Treason's Daughter (34 page)

Hen looks for the right staircase and walks to it. Her stomach rolls and rollicks like a butter churn. She climbs the staircase inside, listening to the sonorous echo of each footfall. She feels large, awkward.

At the top, she finds his door. His name is stencilled into the panelling. She traces it lightly with her finger. Then she holds her hand up to knock at the door, and notes that she is trembling. Is it the encounter with Mathew, the fear still coursing through her? She tries to fool her mind; she counts silently to three but knocks on two, a violent spasm of a motion.

‘Come in,' shouts a familiar voice, and she half turns to run away, before forcing herself to grip the door handle and turn. She opens the door, and there he is, standing next to the bookshelf, one hand ruffling his unruly hair.

‘Hello, Will,' she says.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

June 1646

N
ED TAKES THE STAIRS TWO AT A TIME. HE SPRINGS WITH
the joy of being first with the news. He has already delivered it to Parliament. He has allowed them to bathe him in purple praises, he has let the old men shake his hand, and he has knelt with the godly to give praise to the Lord. Such thanks for His glory! At last he wriggled free and ran to the river. He told the boatman, who pulled him towards the bridge for free, shouting the news to the boats passing up river.

In one boat, the passenger leapt to his feet, waving his hat. He staggered, rocking the boat, and then fell head-first into the river. Ned turned and watched him get pulled out, still smiling, and he gave a joyous wave.

He jumped up the steps at the landing pier and then walked along the street, deciding who to tell. He scanned the passing faces to see who best deserved the news from the hero of the hour, the conquering Jove, dispensing joy like a benediction. He whispered it to a godly dressed preacher, who stopped in the
street open-mouthed. Two young and pretty women out walking were offered the news as a tribute to their beauty, with a gallant bow and a self-deprecating grin.

Now home. Home! He opens the door with a crash to find Lucy there alone. She half rises and he pulls her to him, kissing her.

‘Ned!' she cries, half laughing, half confused. ‘What are you doing here?'

He stops her questions with another kiss.

At last he tells the news to the one he wanted to see first. ‘It's Oxford, my love. It's fallen. It's over.'

She sits, speechless. Like all the others Ned has told, she knew it was coming. How could it not, with the king a virtual prisoner of the Scots and the surviving royalists in tatters. And yet… Oxford has gone. There is no duopoly of power, no strange and unnatural split in the land. All heat and power emanates again, as it should, from this mighty city. Oxford, thinks a gleeful Ned, I piss on you.

‘And you were there?' she speaks at last, looking up at him.

‘I was.' He pulls himself taller. ‘I was trusted by Lord Fairfax with the news.'

‘And what did you get?' Her face, looking up at him, is eager and bright.

‘Get?'

‘Yes. From the sackings and the sieges.' She pulls a crumpled news-sheet from her work basket. It tells of the sack of Basing House, home to the Marquis of Winchester. It tells of Cromwell's men rolling in jewels, struggling to walk under the volume of plate and silverware lifted. It tells of lowly troopers dressed like kings, pikemen set up for life.

‘But Lucy, I wasn't there.'

Her face sours. ‘What of Bristol, of Oxford?'

‘Bristol, the Lord Fairfax gave us orders not to loot. Oxford, well, I left as soon as the flag was hauled. To bring the news.'

‘The
news
.' She spits the word out. ‘And what do you
get
for bringing the news?'

His voice is small. He can feel her response coming over the hill like a cavalry charge. But he pushes forward, regardless. ‘Duty. Honour.'

‘Duty! Honour! Ned, you looby. Can we eat honour? Set up house with duty? I married a Jack-Adams, a God-cursed, sap-pated fool!'

‘Lucy!'

‘Don't say anything.' She paces. ‘Why did I marry you?' She presses balled fists to her eyes. ‘Why? I should have waited – someone better would have turned up. Look at me! Look at me, Ned. What is the point of looking like this just to be a cursed beggar? Our affairs are at the lowest tide. Must I wash clothes, Ned? Must I knead? Must these hands scrabble in the gutter, for the sake of your duty?'

The words tumble over him, washing away his happiness. Of all the scenes he played in his head on the journey up to London, this was not one.

‘Sorry,' he mutters, seeking to calm her. ‘Sorry.'

‘Sorry! Were you knocked in the cradle? What use is sorry? Will you be a night soilman? A 'prentice butcher? Sorry, for the Lord's sake.'

Her tirade mounts. He looks at her red face, sees the burning hatred. Suddenly she falls silent, looking over his shoulder.

He turns and sees Hen, with Will, of all people, standing framed by the door, peering in awkwardly.

‘Ned,' says Hen into the echoing pause. ‘Have you heard the news?'

Later, they go out to a nearby inn for dinner. Lucy has pleaded a headache, so it is just the three of them. Even Ned, not a man who prides himself on acuity in these matters, can sense a strange current between Hen and Will. They seem too aware of each other. Will focuses his eyes on Ned with an unusual intensity, as if afraid to let them stray to his sister.

They eat well, and drink a fine claret. All around them are people feasting and drinking, toasting the end of the war.

‘How do you two come to be together?' he asks.

Hen blushes.

Will says: ‘Last week . . .'

‘Tuesday,' says Hen.

‘Yes, Tuesday. She called on me. For help evicting a troublesome visitor.'

‘Cousin Mathew.'

‘Drunk, he was, and pot-valiant.'

‘Ned, he was horrible. But he had not heard of Anne's death.' Her face crumples a little, and Will's hand twitches on the table, as if compelled to seek out hers.

‘So Will persuaded Mathew away? And?'

‘And nothing,' says Hen, blushing ridiculously. ‘We have not seen each other since. I met Will on my way home from the shop; he came to tell me the news.'

There are gaps in the narrative. She doesn't tell Ned of the
hours they spent together after Mathew left, staggering and cursing into the night. How Will looked at the bruise on her cheek and brushed it gently with his thumb. How they talked as if time itself had dropped away and she was seventeen again.

She doesn't tell Ned either of their meeting just now. She had not expected to meet Will in the street. They stood looking at each other, senses straining. All the cacophony of life around them, and the two of them in the middle of it, just looking at each other. She doesn't tell of how it feels to be perfectly calm on the outside, while inside a torrent of blood and heart and heat rages.

She can't look at Will easily, not yet. She is twenty-two years old, and giddy as a girl just flowered.

Will steers the subject on, moving it to safer ground of wars and carnage and looming political wrangling. They try to dwell on the upside – the effective end of the armed conflict is reason enough to thank the Lord. But they keep coming back to the obstacles; the dark dunghills strewn between this poor benighted England and safety. The king is a slippery fish to catch; he twists and turns. And yet for all the blood and all the lives lost, a restored king is the only sure way to make the peace safe.

But the man who holds the crown – he must have limits placed on his power to wreak carnage, this they all agree.

It is an accepted notion now that the king and the man Charles are two separate entities. How did it happen, this shift in thought, this splitting out of the man from his office? Hen remembers her father and his brother talking of evil counsel, as if the king could be shielded from his own decisions by the attribution of them to malign outsiders. And now the same ruse, differently worked. It's not the king to blame, but the man Charles. To blame the king
– where could that lead? To anarchy. To the breakdown of order.

Will articulates it best. Hen watches him speak, his face illuminated by the house candles, his hands moving for emphasis.

‘For what is order but the law?' he says. ‘And what is the law of England without the king?'

‘But does that mean the man who holds the office of king can be himself above the law?' Ned puts the question, and Will leaves it unanswered.

Instead, he says: ‘But this talk aside, what of the practicalities? Parliament wants to bind the man to rules whether or not he believes himself to be the font of common law or subject to it. The Presbyterian MPs – who last time I looked were still the leading faction – want him to abolish bishops and to cede control of the militia. But here's the rub – what if he will not?'

‘He must,' says Ned.

‘You would think so, would you not? He has no army, few friends. He is, in effect, a prisoner of the Scots. But he has one card which trumps all others.'

‘The king card,' says Hen.

‘The king card. So I ask again. They want him to cede everything he would not before the war. What if he will not do so?'

‘The army will not stand it,' says Ned. ‘You do not understand them, Will. I have marched with them, suffered with them, watched them die like offerings. We were laughed at, and we prevailed. We are God's chosen. We beat him, and he must take our terms.'

‘Or what? You will fight him? He has no army.'

‘What do you think will happen, Will?' Hen looks at him, relishing the swoop of her stomach. He is grown into himself,
the boy she once loved. He is confident and assured. If some of his buoyant good humour has muted, so be it. She is older too. He is still the boy who kissed her against a wall, and yet now he is even more alluring, she finds. She thinks of kissing him and feels her cheeks grow hot.

‘Lord, Hen. Look where we now stand. The Scots arrayed against us, their former allies. The army bickering with Parliament. The Presbyterian MPs ranged against the independents. The City fathers siding with the Presbyterians, and their sons with the radicals. Religion and politics all a-jumble. And there is the king sitting at the eye of the storm, clutching his trump card. Do you remember, at the start of it all, Jeremiah Whittaker preached a sermon in Parliament, which your father read to us? “These are the days of shaking,” he said. Well, we have shaken and we have fallen. And now we shall see the days of bickering.'

Hen and Ned remember Will's words countless times as the year winds down to winter. These truly are the days of bickering. Politicians and soldiers, clergy and divines – all in the right and all exhausted by the other players' wilful intransigence.

Hen comes to think of it like a dance in the masque – each dancer has his own history and his own vision of the future. They can come together for the space of a tune, long enough to step in time and look as if they are a coherent whole. But then the beat shifts or the tempo changes and they break into smaller units again, circling each other warily – murderously.

She tells Hattie her analogy, and the butcher's wife laughs. ‘As
long as the fuckers stop treading on my toes, Hen, they can dance till the dead rise for all I care.'

On one fine autumn day they are walking in Highgate Wood with baby Anne. She sits on Hattie's hip, straddling her waist and clutching at her dress with proprietorial fingers. Leaves crunch underfoot, and the symphony of reds and auburns and browns is making all of them happy. Hen gulps at the beauty with the glee of one normally hemmed in by sooted brick. She hums as she walks, and suddenly they begin to sing:

Fortune, my foe, why dost thou frown on me?
And will my favours never greater be?
Wilt thou, I say, forever breed me pain?
And wilt thou ne'er restore my joys again?

Hattie hugs Anne and waggles her big toe. ‘Fortune, my toe,' she sings, and the baby giggles.

‘Hen,' says Hattie, an odd tone in her voice. ‘I've been thinking. My old man would have been in touch by now. I think he's dead.'

‘I'm sorry, Hattie.'

‘Don't be. I'm not. I like it on my own.' She pauses. ‘But here's the thing, Hen, love. Before the war, we were together ten-odd years. And not once did I get a sniff of a baby. Him or me, I don't know, but the Lord didn't see fit to bless us. So, I was thinking. The baby, Hen. Anne. Mum dead, dad most likely too. Grandparents not interested.'

Hen can see where this is going, and she panics. She loves Hattie; owes her a profound debt, too. But Hattie is a butcher's
wife. Her daughter will be a butcher's daughter. The baby will slither down the social scale, irrevocably. She forces herself to think about alternatives. Baby Anne can't stay with her nurse. Could I take her? But who would look after her during the day? Hattie anyway. Do I even have the right to determine Anne's child's future? But if not me, then who?