ‘He did not love being a soldier, your father.'

Ned wants to ask why a man such as Skippon likes it, but knows his place. This descent into bestiality has horrified him, despite his father's warnings. He is shocked by the soldiers' easy carousing, and by the officers' resigned acceptance of it. Why am I shocked by man's vile nature, he wonders, as an image of Milly's white face appears in his mind's eye.

‘Men are frail creatures,' Skippon says, as if reading Ned's thoughts. ‘This vileness is the aftermath of fear. I do not know why God sends us mad after a battle, but He does. It takes a strong man, or a sober one, to resist it.'

‘This… this abomination cannot be His will,' says Ned.

‘All is God's providence, Ned, you know that.'

‘There is a sty of filth in all our souls. We are beasts. Vile, low, unworthy of His love,' Ned says, a little too loudly.

Skippon tilts his head to one side and looks keenly at the young cornet. ‘Aye. I do not know a single man who could bare an unblemished soul. If we did not so desperately need God's grace, and the intercession of His son, it would be no sort of a prize.'

Ned is unconvinced, but he nods anyway because he wants to please Skippon. He has thought of little else these two days. God's providence set against this rampaging of the godly.

‘But sir,' he says, waving his hand vaguely towards the window, ‘all this refutes Arminius. God's salvation is such a gift, such a bounteous, endless joy. And we are so filthy, so vile, such creeping low things. There is nothing any of us could do to deserve the gift; we are too damnable. So salvation cannot be linked to good works, sir, the way I see it. We are too low for any miserable actions that are within our grasp to save us.'

Ned's evident misery and his loneliness amid the pillaging are so evident, so raw, that Skippon is moved to grasp his shoulder. Ned is terrified, suddenly, that he might cry. This small gesture unmans him.

His commander smiles and forces some jollity into his tone. ‘A wife, Ned – that's what you need. When all this confusion is reined in, nothing settles the soul so much as an honest woman.'

There is some truth in that, Ned thinks, as he climbs into the saddle and points his horse towards London. A wife. But what wife and when? Pretty, yes, but godly and modest. He remembers something Taffy said once: ‘A homely Joan is as good as a lady when the lights are out.' Aye, Taf, he thinks, but best to marry one whose face you can worship. An image of Lucy Tompkins pops unbidden into his mind. A sign, Lord, he asks, as the phantom Lucy pirouettes in his head, smiling up at him shyly with parted, moist lips.

Ned dreams his domestic dreams all the way home, fighting off the intrusion of darker thoughts; a faceless wife spreading her thighs for him, the devil on his shoulder urging him on.

In his room in the Temple, Oliver Chettle sits back in his chair and listens to Ned's account of the siege. Ned tells him about the earthworks thrown up around the town, and the ten-day artillery bombardment. He tells of Aston, the royalist commander, who hung out his white flag moments before the royalist reinforcements arrived at the parliamentary rear. The king's troops paused, waiting for Aston to sally out and join them in crushing the rebels in a vicious pincer, and then came the dawning realization on both sides that Aston would stick to his flag. Ned tells Chettle briefly about the desperate fighting at Caversham Bridge to keep the royalists off, as Aston sat miserably behind the earthworks, bound by his own untimely capitulation.

‘A noble man,' says Ned, ‘to stick to his flag so. He could have hauled it down and come out to play. The outcome would have been very different.'

Chettle nods. ‘Noble, certainly. Foolish also, perhaps. It would be interesting to know how His Majesty deems it.'

Ned is in no mood for ambiguities. Aston was noble, he tells himself obstinately, and hang the king's version.

Ned doesn't tell Chettle what else he learned during the siege. That the constant play of the big guns can jangle on a man's nerves until he feels close to breaking. That a ball travelling from a rampart at musket-shot distance will open up a man's body like a knife through mustard – and spatter his brains for up to ten metres. That a horse pinioned in a spike-pit will scream with pain and thirst and hunger for days until it finally lets go of life with
just a whimper. These details feel far away, here in Chettle's book-lined office. Ned fights to hold on to them. They are more true than the smooth patter of the Temple. Outside Chettle's window, a fountain cascades.

‘And Essex has made no concerted move on Oxford?'

Ned shakes his head.

‘He is an old woman. He let them go at Turnham Green, and now he circles round Oxford like a French dancing master. And of course…' Chettle makes the sign of a cuckold.

Ned ignores it. He fights to remember that he likes Chettle. Them and us, he thinks. I have become a soldier; Chettle is the other. Ned sees the young lawyer as if from a great distance, across a mound of bodies and fear.

Briefly, Ned tells Chettle why he has come, the nature of his mission from Skippon. He describes the debauch he has left behind him.

‘Animals,' growls Chettle.

Ned bristles. He can think it, but he was there. Chettle sits sleek and smug behind his desk and condemns Ned's fellows out of hand. Come and hold a pike next to Taffy, then call him an animal.

‘Do they not realize that we lose our moral advantage if they rampage? Fools. How can we win the hearts of the undecided by behaving worse than the devil Rupert?'

‘Perhaps,' says Ned, ‘if we paid the men what we owe, we would not have to worry so much about their plundering.'

Chettle looks at him sharply.

‘If men like your father paid up without arm-twisting then perhaps we could pay them.'

‘I am not my father.'

‘No,' says Chettle. A silence falls on them. ‘Will you go to see him?'

‘I was not planning on it.' I am a coward, thinks Ned. I can face a royalist charge, yet I cannot face a servant girl's sad white face. I am low.

‘It might be wise,' says Chettle. ‘Tell him quietly that his attitude is noted.' Chettle leans forward in his chair and speaks softly, despite the heavy walls and thick oak door between the two of them and the rest of the world. ‘The estates of clear royalists are being sequestered.'

‘My father is not a royalist.'

‘Is he not? He is not a supporter of Parliament. The time in which neutrality was an option seems to me to have long passed. I have said enough, Ned. I have a fondness for your family, else I would not have spoken.'