Charles the King (31 page)

“True beyond doubt,” was the answer. “They are not King's men, any of them. Argyle, Leslie, Leven, none of them have any love for your Majesty or what your Majesty represents. We're an ancient people, Sire, and, as Prince Rupert says, not over careful of our Kings. Where the clans flourish, no one man can hold any man's heart. They are set upon spreading their version of the Word of God and spreading the glory of Scotland with it at the expanse of England. There's nought to be got from you now, and they know it. Argyle will sell you, Sire, and the Parliament will pay his price. On my knees,” he said desperately, “I beg of you to let me go home and rouse the loyalists and have an army there, ready to fight the Covenant and keep them occupied in Scotland.”

Charles shook his head. “Nothing would bring them over the Border quicker than any such attempt,” he said. “They would feel that I had betrayed them and they would be right. My Lord, come closer, please.”

Montrose advanced to the steps of the dais where Charles was sitting in the room in Christ Church College which he used for audiences. Henrietta was right, he liked and trusted the young Scottish peer, and he gave him his hand and smiled at him with kindness.

“You are a soldier,” he said gently, “Your fame has spread before you, and as a fellow Scot I know the strain. But I cannot let you be both brave and rash on my account. Not till I see the need more clearly than I do today. But this I promise you—if the time comes when I must send a general into Scotland, it will be Montrose.”

“I thank you, Sire,” Montrose said quietly. “With your permission I'll remain with you until that time.”

The King dismissed him and Rupert followed and ran after him, his steps echoing down the quiet stone corridor.

“I knew you'd fail,” he said, “I told the Queen he wouldn't listen. Great God, what are we to do?”

“Wait,” Montrose answered him. The two young men had fallen into step. “There's nothing else to do. When the Covenanters cross the border, I shall at least be ready to return and stir up what trouble I can against them.”

Rupert looked at him. “And you've no word of complaint,” he said slowly. “You make yourself an outlaw and come all the way across Scotland and England to warn the King and he won't listen, and you are content?”

“Years ago,” Montrose said to him, “when I was scarcely twenty, I heard the King called a tyrant and a liar, and a servant of the Pope. I listened and I fought against him because of what I heard. And then I met him in Edinburgh, after the Covenant War was over. Can you imagine how I felt, Prince, when I saw the King and spoke to him for the first time, and knew that every word spoken against him was a lie? Argyle and the rest promised loyalty with their hands upon their hearts and he believed them. He believes them still.”

“But why,” Rupert raged, “why can't he realize that all men have a price if only you can find it out?”

“Because he hasn't one himself,” Montrose replied. “He is the gentlest and noblest man that I have ever met, and whether he wins or loses, he is a King worth fighting for. I am content, Prince Rupert.”

The summer days passed quickly. The queen arranged masques and theatricals and spent her time walking in the lovely gardens with the King. While the summer sun shone and the gallant soldiers left for a week or more to skirmish with the enemy, the King and his War Council formed a plan formulated by Rupert which seemed certain to bring him final victory before the end of the year. Three Royalist armies were to march upon London. Sir Ralph Hopton, leader of the Cavaliers in the West Country, was to come up through Hampshire, Newcastle would march down the Great North Road, and Rupert himself would join them through the Thames Valley.

When they met and surrounded London, Parliament would be cut off from all help and supplies. Gaiety and optimism infected the courtiers and the soldiers, and for the first time in countless months Charles found happiness again. He often marvelled at Henrietta's capacity for loving, and it was a love in which there was no thought for herself or for her children or for anything in the world but him. He lay in her arms night after night, sometimes talking until the dawn came, watching her sleep beside him, touching her face with gratitude and awe, wishing that there were anything worthy of her devotion that he could give her. Often he found himself brooding upon Henrietta's wrongs as a reason for continuing the war which had become so abhorrent to him; he had ceased to resent insults to himself. Even the cruel name his enemies had given him, doubly cruel because it was so patently unjust, the Man of Blood, became a joke between them, and lost its bitterness.

In the autumn he rode out at the head of his army with Rupert to intercept the Earl of Essex and his troops who were marching towards London. He met them at Newbury and among the leafy lanes, under trees turning gold and brown, through hedges and ditches and across fields where the summer crops had been harvested, he fought in what was the bloodiest battle of the war, more bitter than the fierce cut and thrust of Edgehill. Again Rupert's cavalry came sweeping down upon the enemy. And at the end, when what was left of Essex's army struggled on to London, unhindered by the Royalist troops who were without the ammunition or the energy to fight, Charles sat in an inn outside the town, watching one of his own commanders, Lord Caernarvon, dying from many wounds. Falkland, his Secretary of State and wisest friend, had died as a prisoner of the enemy; the Earl of Sunderland, a brave and gallant nobleman whom the King knew well, had fallen with Caernarvon. And all around him yeomen and artisans, farm boys and clerks, lay still and silent, bodies across bodies, some wearing the scarlet Royalist scarf, others the orange sashes of the Parliament. He sat by Caernarvon's bedside, watching the fair young face contort with pain, and wiped the sweat away from it with his own handkerchief. In the groans of a single man, born to a life of power and riches, it seemed to Charles that all those humble thousands who had died at Edgehill, at Gloucester, Bristol, Hull and Newbury, called out to him in their last agonies. They had given all they had for him and there was nothing he could do for any of them except try to ease the discomfort of one dying man. He closed Caernarvon's eyes himself and covered his face with his own handkerchief.

When he returned to Oxford, he found the city and the Court rejoicing as if he had won a great victory, and Rupert met him with the news that he had killed John Hampden in a foray not far from Newbury. And in December, while Charles was preparing for Christmas with the Queen and his children, he heard that Pym, his greatest enemy, had died in London of a malignant tumour. Pym was dead, and the Cavaliers drank toasts to his eternal damnation and the confusion of the Parliament which they boasted would be suing for peace within the month now that they were leaderless. Hopes of a settlement rose high at Oxford, and Charles celebrated the great Christian feast of peace and joy in an atmosphere which was full of optimism.

But by the end of January all hope was gone. Parliament had found new leaders, and in that same month of January, a Scottish army of 20,000 men crossed into England to fight on the side of Parliament.

Charles was alone in his apartment at Christchurch College, sitting in front of the fire, with one of Henrietta's little dogs sleeping beside his chair. It was bitterly cold and the rain spattered against his windows and blew down the chimney on to the burning logs. It had rained for a week and he knew from despatches that his armies were bogged down in mud. The plan for a triple advance against London had failed. Hopton's West country troops had been diverted to help in the siege of Bristol and Gloucester, and Newcastle was blocked by the forces of Cromwell in the North and hurled back in Lincolnshire. The advance was halted and then abandoned, as Rupert pressed on to take Newark and join Newcastle in meeting the Scots invaders.

Montrose had warned him, and Montrose had been proved right. The men he had trusted and honoured in Edinburgh had betrayed him and ruined his chances of victory. And when at last he sent Montrose to Scotland to raise a Royalist army, he knew in his heart that it was already too late. He had been sitting in his chair, staring at the fire, absently leaning down to stroke the spaniel's head and feeling as if he were living in an evil dream. All he wanted was peace—not because he feared war or was afraid to die himself, but because the ruin and bloodshed was abhorrent to him and the loss of his friends was a personal blow which' poisoned even the victories they won for him. He was brave, but his courage could not overcome a growing presentiment of defeat, and that presentiment never left him. It shadowed him night and day, making a mockery of his plans for the future, and he could see it reflected in the faces of his advisers. For the past two hours he had been thinking quietly, examining his conscience for any means by which he could avert final disaster without sacrificing his honour as a King. Then at last he rose and stretched wearily—he rang his bell for Parry.

He picked up the spaniel and stroked it gently.

“Mutz,” he said, “Mutz, there is no way out. A King cannot turn back. I was a fool to think of it. Ah, Parry, be good enough to ask Her Majesty to come to me.”

The valet bowed. “Will you have supper served here, Sire? The Queen has already eaten.”

“I had forgotten how late it was,” the King said. “But I'm not hungry. Bring some wine.”

Parry hesitated. “You should eat, Sire,” he said, “you've scarcely touched anything all day.”

“Hunger is not what ails me,” Charles kissed the dog, which whimpered excitedly and nuzzled his cheek. “Tell the Queen that Mutzi and I are lonely and low-spirited, we need her company.”

He listened for Henrietta's step and hurried to open the door for her himself. They kissed without speaking and with his arm round her shoulders Charles led her to his chair and settled her into it, placing the dog on her lap, and lifted her feet on to a little stool. Henrietta was nearly five months pregnant.

“How are you feeling?” he asked her. She had begun to be sick and listless and complained of pains in her side.

“Better this evening,” she smiled at him, forgetting her own discomfort. He looked so pale and tired, and they had received nothing but bad news for days.

“I wanted to be alone with you,” he said. “That's why I asked you to come to me. Parry said you'd eaten already, my love, so I thought you must be feeling better. Is Mutz too heavy for you? Here, let me put him down …”

“What have you been doing, shut up here alone? You look so weary, my beloved …”

“Talking to Mutz, and thinking, sweetheart. Thinking what must be done for you.”

“Nothing can be done for me,” Henrietta said. “The doctor's say I shan't miscarry, and that staying in bed only lowers my spirits. Don't worry about me, I'm well enough … after all, dear heart, this child will be my ninth!”

“This is no time to have a child,” he told her. “What happened was my fault. What you are suffering is the result of my selfishness. I should never have touched you, rather than risk giving you a child at such a time. If you had reproached me afterwards I couldn't have borne it, but believe me, I never cease reproaching myself!” She took his hands and held them against her cheek.

“How could I reproach you?” she said softly. “These months have been so happy—all the time I felt as if we had somehow turned back time and were living again at Whitehall.”

“What wonderful days those were,” Charles said. “Four months ago we seemed likely to win, and now—” he did not finish the sentence and Henrietta held on tightly to his hands and closed her eyes. She felt so weak and ill that her hopes were sinking as low as his. She did not believe that Rupert could win an impossible victory in the North, fighting both Scots and Parliamentarians, or that Montrose could raise an army in the Highlands and bring them sweeping down into England in support of Charles. Defeat was in the air they breathed—the shadowy room was heavy with it.

“I shall have to leave Oxford,” Charles said at last. “Hopton can't reach me, and Essex's army is re-forming. I daren't risk an attack here.”

“Where will we go?” she asked him.

“I shall take my forces and march to Rupert and Newcastle to engage the Scots. We must destroy Cromwell's cavalry before they join with them.”

The name of one obscure Roundhead general was on everyone's lips at Oxford. Essex was still the commander-in-chief but the troopers who shattered Charles' forces, the strategist who had hurled Newcastle's army back and turned them from their advance on London, was Lieutenant-General Cromwell.

“That brute,” Henrietta said. “They're all brutes, these people, singing psalms and reading their bibles, and killing wounded men … When must we leave here? Oh, Charles,” she said suddenly, her eyes filling with tears, “I feel so safe here, so protected … must we really leave? I don't know how I am going to bear the travelling at the moment …”

“I know my darling,” he said gently, “but its better for you now than later. And now you must listen to me and promise to be patient while I explain something. We cannot go together.”

He put his finger to her lips. “No, do not interrupt me, sweetheart. You cannot possibly face a series of long marches through the country at this time of year, and I haven't enough men to leave you here in safety. I have thought very carefully, and I've decided to send you to Exeter with an escort. You must stay there until the child is born.”

“But Exeter is almost the other end of England,” Henrietta protested. “Charles, how can I make such a frightful journey in my present state? I'm hardly able to walk! Why can't you take me with you—I'll bear anything if only we can be together!”

“Because I am going to fight, and I shan't know where my next night's lodgings will be, or whether I'll have any lodging at all. Exeter is the safest place in England, guarded by Hopton's army and staunchly loyal. You'll be comfortable and safe there my darling, and if my cause is going well we can be reunited as soon as you're able to come to me.”