Treason's Daughter (37 page)

London, used to divisions, is more fractious than ever in the first months of Hen's marriage. It's a time of dissent and grand ideas. Parliament's ongoing tussle with the army is the backdrop. Unpaid and mutinous, the army squats beyond the city walls, and those inside begin to fear that it may soon bite the hand that's too slow to feed it.

The ‘reformadoes' set the tone too – wandering veterans, mostly royalists, drawn to London by poverty and desperation. Alongside the usual tussle of living, there is a plague of dissent and arguing, all inflated and fed by the voracious presses. The godly, who were once themselves the dangerous thinkers, are now the moderates. It is not enough to despise the bishops and altar rails. To be dangerous means despising the very bricks of a church. It means the Holy Spirit working through the poor and the dispossessed. It means a harkening back to the rights and liberties of the English peoples, now trampled by Parliament as well as the king. And, increasingly, it can mean thoughts too dangerous to be spoken louder than a whisper. The word is there, though, floating on the currents of news and opinion that bubble around the city: Republic.

Late into the night, Will and Hen try to make sense of it all. He is sympathetic to the political independents with their insistence
on finishing the war and remaking the state with limited reference to the king. He is less sympathetic to the religious independents, believing that one uniform state church, godly or otherwise, is the best route to healing the nation's deep and festering wounds. But then, Hen counters, the call of the Holy Spirit has never meant much to him. He hurries through his prayers to reach for his star charts.

Hen's views are more inchoate. She agrees with much of the radical thought, but shies from the consequences of the logic. It is one thing to agree with the theory that men are equal under God, but what does that mean in practice? She remembers her father's fear of anarchy. To work out where you stand is no easy matter, especially when the ground keeps shifting.

And then, suddenly, Hen's ground disappears from under her feet.

Hattie and Goodwife Simmonds confirm it. She is pregnant.

She hasn't seen Goody Simmonds since their eyes met over Anne's broken body. When the confirmation comes, Hen stands and shrugs off their concern. She is not acting how she should, she knows. She runs home to wait for Will.

Their new rooms, where he comes when not sleeping in his Temple lodgings, are in a quiet street not far from Fetter Lane. They have little stuff. One chest of linen and pewter – mostly wedding presents from his side. A bed and a table. But she loves it here, not for itself, but because it reminds her of him. He is in the air here, even when he is somewhere else. And sometimes, at night, Will sneaks out, even when he should be keeping his hours in the Temple.

She waits for him as evening approaches, not bothering to light the candles. When at last he comes in, he finds her in the
dark, sitting hunched in the corner. She runs to him, burying her face in his shoulder, sobbing so violently that he has to coax it out of her.

‘But Hen, that's wonderful!' he says, and draws away so she can see his smile in the gloom.

She is furious, raging at his blindness. ‘Wonderful! Do you know the last thing Anne said to me? “I'm frightened,” she said. And my mother – I killed her, Will. Wonderful? You looby!'

He is aghast at her fury, visibly at a loss for what to do.

‘Inside here!' She strikes her stomach. ‘It's growing, do you understand? Growing. And it wants to kill me. It will try to. And then I'll have to leave you, Will, and Hattie, and Anne. And the baby.'

‘You're being unreasonable,' he says, and she finds herself at a new pitch of fury. How dare he!
He
should carry it. Already it's making her weak. She understands now why she feels so sick, why every day she sinks into a bone-deep weariness that no amount of sleep can relieve.

That night, they sleep at opposite corners of the big bed, both horribly aware of the cold, dark space between them.

Outside St Mary's, knots of soldiers talk, agitated and passionate. Ned wants to be alone and so walks down to the shore. The water this far upstream, at Putney, is somewhat clear. It is yet to reach the sewage and stink of London. There's a metaphor there, but Ned can't quite grasp it. His head is all raddled with claim and counter-claim. Arguments spin, befuddling him.

Suddenly, a voice behind him. ‘Well, Ned. I don't know about you, but I feel as though my head is doused in sack.'

It is Captain Shelby, from Whalley's regiment. They became friendly in Bristol after the siege two years past.

Ned shakes his hand, glad to see him. ‘Well, John. And where do you stand?'

‘Lord alone knows. When the levelling officers speak, I am all fired up. Did you hear Colonel Rainsborough? “I think the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he.” I hear that and the fire in my belly shouts, yes! This is what we have fought for. This is God's providence. A vote for each man, justice for all, freedom of conscience. And then I hear Ireton railing that such thoughts will lead to anarchy, that property rights and political franchise must go hand in hand, and my head convinces me he is right, and I pull back.'

Ned nods. He feels this sway too. Three days of debates – called by Fairfax and Cromwell – to hear the growing swell of dissent within the army, men and officers both. The arguments pull back and forth in an orgy of passionate rhetoric. No man here can doubt that they are arguing for England's future. A strange triumvirate is at play in the search for peace: King, Parliament and Army. The king, now held by the army, is obstinate yet slippery. He is backed into a corner, alone, and yet seems bent on engineering a stalemate. He agrees terms with one face and scoffs them with another. Parliament is crippled by factionalism, exasperated by the king and frightened of the army it created. Its attempt in the summer to disband the army brought the soldiers down on London. And though they showed their customary restraint, the tramp of their boots down the Strand echoed from the Tower
to Westminster. And now, on this brisk autumn day in the year of our Lord 1647, here is the army, camped not six miles from Westminster, debating its very soul and the terms on which it will look to peace.

‘My father,' says Ned, ‘used to say that no matter how much you love both sides of the coin, when it is spinning, you have to call it.'

‘He called it wrong, as I recall.'

‘Yes, but his thinking was sound. The coin is spinning, John. We have to choose.'

‘Well, Ned, I choose to fight for my arrears of pay, and my men's, and leave the politicking to others. I want to go home, Ned.'

‘But if all the good men leave the politicking to others, we are left with fools and knaves.'

Shelby nods his agreement. They watch Colonel Rainsborough walk past. The highest ranking of the Leveller officers is passionate, battle-hard and fierce. The men love him. ‘He is neither fool nor knave,' says Ned.

‘You served with Holles?' Shelby asks.

He nods. Denzil Holles, who stood beside him at Edgehill, is now the prime mover in the MPs' bid to disband the army. If a man like Holles, who Ned admires, wants them broken up, there must be something to his side of the argument.

‘He's a good man, John. He argues that all the apparatus set up to fight the war – the parliamentary committees and the local committees – are contrary to the spirit of liberty and hatred of arbitrary power that led us to war in the first place.'

‘The committees are as bad as the king.'

‘Exactly. Arbitrary taxes and levies – just the same, but in a new guise. Yet he cannot dismantle the committees without dismantling the army they service.'

‘But we must be paid first,' says Shelby. ‘If they won't pay us with swords in our hands, why should they pay us when we have laid them down?'

Ned nods. ‘But there is no money,' he says.

‘Lord, Ned, are you on their side?'

He protests not. Protests his loyalty to the army. But he is in a muddle. And there is only one point of clarity in his thinking: the king. Everyone talks of the liberty of the English people; the king, the army grandees, the MPs, the Levellers, the radical sectaries, the prophets, the Anglicans – each defines it differently. Ned sees the tangle of thoughts and ideas like a Gordian knot, smothering the chance of a settlement, strangling peace. One sword could cut through it. What if, Ned whispers to himself, that sword took the king's head? Because unless the king disappears, they will be beating each other about the heads with blunt edges until the Second Coming. But who can kill a king but God?

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

November 1647

O
N A CHILL NOVEMBER DAY, NED STANDS BY SIR PHILLIP
Skippon as the army grandees lose patience with the levelling soldiers.

The king has escaped from Hampton Court. No one knows where he is. The army is mutinous, grumbling. But the officers, by and large, have forsaken the men. The king first, grievances second. Fairfax has called for seven regiments to assemble at Corkbush Field. Two more arrive, against clear orders and without officers, waving a copy of their latest demands: ‘An Agreement of the People'. The soldiers have copies of the agreement in their hats. Close up, the black type can be seen clearly: ‘England's freedoms, soldiers rights'.

The mutinous regiments know they have crossed a line. The men are defiant, but clearly nervous. For a moment, they contemplate each other, men and officers. Silence hangs over the field. Next to Ned, Skippon's horse blows through its nose, and its impatient hooves rake the frosty turf.

It is Cromwell who breaks them. Cromwell, filled with a spluttering fury, who charges in among them, sword drawn, grabbing copies of the agreement and trampling it underfoot. He is puce with anger, his ugly face transformed. Such is his righteousness, his reputation and his air of carrying Providence in his palm, they crumble a little before him. He is a one-man forlorn hope, carving a path for his allies to come in behind him and round up the Leveller ringleaders, swords drawn. Without their leaders, the men lose heart and sink a little lower to the ground.

Fairfax and Cromwell are implacable. They work together, those two – the fox and the toad. The Leveller ringleaders are told to draw lots in front of the army for the one who will be scapegoated.

Watching the lot-drawing is as good as a play. The first man steps up, trembling and white, reeling backwards in exaggerated relief as his lot comes out long and thin. The second pulls himself forward, will trumping fear. Long. The third looks younger than the others. He's a private too. He pulls. Short. His face crumples with disbelief. That his life could be pierced by so slender, so tiny a stick, makes no sense to him.

Cromwell himself strides forward and grabs him by the wrist, forcing him against a post his troopers have driven into the ground. The private looks wildly about him, as if there has been some terrible mistake. He sees only the solemn faces of his comrades, silently watching. To give him credit, he straightens his back and looks straight ahead.

‘England's freedoms—' he starts to shout, but Cromwell nods and the muskets fire a ragged volley that cuts him short mid-word.

He falls to the floor, and Cromwell turns to face the rebel
regiments. Bullish, pugnacious, he stands there in an unspoken challenge. They turn away.

By the end of the year, Hen is reconciled to the life inside her. She talks to it, on quiet evenings, singing sometimes and beating out time on her belly. Will laughs at her, calling her cracked. She sings and thrums, and lies listlessly through short winter days, waiting for her fate. She has resolved to meet it firmly, to walk towards her own gibbet with her head high.

Hattie visits often, pulling a tottering baby Anne up the stairs to Hen's rooms, where she climbs where she shouldn't and pokes fingers into every crevice. They talk about childbirth obsessively. Hattie says that fear makes the pain worse. Hen smiles, but wonders, then what is she to do? She is afraid, so the pain will be worse, so she is more afraid.

‘You'll be there, Hattie?' she asks, endlessly and urgently.

‘Of course, Hen. Of course.'

When the day comes, and her pains start, they come on slowly. She finds herself unexpectedly giggling at the ebb of each contraction when she registers Will's face set in exaggerated concern. Hattie arrives at last. Baby Anne has been deposited on Mary Overton, freed from prison for now, and eager to repay the moral debts accumulated last time.

Hattie bustles into the room, kisses Will and sends him away. She kneels in front of Hen, who finds that leaning over the back of a great chair gives some relief. Hattie holds on to her hands, looking at her anxiously.

‘Well now, how is it?'

‘Smarts a bit,' says Hen.

Hattie laughs. Hen snorts with laughter too, just as another wave takes her down. Somehow, though, the pain is a relief after all the waiting. As the night moves on, the room fills with the gossips. They chivvy her and try to make her laugh. Lucy is there, and Frances Cooke, and Will's sister Beatrice, newly married to another London lawyer and wide-eyed at Hen's pain. Two or three of her new neighbours come by, bearing sweets and biscuits, spiced wines and hot possets.

Hen walks around the room – she finds that moving helps. The groaning stool sits in the corner, but she's not ready for it yet.

‘Taking its time, this one,' says Frances towards dawn.

‘What size is your brother's head, Beatrice?'

‘It's not his head she'll worry about after this one.'

‘Easy, honey, easy,' says Hattie as Hen crumples under a fresh wave of pain. They are closer together now, and strong, so strong. The midwife, fresh from another birth, arrives.

‘Just in time,' says Hattie.

‘Well. Full moon. They pop like spawn this time of month. She's lucky I didn't just go home to bed, that tired I am.'

Hen stifles a scream. She hops from foot to foot. It's a terrible burning now. She lies on her back, and the midwife brings a candle between her legs. It's worse lying down, and Hen is racked with pain.

‘I can't. I can't. Make it stop.'

‘They always say that when it's near.'

‘It's not. It wants to kill me. Hattie. Make it stop.'

‘Hush, now. Hush. I can see the head. The head, girl.'

Hattie and the midwife lift her by the elbows and take her to the stool, where she squats and howls. She is a beast, an animal. She watches them cajole her with feral, detached eyes.

‘Now, girl,' says the midwife.

‘Now, Hen. Go on, my darling. Push it out.'

Hen feels as if her body is pushing itself inside out, as if a sharp blaze of light, star-like, is burning its way down her back and through her groin. The star turns inside her; she can feel it. A sudden new pain, sharper than the rest, splits her between the thighs. She screams for her God, calling His name, begging Him for His mercy.

‘There! There!' Hattie is near weeping with excitement, and the gossips crowd round, urging her on, a shrill chorus.

A slithering, a wetness, and it is done. Here comes a surge of joy as strong as the pain. The midwife lifts it up, and she sees its face as if she's always known it, scrunching up for a scream.

‘A boy!' the cry goes up. ‘A boy!'

Later, towards noon, they all file out, flush with the joy of watching this tiny miracle. They kiss her, one by one, Hattie last. He's swaddled in Hen's arms, and she can barely raise her eyes from his face long enough to say goodbye. He snuffles and sniffs the unfamiliar air.

‘Shall I send him in?' Hattie asks.

‘Who?'

‘Will, you looby!'

Will! He rushes in, unshaven, red-eyed, and pauses suddenly
on seeing them. He looks ridiculously young, and she finds herself laughing at his face, at its peculiar mix of awe and excitement. She looks down to their baby's sleeping face and traces his father in his oddly malleable features. Hen looks from one to the other and feels a surge of love so powerful it can only escape her exhausted body in silent sobs. And then there were three, she thinks.

Will takes a hesitant step forward. He is so male, he must feel out of step in this room, steeped as it is in all the mysteries of birth and pain.

‘A boy!' he says in a hushed voice.

‘Did you expect a cat?' asks Hen, smiling as the tears stream down. He sits down next to her on the bed and folds his arms round both of them.

When war breaks out again in the spring, Hen is furious. She takes it personally, as if the machinations of kings and grandees and the movements of armies are all designed to compromise the safety of baby Richard. She is pleased that there is no money, so she has to nurse him herself. Wrapped in a bed with him feeding, his limbs limp with pleasure, she curses everyone involved.

Across London there is a weariness and sadness. When will things be ever be normal again?

Burying her nose in his neck, wallowing in the smell of him, she whispers: ‘How can you smell sweet and sharp all at the same time, hey, baby? Like a blackberry. My blackberry baby. Hey, hey, I will keep you safe, my blackberry.' And there it is. She kisses him guiltily. Her first lie.