Charles the King (39 page)

The rest of his speech was lost—the troops were on their feet cheering and singing, and Ireton came up to him and whispered.

“When you have finished, Lord Fairfax wants to speak to you.”

“I have done now,” Cromwell answered. He was sweating with the effort of that extempore performance, and he searched in vain for the handkerchief a gentleman was expected to carry.

“It was well done,” Ireton congratulated him. “I thank God on my knees to see this change of heart in you again.”

“The Lord enlightened me,” Cromwell muttered. “May He forgive me for the months I wasted trying to reconcile Him with Mammon.”

He felt very tired, and yet there was this wonderful feeling of relief which was almost a feeling of well-being. Parliament was dithering with fright, faced by the upsurge of Royalism among the ordinary people who were not of the Puritan belief, and threatened now by Scotland that unless they reached agreement with the King and restored him, the Scots would establish him by force of arms, Parliament had buried its quarrelling and jealousy and called on the army to protect them. And the King himself was trapped at Carisbrooke.

But apart from Cromwell's own fanatics, most of the ordinary, uncommitted English people were Royalists who hated the muddle and uncertainties of life without the King. They wanted him back and they had challenged Cromwell and his army; it was a challenge that filled the General with such exultation that he could hardly restrain himself. Peace had not really agreed with him. Peace and negotiation were not the means which suited him best, though he could sit round a table with the wiliest men at Westminster, and manage to trick them all. But what he really preferred to do was fight them. It was cleaner in his eyes than the exercise of his considerable cunning, and the results were final. Dead men did not go back upon their word. And now there was a Second Civil. War, with the old allies fighting each other, and at last he was free to take his armies out and smash his enemies in the name of God, and to dispose of them afterwards as he thought fit.

“Will you go to Lord Fairfax now?” Ireton asked him. Cromwell looked quickly to the back of the assembly and saw his old friend and Commander-in-Chief sitting with his head back and his eyes closed as if he were meditating. Cromwell did not misunderstand that look. It meant that Fairfax was displeased.

“How can he talk to me here?” Cromwell said impatiently. “Go back to him, my son, and say that I'll pay my respects this evening at five o'clock.”

When they met it was in Fairfax's quarters in the centre of the town. It was often said by the less well-born officers that the Commander-in-Chief was lacking in the humble disregard for personal comfort which distinguished that great Christian, General Cromwell.

The two men had been close friends since long before the Civil war; from that friendship their famous military partnership grew until the New Model was evolved. Sir Thomas Fairfax was much altered since the day he walked in Pym's garden and discovered the potentialities of Hampden's humble cousin, Oliver. He was known as Black Tom by his troops—of all the Parliament Commanders he had preserved some semblance of civility to his enemies, most of whom were men and women he knew very well. His courage and flair in battle were unfortunately matched by his lack of both in a civilian capacity. In the negotiations with the King and the wrangling with Parliament, he had gladly appointed Cromwell his spokesmen and left the conduct of political affairs largely in his hands. When Cromwell came in he stood up and they embraced, but he was obviously still very irritated. At such moments he was apt to revert to type, forgetting that great Puritan maxim of equality, and when he spoke he did so as an irate peer addressing a subordinate.

“I listened to your speech today,” he said. “I damn near fell off my seat when I heard you say that we'd call the King to a terrible accounting. Now, General, be good enough to tell me what you meant by that remark!”

He saw Cromwell's face turn slowly red; the colour began at the edge of his collar and it crept slowly up the powerful neck and into his cheeks. He did not answer at once, he looked into Fairfax's irritable face, so unconsciously proud, and decided that this was not the moment to prove to his Lordship that he might have the higher rank but his General had the power. Not now, he decided, and immediately his hard bright eyes grew mild. He said gently, “How, Thomas, have I offended you by what I said? I meant to depose him in favour of the Prince of Wales, what else?”

His use of the Christian name put Fairfax at a disadvantage, as Cromwell knew it would. He frowned and walked irritably round the room. He had not offered his General anything to eat or drink.

“They're strong words for deposition,” he retorted. “A terrible accounting … For a moment there I thought you were pandering to these hotheads who keep talking as if they could put the King on trial.”

“I told you,” Cromwell said, “I meant that he would be deposed. No more, no less. You have my word for it.”

“Ah!” Fairfax stopped pacing up and down and breathed a long tired sigh which was full of relief. His thin dark face softened and he sat down on the oak settle by the side of the empty fireplace.

“I should have known, Oliver. The phrasing startled me, that was all. Besides, that son-in-law of yours was ranting on about the King only yesterday, saying he should pay for his crimes like any other criminal, and there were a dozen officers, half of them well known to me all standing there agreeing with him.”

“Ireton is young,” Cromwell took Fairfax's offer of a stool and balanced his broad body on it, his elbows on his knees. “He was present when we negotiated with the King at Hampton Court. He was upset by such obduracy in the way of evil. Nothing any of us could say could move him, and I let the negotiations go on for months in the hope that he might come to grace. Ireton cannot forgive him for it, nor for being the cause of a fresh war which we are forced to fight.”

Fairfax shook his head.

“There's no use blaming the King for that,” he said. “It's the muddling of Parliament and the interference of those pestilential Scots that has caused these outbreaks of rebellion.”

“They're more than outbreaks,” Cromwell said. “Carlisle and Berwick are in Royalist hands, the fleet's mutinied in the King's favour and about to be joined by the Prince of Wales, and worst of all a Covenant Army is about to march on us! That's not an outbreak, that's a war!”

“You say it almost with relish,” Fairfax looked at him. “Are you not tired of fighting, Oliver? Have you no wish to put up your sword and return home? By God, I long for peace! I dream of my home and my lands. I'd put off this uniform tomorrow and return with Her Ladyship and never leave Yorkshire for the rest of my life.”

“I have no great estate to care for,” Cromwell answered. “I have no yearning for anything but the completion of our work. Think of it, Thomas! Think of the infamy of human nature—only six years ago the whole of England was crying out under the King's tyranny, and now a good three-quarters of it wants him back!”

“We're a peaceful people,” Fairfax explained. “‘Now the war's over, let's send the army about it's business.' That was the beginning of the trouble.”

“Send it about it's business and cheat it of its pay and of the things it fought for.” Cromwell snapped back, unable to contain his anger. Once again his old jealousy of the aristocratic classes pricked him. How could a man as enormously rich as Fairfax understand the common soldiers' pressing need for a few pounds pay? And not only the common soldier but the officers who were tradesmen and labourers in civil life; their businesses or their few miserable plots of land were run into ruin through their absence at the war. And then there was himself.

How easy to lay down your arms if you were Fairfax; how difficult to cast off General Cromwell and go back to parish duties and boundary disputes at Ely in a house no bigger than the inn Fairfax was staying in at that moment! Suddenly he felt a profound dislike for the man who had obtained his first promotion and generously furthered his military career in the early days.

He stood up—he had wasted enough time reassuring this lukewarm patriot that he was not going to kill his King, or let anyone else kill him. When that question was asked again he would, with God's grace, be strong enough to tell the truth. So strong, he thought in his excitement, that the question would never be asked. There would be no one left in England who would dare. He had gone to ask Charles to rule under the Army's guidance because he was still hoping that he might avoid ultimate temptation and seize all for himself. It was a temptation no longer. As he stood in the little inn room on that May day, his temptation was now his only goal.

“I have a favour to ask you, Thomas.”

“Ask it,” Fairfax said eagerly. He was ashamed of his suspicion of his friend. Cromwell was no regicide, even if he were a little vulgar in his dealing with the commonality, that was his birth, and it was most unfair to blame him. “Ask what you like and you know I'll do my best.”

“When the Scots invade, let me go North to meet them!”

For a moment Fairfax hesitated. Normally he would have taken the post as Commander-in-Chief.

“Are you so eager for glory, Oliver?”

“Yes,” Cromwell answered vehemently. “But not glory for myself. I want glory for our army and our faith. Give me this command, Thomas. I want it so much that I will go down on my knees and beg you for it if I must! Let me march against Hamilton and the Scots, and if I win then I'll give my sword into your own hands and seek retirement with you!”

Fairfax stood up and held out his hand to Cromwell.

“Take it then,” he said, “with my blessing. I will go into Kent and then to Essex and put down the rebels there, while you take the main body of troops northwards to meet Hamilton.”

They shook hands solemnly, and Cromwell squeezed Fairfax's so tightly that he winced.

“God will reward you for your generosity,” he said.

Carisbrooke Castle rose like a grey cliff on the shore of the Isle of Wight. Its walls were so thick and steep that, as its commander Colonel Hammond wrote to an anxious Parliament, unless the King were a bird, he could not hope to escape from it. Hammond had been his custodian for over a year, and now at the end of November 1648, he was about to take his leave of Charles.

It was not a happy occasion for the Colonel; he was a just man with a profound sense of duty. That sense of duty had made him take the King into protection and then change that protection into strict imprisonment; but so long as he was in command of the Castle, the prisoner's life was safe. But now the Royalist forces were crushed and the Scots annihilated. When he received orders from the victorious General Cromwell to relinquish his post and go to London, Hammond was strongly tempted to let the King escape. It was a temptation which had come to him more than once, when the King's servants were removed and replaced by soldiers picked from the most fanatical regiments in the army. Whatever Hammond thought of his prisoner, he recoiled from the rumours that he would be assassinated in the Castle, or worse still, taken to London and tried for his life.

The Colonel was waiting in the small stone room leading into the King's bedroom. Even now the formalities were preserved, the King was served on bended knee, his privacy was guarded as jealously as his person, and thanks to Hammond's insistence, Parry and Firebrace, his two oldest servants, were allowed to remain and attend to him. The door to the inner room opened, and Parry bowed to him and stood aside.

“His Majesty will receive you now, sir.”

Charles was standing by the window when Hammond came into the room; his face was averted, but when he turned and the light fell on it, the Colonel was acutely embarrassed to see that the King had been crying.

“Come in, Colonel Hammond. I'm sorry I had to keep you waiting, but I had some letters to read.”

Hammond had been forbidden to give Charles any letters or to allow him to receive anyone not granted permission by Parliament, and by Parliament, he and the whole of subjugated England understood that it was the army and General Cromwell who ordered the terms of the King's custody. Only that afternoon Parry had been brought before him by one of the unyielding troopers and accused of smuggling messages to the King from a boatman who had called at the Castle with provisions. Parry had broken down and begged on his knees to be allowed to give his master the letter he showed Hammond. It bore the royal seal and came from France. It was the first letter he had received from the Queen for nearly two months, and the valet implored him not to deprive his prisoner of his only comfort.

He could see that letter on the small oak table by the narrow window. Charles saw him glance towards it and he said quietly—“My thanks to you, Colonel. Parry brought me this with your permission. I have heard nothing from Her Majesty the Queen for so long … I am truly grateful for your kindness.”

“I disobeyed my orders,” Hammond said. “But since I am going to leave you, it seemed unnecessarily harsh to forbid a wife's letter to her husband. I trust the Queen is in good health.”

Charles looked at him with eyes reddened by tears. His face was thin and hollowed by anxiety and his pallor was that unhealthy grey that comes from long imprisonment and little air and exercise.

“My wife is ill, sir. That letter tells me that her allowance has been stopped; she is in such poverty in France that she and my children are forced to stay in bed because they have no money for fuel and scarcely enough to buy bread.”

He sat down in the one chair in the room and covered his face with his hands.

“I wish that I were dead before I brought her to this pass.”

Parry came up to him. He carried a glass of wine and his hand was trembling so much that he spilt some of it on the carpet. That carpet had come from Hammond's own quarters when he was told that there was no covering on the King's floor.