Charles the King (40 page)

“Shall I leave, Sire?” Hammond asked. In all the trials and disappointments of which Charles had been a victim this was the first time he had ever seen him lose his self-possession. He was so embarrassed and so shocked by it that he turned round to go.

“No,” the King called out to him, “no, don't go, Hammond. I have nothing to hide from you. This is your last night at Carisbrooke and I want to say farewell to you. Forgive me.” He drank the wine and took a handkerchief from Parry, wiping his face and lips.

“Forgive the distress of a husband and father. I cannot bear to read it, and yet I have read it twenty times or more since Parry gave it to me. ‘I am an embarrassment to them.' That's what she writes. ‘They shun me, they neglect even to send what pittance they promised, and while my sister Queen Anne consoles herself with the Cardinal and her amusements, we stay in rooms at the Louvre which are bare of furniture and keep to our beds because there is no wood for a fire to warm us with the snow thick on the ground.'”

“That letter must be old,” Hammond suggested. Even to him it was unthinkable that the Queen and her children should be living in actual want. The agony of the unhappy man before him, weeping for the woman he loved as he had never once wept for himself, unnerved the Colonel until he felt quite close to tears. “Look at the date, Sire. It may have been so then but I'm sure the Queen has found friends to care for her by now.”

“What friends can she have?” Charles demanded. “She is an exile, married to a prisoner whose last hope of freedom has gone for ever. There is no future for my wife because there's none for me.”

“If I had known what was in that letter, Sire, I would have kept it from you,” Hammond said. “Whatever our differences, you have enough to bear.”

“I shall have more,” Charles said. “You leave tomorrow and the lieutenants of Cromwell come to escort me to London. I know what is in store, you see. I knew when he beat the Scottish army at Preston.”

“He has beaten them all,” Hammond said. “There is not a Royalist left in arms in the whole of England. Scotland itself is utterly subdued.”

“He is a great General,” Charles said wearily. “A great leader of men in battle. He has but one opponent left and I am he. You should be glad to leave here, Colonel. I know you would not be a party to my death. Will you take some wine with me? Parry, bring a glass and set a stool for the Colonel. Then you may go.”

It was a long time since he had refused a seat to Cromwell. He was more tractable in the bleak fortress, where even the company of Hammond was a luxury. And he had long since forgiven Hammond for not letting him escape. Contact with his enemies had taught him to respect those men among them who were truly men of principle. And compared with the new officers who garrisoned the Castle and their men who turned aside and spat when he went out to exercise, Hammond was the soul of Christian gentleness.

“Would you tell me,” Charles said, “what can I expect in London? I am shut off from all but rumours now.”

It was the one question Hammond did not wish to answer. Cromwell's crushing victory at Preston, where his force of a little over eight thousand men had routed and cut to pieces twenty thousand Scots, made him the military ruler of the country, reducing the protests of Parliament to a frightened murmur. What could Charles expect? With an effort he tried to explain.

“You must expect to answer to the army for what they consider to be crimes against the realm.”

Charles raised his head.

“I am the realm. What crimes can I commit against myself?”

There was no answer to it, and Hammond did not try to make one. On that reply alone he would be doomed. How could he describe the hatred of the Puritans in his own garrison, who spoke of the King as the Anti-Christ, responsible for both Civil Wars and all their bloodshed, and warn him what to expect from them when he still spoke of himself as the personification of the kingdom? It was hopeless; if the King's position had been less pathetic, it would have been unbearably proud. “You do not answer, Hammond,” Charles said. “But I repeat my question. How can I sin against myself? How can the King be guilty of treason when the only treason is that committed against the King? I've even heard that they are going to put me to some kind of trial. How far can absurdity go? Who can try me, except my peers, and there are no Kings at Westminster that I know of Hammond, you are a just man and I know that I owe you my life. The news that you were relieved of your command and I was being sent to London made me sure that I was going to lose it. But how will it be done? By murder on the journey? By poison in some prison? Forewarn me if you can. I have no hope of escape now. All is lost for me on this earth and I am reconciled. But I don't want to come on death unawares. Forewarn me if you can; at least then I can meet my end prepared.”

“You will not be murdered,” Hammond said. “You have my word on that. I know the General's mind. He's not a man to take the easy way and kill you underhandedly. But you asked me what will befall you now that he has won and made himself master …”

“Answer me on your honour,” Charles said, and he spoke the words as a command, given by the sovereign to a subject.

“The General will bring you to trial,” Hammond said. “As for the verdict, God alone can say what it will be.”

Charles leant back and put his glass on the table. His expression was calm but there was a glint in his tired eyes which Hammond recognized. He had seen it when one commission from Westminster after another had come to the Royal prisoner with their unacceptable and crippling terms, and one and all had been dismissed.

“No man can try me,” Charles said. “God is my only judge and I submit to Him and no one else. Cromwell may accuse me, but his verdict on me can be nothing else but murder. And murder it will have to be. I met the man and I measured him as a true Englishman,” his tone was mildly sarcastic—“a man of sound sense and Christian purpose. He knows full well that so long as I live, whether here or in the blackest dungeon, he will not have peace to enjoy his power. He will have to kill me; it is an old rule in history, Colonel, that you cannot have two Kings.”

He stood up and Hammond rose quickly. Old habits die hard indeed, Charles thought, as he held out his hand and the Colonel knelt and kissed it.

“Farewell, and my thanks to you for the good care you took of me.”

“Farewell, Sire, and may God help you!”

“He has never failed me,” Charles said gently. “And now that my time is coming, I shall try not to fail Him. Be good enough to send in Parry as you leave. I want to write a letter to the Queen. I know that you will break another rule and let him send it by the way hers came to me.”

By the light of two wax candles, begged or stolen from one of the townspeople at Newport by the tireless Parry, Charles sat down to compose what he felt would be his last letter to Henrietta.

He had always written to her with fluent ease; they both wrote as they spoke. He began as always.

“My Dear Heart, your letter came to me today by the good offices of our messenger and the kindness of the Puritan officer in command here, who is leaving tomorrow, alas! Mine own beloved, the knowledge of your suffering has smitten me to the heart …” He faltered, overcome by emotion, imagining the icy room and the horrible indignity of that tumbled bed in which his wife and daughter huddled to keep warm.

What had become of the gay and lovely wife whom he had delighted to wrap in the most costly furs, cherishing her against a breath of wind? Was her hair grey now, like his; had the light and laughter gone out of her smile, if indeed she ever smiled? He had almost forgotten how to smile himself. His laughter had been still for years. His tears fell upon the paper as he took up his pen again. He had written her so many letters and this was undoubtedly his last. He poured out his compassion and heartbreaking regret, blaming himself for her predicament, and then in the next line thanking God that at least she was safe and that their son Charles had returned from the fiasco of the Second Civil War and was able to comfort her. And then he began the hardest part of all and told her that she must no longer try to help him but resign herself that he was lost. Her duty was to work for the restoration of their son; he assured her that he was calm and unafraid.

“So many times,” he wrote, “you have reproached me with irresolution, and that reproach was justified, for I never possessed your hardy spirit, seeking always the way of peace rather than the sword. Now by the sword I shall come to mine end, and I do vow to you, the dearest of all human creatures and the sole comfort of my life, that I will bear myself as a King should and you shall have no report of me that is dishonourable. Farewell my love, care for my children and fight for the rights of my son as you have fought so faithfully for mine. Keep nothing of grief in your heart, but only the memory of him who loves you and will never cease to love you, even beyond the grave. Ever thine own devoted husband, Charles R.”

He sprinkled sand over the letter and folded it, sealing it with his ring. “Parry!” he called out. The valet came in from the outer chamber and Charles gave him the letter.

“Give this to our friend at the quayside, and tell him to come no more. We will be leaving here and letters must not fall into the new Commander's hands. When you have done, come and help me undress. It's been a weary day.”

Chapter 14

The Master of England was alone; he had taken up quarters in the Royal Palace at Whitehall as soon as he arrived in London early in January 1649. He had come to the capital bringing his victorious veterans with him, and the city was now under military occupation. One of the army's first actions had been to surround the House of Commons and disband or arrest all those who were of the moderate party, leaving a nucleus of forty-seven picked fanatics to fill the Chamber whose full complement was over two hundred members.

There was no longer any power in the kingdom except the military, and the military was controlled by Cromwell. He had returned after Preston and without a moment's hesitation consolidated his gains by taking the King from Carisbrooke and lodging him under a strong guard at Windsor. He had dealt with the protests of Colonel Hammond by placing him under arrest as soon as he arrived in London.

Cromwell had crippled Parliament just in time, for they were about to make a hurried peace with the King in preference to submitting to the Army.

He thought of Parliament with contempt. Parliament had been easy to dispose of, the people despised them, the army hated them with a hatred only one degree less furious than that they reserved for the King. And now he had the King secure, hemmed in by men who would kill him if he so much as tried to pass a message. He had the King and he had spent the last three weeks in a desperate attempt to make his trial and execution legal.

But nobody would help him. All those who had cried out so loudly against the King's iniquities, became suddenly nervous and hesitant about calling him to an account for them. Cromwell had announced the trial, braving the anger of Fairfax who accused him of breaking his word, and shrugging the insult aside because Fairfax had nothing left with which to fight him but words. But the judges he ordered to sit at the trial had refused, and no amount of threats could make them yield. The English Bar had condemned the idea of arraigning an anointed sovereign as preposterous and illegal and withdrawn from it. Of a hundred and thirty-five Commissioners summoned by Cromwell to act as judge and jury, less than half would take their seats, and some of these were hardly to be trusted.

He began to pace up and down, pulling at his collar. It always seemed to choke him when he was agitated, as if the big muscles in his thick neck swelled. Nothing had changed in his appearance. His linen and hose were coarse and dingy, his plain uniform coat was creased where he had thrown it on the floor the night before; only his breastplate was polished and clean and it shone in the soft winter sunlight which crept into the windows of the room, bringing the reflected shimmer of the Thames outside. He was still the General; humble and untidy and very much a plain Englishman, but there was a look in his face now and a look in the faces of those who were with him which was a token of great change. His brow was deeply lined, and the lines were lines of ill-temper and constant, unremitting concentration. His voice had a loud, harsh edge to it, full of command. The wheedling overtones he once used to Fairfax and his fellow officers had gone. Nobody argued with him now, nobody except a pack of miserable lawyers whose only concern was the letter of the law, and a few fainthearts who were afraid to twist it to suit their own purpose. Cromwell was not afraid, he was not afraid of the law, or of those who accused him under their breath of dangerous ambitions, of Fairfax, or of anyone who tried to thwart him. He had no fear of any living creature but the King of England and that was why he knew, without hesitating, that he would have to kill him. He had no feelings of vengeance or a genuine thirst for what he described so eloquently to the doubters as the guiltiest blood in Christendom. He had nothing but an unwilling admiration for the man who had fallen so pitifully low and yet whose personal stature was greater than ever before.

Cromwell did not hate the King, as Ireton and some of the Commissioners hated him. It was all very well for Ireton to speak as if bringing Charles before a picked tribunal and cutting off his head were an act of Divine justice; Cromwell did not regard the Commissioners as inheriting the mantle of Judith nor did he think the King was Holofernes. But he knew quite definitely that the victory he had won and the form of government he meant to impose upon his country would be constantly endangered so long as the King lived. If he were buried in the deepest dungeon, those who opposed Cromwell would still take up arms in his name. And though the prisons were full all over England, the spirit epitomized by Charles was not yet dead or even truly conquered; it mocked and defied him even at the edge of the grave.