The Tyrant’s Shadow Read online

  She thinks of her father in his quiet country vicarage, studiously avoiding theology. Following the prayer book, praying on Sundays. Performing baptisms, marriages and deaths with a benign, wilful mediocrity.

  She speaks quickly into the pause. ‘I mean, of course, I behave as if I have God’s grace. But how do I know for sure?’

  ‘I think, my dear, that you need to meet my husband.’

  She draws Patience into the hubbub of the room. Arms are waving, voices are rising. In one corner, a man is almost shouting. He has a thin white face. He looks like a voluble parsnip, Patience thinks. She laughs at herself, just as they come to a stand in front of the pastor, and Sidrach Simmonds. They turn to look at her, frowning at her fading smile, and she wilts. She has made herself appear silly; frivolous. These are serious men.

  Be strong, she tells herself. The woman she will become does not quail at strangers, does not falter.

  ‘This is Patience Johnson,’ says Marigold. ‘She is newly arrived among us.’

  She bobs to them, casting her eyes down at their shoes. The pastor’s are scuffed and old; Sidrach Simmonds’ shoes gleam as if licked clean.

  ‘You are welcome,’ says the pastor. ‘Did you enjoy our service?’

  ‘Very much,’ says Patience. ‘I believe I understood it. I believe so,’ she repeats, sounding uncertain to her own ears. Sidrach Simmonds looks directly at her, holding her eyes with his. ‘Well, Patience Johnson, there is a beginning in all understanding. And the beginning is the word.’

  His eyes flicker around the room. He shifts his weight as if to leave.

  ‘Do you live close by?’ asks the pastor, in a voice that signifies he does not care overmuch.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘With my brother. I keep house for him. His wife died.’

  There is a pause. Sidrach Simmonds looks down at his cuffs, pulling a speck of white lint off the black.

  ‘Yes,’ she says again, too brightly. ‘He is a lawyer. But he has a new line of work soon starting.’

  ‘Mmm,’ says the pastor, turning towards his wife.

  ‘He is to be one of the private secretaries to General Cromwell.’

  ‘Cromwell?’ says the pastor. All three of them turn back towards her.

  ‘Yes. He starts on Wednesday next.’

  A tut from Marigold.

  Sidrach Simmonds says: ‘We do not use the old names here. They are pagan-inspired. You must say the fourth day of the second week of the seventh month.’

  ‘I am sorry. I did not know.’ Another nugget not to offer up to Will’s disdain, she thinks.

  ‘It is of no consequence,’ he says. He seems to look at her as if for the first time. Weighing her. He holds her gaze for an eternity. She is giddy with it.

  ‘You will learn, Patience Johnson,’ he says. ‘You will learn.’

  Here he is. Will swallows. He clenches his fists and finds them moist with sweat. Standing outside a door waiting to meet the man himself. The man who holds England’s future in his palm. For as much as the MPs debate and the radicals rant and people persuade themselves otherwise, the army is the final arbiter of power in England now. Its lord general sits behind this door. Will feels like a schoolboy waiting for a beating.

  There is shouting from inside the room, but the thick oak blurs the words. Abruptly, the shouting ends and the door opens. Will starts at the sudden movement. A man comes out. Tousle- haired and smiling-eyed, he looks at Will and grins. ‘Johnson?’

  Will nods.

  ‘Marchamont Nedham.’

  They bow. Will knows him by reputation – he is the broadsheet man. The writer of news and views, currently producing the Mercurius Politicus, the Parliament’s newsbook.

  ‘The lord general begs your attendance,’ says Nedham. He moves closer. ‘Careful,’ he whispers. He blows out his cheeks and shakes his head, to illustrate his point. Will smiles, taken by the man’s droll charm. Nedham sweeps an arm towards the open door, then saunters away. He is practically whistling.

  Will steps forward into the room. A man stands by the large window, his back to the door. He is a broad silhouette – his plain dark coat blurred against the light from the window. He turns, and Will catches the lingering fury on his features. Drawn brows, reddened skin – the strength of his face is a punch.

  Will begins to stammer something, anything. But the man’s expression clears. A sudden smile, wide and artless. The reddish hue remains, and the impression of energy contained by will. He walks forward.

  ‘William Johnson? I am Cromwell.’

  Will bows, murmurs something.

  ‘Forgive me,’ says Cromwell. He reaches out and clasps Will’s shoulder. No flinch? How strange, he thinks as Cromwell pulls him further into the room. ‘I was out of countenance,’ says the general.

  He looks at Will with clear eyes, set in a gnarled face. Will feels an absurd urge to please.

  He has been silent for an age. Bewildered.

  ‘It is no matter,’ he says.

  Cromwell stares at him. Will knows that he presents a confusing figure. After Henrietta’s death, his hair turned white. He does not know how long it took to turn. Those days are too much of a blur. All he knows is that one day, he looked in a mirror and he was white-haired. Shockingly old.

  He has a young man’s face, and an old man’s hair, and eyes that make women want to coddle him. He does not want to be coddled.

  Cromwell smiles again, and it transforms him. A man would go a long way to win a smile like that from his general, thinks Will.

  ‘I must beg your forgiveness once more,’ says Cromwell. ‘This letter will not wait.’

  He waves a hands towards the large oak desk. It is thick with paper; letters and pamphlets and bills all higgled together. An inkwell sits in a roughly cleared island, droplets from it freckling the dark wood.

  ‘You will understand now, Mr Johnson, why I require your services. I have army business, Council of State business, Parliament business. I drown in business, sir, and I am need of a raft.’

  ‘I hope to be useful, sir,’ says Will. He has lost his eloquence. He is a fool.

  As Cromwell returns to the desk, Will wanders to the great painting on the wall to the side of them. A Roman general sits on a chariot. Behind him, a long-haired boy holds a laurel wreath in a hover above the man’s short curls. Below him, a horse capers and infants wave leafy fronds.

  Will can hear the rough scrape of Cromwell’s pen as he studies the painting. He is drawn always back to the Roman general’s oddly strained face. He tries to look elsewhere, but cannot. The scraping has stopped, and suddenly Cromwell is just behind him.

  ‘Julius Caesar,’ he says. ‘A fine work, is it not? One of a series of nine by Andrea Mantegna. The remaining eight are at Hampton Court. They work together as a long frieze showing Caesar’s great triumphal procession through Rome. I had him moved here to keep me company.’

  ‘It is a fine painting, Lord General.’

  ‘Almost the last of the late king’s paintings. I will try to keep it from being sold. It would fetch some thousand pounds, I am told. But Caesar there. Look. He helps me think on power and hubris. On the dangerous seductions of vanity. Look at him, Johnson. “Ha,” thinks he. “Look what I have done!”’

  Cromwell lends Caesar a pompous boom, which suits his own deep, scratchy voice. Will smiles. But that is not what he sees. Caesar’s face looks frightened, almost. Contained panic. ‘Look what I have done’ is a whispered lament. This Caesar already understands the price that power will exact.

  Will pulls himself away from the picture, turning to face his new benefactor. He says: ‘The sale of the king’s goods has raised bounteous funds, I have heard.’

  ‘Not enough. Ah, Mr Johnson, to see the beauties, the glories, we have sold. Some lewd pieces, to be sure, that will better hang in a popish court. This, the jewel, and its eight sisters. These we will keep. But the rest? Gone. Lord, to think of all the blood and treasure spent in our cause. We must make sure it is not i
n vain.’

  Will nods, accepting his complicity in the cause. As ever, it is easier to let other men assume they know his politics and his God. He has no strong convictions. He is a hollowed-out player on this stage.

  He still does not quite understand why he accepted the post at the heart of the godly ranks. Perhaps because it would be unthinkable for a young man of his status to refuse such an offer.

  Will is accustomed to behaving how a theoretical young man of his position would be expected to behave. He acts from within the daze that shrouded him on Henrietta’s death. The lawyer who cheerfully nods his head to colleagues as he strolls through the Temple is not real. The brother who watches his sister’s growing infatuation with the millenarian preacher is not real. The father who stoops to kiss grazed knees is the most shameful masquerader of all.

  Cromwell clears his throat, breaking into Will’s reverie. ‘Bradshaw recommends you highly, as does your old master John Cooke. Bradshaw says you are discreet, hard-working, serious.’

  Am I? Will considers this description of him. If so, I’m not sure I always was. I used to laugh, did I not?

  Cromwell is looking at him, as if in judgement. Suddenly he smiles and nods. Will feels an unexpected flicker of relief.

  ‘You will have two hundred pounds a year,’ says the general, turning back towards the desk. ‘You will share an office with the Council’s Latin secretary, from Monday. And you will be utterly discreet. Does that meet your approval, Mr Johnson?’

  Will mumbles his acceptance. He understands that the interview is over, and as he backs out, he realizes that now he will pull on another mask: ambitious secretary to an ambitious man.

  As he closes the door, Cromwell sinks back behind the desk with an audible sigh. Behind him, Caesar looks down on his triumph with his inscrutable, deadened face.

  WEST INDIES

  June 1652

  SWALLOW. HOW SHE DESERVES HER NAME. SHE FLIES ACROSS the water, spreading her great sails, swooping to meet the pitch and fall of the sea.

  And what a sea! A cycle of blue and green and turquoise and a blind of white, white sand at the water’s edge.

  Sam loves the night watches. The rock of the ship like a lullaby; the whispering rush of the white-frothed water under the stern. Above, the masts roll and only the white of the sails is visible in the gloom as the cat’s cradle of rigging fades to black. The stars are still, impervious as the rocking of the sails frames one patch of sky and then another, picking out their indifferent beauty.

  The men are wraiths in the darkness; a patter of bare feet on the planking. Burned already by the Caribbean sun, their faces are indistinct. Only the gleam of teeth and the yellow of an eye to mark them out.

  Below, the men in their hammocks sweat and swelter. On deck there is always this delicious breeze, kissing their damp brows, filling the sails. Lifting a quiet, unthreatening swell from the warm sea.

  The ship is a quiet cocoon. It is impossible to believe in elsewhere, inside the dark embrace of deck and sea and star-flecked sky. Impossible to believe in a man’s brains spilling on to an African foreshore. Impossible to believe in the storm, last year, that sent the general-at-sea’s last flagship down to the deep with three hundred souls weeping aboard as the sea closed over them. Impossible to believe in the pestilence that lurks on these beautiful shores, waiting to send a man mad with fever and delirium. Impossible to believe that this sweet, God-blessed sailing can ever end. Impossible to believe in home.

  One night, he stands next to the helmsman and growls at his inattention as the head comes up a trifle and sails lose their taut beauty.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ says the man at the whipstaff. Sam looks at him more closely, peering through the half-light cast by the lantern. James Fowler from the Supply. That tub is long gone – she crept off towards the horizon when her captain was floundering on an African shore, Fowler left behind in the confusion. The mutinous bastards sailed back to proffer their arses to Cromwell, most like, leaving the erstwhile Captain Challoner kicking his heels on the flagship, volunteering for night watches to stave off the boredom.

  ‘Settling in, Fowler?’ asks Sam.

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  Sam looks up at the rigging. The topgallants are set, to take advantage of the light wind and open water. Lord, the beauty of it. He yawns widely. He is tired and still pissed, he thinks, from a convivial dinner in the gun room. Two hours’ sleep he had. Enough to take the edge off the port before he was called from his sweat-drenched cot.

  He holds his face towards the breeze and closes his eyes. He wrenches them open again. Stay awake, Challoner.

  ‘You were at Naseby?’ he says to Fowler, remembering their conversation in the hut on Cabo Verde.

  ‘I was.’

  ‘As was I. Cavalry. Prince Rupert’s regiment, of course. A sad day.’

  Fowler smirks. ‘Depends on your point of view, sir.’

  ‘True enough. My brother was there too. Served under Holles.’

  Fowler turns to look at him. He keeps his grip on the wooden pole that steers the ship. One man can do it, in these light seas and winds, but he needs strength and concentration. ‘Your brother, sir. He was not Ned Challoner? I had not thought . . . I mean . . . You are not . . .’

  Sam rescues him from his floundering. ‘Yes. Ned Challoner. God rest his soul. You knew him?’

  ‘Served alongside him, sir. Owe him my life two times over. More, probably. A good man.’

  Sam nods, although he is still not sure that his brother was a good man. A man of strong convictions, who put his cause before his family. Did that make him good, or bad? Or does that distinction depend on your belief in the cause that drove him? Lord, he is too pissed to work this one out. He wipes his forehead with his sleeve, and tries to will himself sober.

  ‘I was with him when he died, sir.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ says Sam, looking afresh at Fowler. He is a small, wiry man. His face is lined and burned, and the hair above has receded a fair way. He could be any age from thirty to fifty – impossible to tell. There is a nasal twang to his vowels, and a way of speaking that suggests scorn, despite the disciplined politeness of the actual words.

  ‘In Ireland. I’d fought for him all over, sir. I was his troop sergeant at Naseby. Knew where you stood with him, you did. Hard, but fair. Knew his onions. But at Drogheda, something happened to him. Afterwards, after he died like, I left. Fed up of waiting to be paid, I was. The new officer, he was a green prick, begging your pardon, sir. I signed on to the Supply. Know my way around boats.’

  ‘What do you mean, something happened to him?’ Sam draws closer. There’s a strange intimacy about talking on deck in the night watch. Men speak softly, as if afraid to send their voices booming out into the dark shadows.

  ‘Ireland was hard. Drogheda. Fucking horrible place, sir, begging your pardon. It was a normal siege. You know the thing. Mostly boring, sometimes bloody terrifying. We offered terms. They refused. Talked sharp. So anyhows, we took the town. Cromwell in charge, course we would. The man’s a genius.’

  He pauses suddenly, and looks around, wide-eyed. It will not do to talk of Cromwell on this ship with anything other than scorn and vitriol.

  ‘No matter, no matter,’ says Sam. ‘Please, continue.’

  ‘Well, sir. You know how it is. If a besieged town refuses terms, they suffer for it. Stands to reason. When we was through the walls, the general he ordered that one man in every ten be put to the sword. And the priests. Fair’s fair. He ordered Ned to take charge of it. Like a bleeding slaughterhouse it was, sir. Lining ’em all up. Stopping the waiting ones from squealing. And the women outside keening. Singing in that funny language. And the begging, sir. Only some of the bastards knew how to die like men.’

  Sam feels entirely sober now. He leans against the mainmast, feeling its solidity. He tries to picture Ned’s features, but cannot conjure the adult brother. Only the small, freckled face of his childhood play-fellow.

  ‘After, like I say
, he were different. Quiet. Uncertain. I had to shoulder some of his work, to stop the whole bleeding troop collapsing. “Was it truly God’s work?” he asked me once, sir. “’Twas orders,” said I. Leaving it there.’

  He falls silent, and Sam, despite the urge to run away, is forced to press him.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, afterwards, we was scouting out beyond the Pale, and we was ambushed. Stupid, small scrap. And he . . . Well, sir. It was like he had no fight left in him. Stood there, he did. I saw. Let himself be cut down by a heathen lad. A boy really.’

  ‘You buried him properly?’

  ‘Of course, sir. He was properly missed, sir.’

  Someone mourned him, then. Oh Ned. Oh my poor brother.

  The bell rings then. The watch is over, and the spell is broken. Sam nods his thanks and farewells to Fowler, as the men relieving them clatter on to the deck.

  He stays above awhile. He is not ready to sleep, nor for the stifle of his tiny cabin. He stands at the taffrail, watching the water rush under the stern. The sky is lightening. The daily routines of the ship are beginning behind him. The rapping of feet on deck, and the waisters gathering to holystone the decks. The animals are waking up, adding their squeals and clucks to the gathering cacophony. And soon there will be a sun, rising hard and bright on the horizon, smearing the sea and sky with its insistent pink and reds.

  MIDDLESEX

  July 1652

  BLACKBERRY STANDS ON A FALLEN TREE, PULLING HIS long skirts up out of the way of his boots. He looks towards Patience with a wide triumphant smile, before taking a tremulous step forward. His boots slide on the damp bark; the sun, though bright, cannot fight its way through the canopy.

  He loses his balance and falls. He lands heavily, silently. Looking up, he sees Patience start towards him with a look of concern and opens his mouth in a wail of anguish. She rushes over and pulls him in. ‘Shh, now, little soldier.’

  ‘The boy is not hurt,’ says Sidrach Simmonds.

  She turns to look at him from her awkward crouch. He is tall, rigid as one of the trunks. Capp, the pastor, stands beside him and seems slight – insubstantial. Behind them, Marigold Capp and her two solemn daughters walk slowly onwards.