Treason's Daughter (38 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Summer 1648

S
AM'S FAVOURITE SPOT IS THE BOWSPRIT. HE STANDS EASILY
now, practised in riding the waves. He is halfway along, the sprit narrow under his feet, and the white-flecked water rushing underneath. His hand grips on to a rope, or a sheet, or a stay, or whatever it is these absurd sailors call it. He flexes his knees and spreads his toes inside his boots, finding his balance without thinking, laughing as the spray rains down on his bare head.

‘Huzzah!' he shouts at the sea. ‘Huzzah!' His voice is whipped away by the wind, which pulls and tugs at his shirt, and buffets his face. Lord, how he loves it. The ship, gallant thing, rises to meet a fearsome wave, trembling at the top of it, before crashing down the other side, threatening a dunking. Air whooshes in his stomach, putting him in mind of the swifts that danced over Marston Moor.

It's like riding a charger over a fence that's too high. These are choppy seas in the channel. The sailors tell tales of waves the size of palaces, which toss the boat like a child's top. I'd like to see
that, thinks Sam. The sailors think he's cracked, standing out here in rough weather. The ones whose job it is to furl the heavy sails along the sprit grumble about him. They call the sprit the widow-maker, and curse him for his joy in their penance. But the devil take them. He relishes this heady rush of wind and sea and fear.

He leaves aside the thoughts that plague him; that plague them all. This ragtag navy, which mutinied against its parliament, and now carries the Prince of Wales across the sea, is scarcely fit for the job. There is bad blood already between the mariners who sail the ships and the gentlemen who will fight them – largely those loyal to Rupert.

Behind him, the sailors go about their unfathomable and endless tasks, knotting things and cleaning things and climbing things. Out here, there is only the rushing of water and air. It is the nearest place to heaven that Sam can imagine. I wonder, thinks Sam, if this is what Ned is seeking from his God. This joy! He realizes that he is crying – the wind is pulling the tears from his eyes. He throws his head back and laughs at the sky.

Ned grunts with a kind of pleasure as his sword finds flesh and pierces through it. Each kill, each stricken royalist, each gutted Scot, each spitted Kentish traitor is proof. The Lord is smiling upon us again. We are His saints marching to His wars. His angels are at our wings; His breath is in our hearts. And we will prevail, again and again.

Afterwards, as the battle heat grows tepid, they talk. There is only one explanation for their tumult and bickering last year,
and for this glorious winning certainty now. Last year they were talking to the man of blood, Charles, and God had turned his face from them. This year they are fighting, and God is with them again. Hugh Peter, Cromwell's own chaplain, says that kingship is craved only by the weak and the fallible. What man would set himself up in opposition to God and call himself a king? The state itself is sinful. Did Gideon not say to the Israelites: ‘I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you; the Lord shall rule over you.'

At Putney last year, even Cromwell had warned against imagining fancies and calling them God's will. But this summer he has no misgivings.

They win battle after battle. They crush all before them. His glory shines on them. His will is clear. At prayer meetings, Ned watches grizzled veterans cry. He watches them raise their hands to the sky, thanking the Lord for His benevolence, for His choice of them as His saints. They decry the king as a false idol, a usurper of the Lord's rightful authority. The Lord has chosen them to bring him low. They sing psalms of joy with the blood still crusted on their swords. Ned too cries without shame when the Spirit comes to them, standing shoulder to shoulder with his brothers.

Hen props Blackberry up with some cushions, watching for his easy, familiar smile. Rewarded, she turns back to Hattie and Mary Overton. They have created a prison for baby Anne and Mary's youngest, trapping them behind a table against a wall with some spoons and pots to bash. They talk over the noise.

‘Now,' says Hen. ‘Let me look.'

She reads the sheet they have given her.

‘Perfect,' she says. She suggests one or two changes and then reads it out.

‘Since we are assured of our creation in the image of God, and of an interest in Christ equal unto men, as also of a proportionable share in the freedoms of this Commonwealth, we cannot but wonder and grieve that we should appear so despicable in your eyes as to be thought unworthy to petition or represent our grievances to this honourable House.'

She pauses, looking at Hattie and Mary. They return her gaze. This is powerful stuff. She feels giddy suddenly, as if the ground ahead of her has fallen away unexpectedly. The phrase spins. Equal unto men. Equal.

She looks down and the words scramble across the page. She takes a deep breath and continues reading: ‘
Have we not an equal interest with the men of this nation in those liberties and securities contained in the Petition of Right, and the other good laws of the land?'

She lays down the document and the three of them lean back. It sits between them, and they all stare at it.

‘They will not listen,' says Hattie.

‘And does that mean we should not speak?' Mary's frustration can sometimes spill into aggression, and Hen lays a placatory hand on her arm.

‘Of course not.'

She makes a decision. She does not look over at Blackberry, but she knows exactly where he is.

‘I will help you,' she says. ‘But I will not sign it.'

Hattie looks shocked, and Mary is cross.

‘It is Will,' she says. ‘I will not harm his prospects just when he is starting to gain a name.'

They cajole and entreat her, but she sticks to the story. They all know it is a lie, but they are fond enough of her not to bring it into the open. At last they leave, and she gathers up Blackberry, crying into his back so he cannot see her tears.

‘I will not leave you,' she tells him. Shame and fear rack her. She has been tested, called to stand up for her beliefs. And she has failed.

On the day of the army's purge of Parliament, Hen huddles inside, curtains drawn, lying on the floor and playing with Blackberry. Ned warned them it was coming. The soldiers are lining the streets of Westminster, turning away MPs who still want to talk to the man Charles. His new war is dead, his navy sent scuttling back to Holland. And still they want to talk to him. England's rivers flow red, its fields are soggy with blood, and still he lives and plots and schemes.

She agrees with Ned. The king must be held to account. Will thinks so too. She wishes that they would find their bollocks, these men, and just assassinate the king. Play the Brutus and strike him until his own blood runs in atonement. But they say now that there must be a trial, that the king must be openly accused of his crimes, so all the world knows that tyranny will not go unpunished. The glory of Parliament is at stake, they say.

She shivers, imagining how London will be if the trial happens.
She imagines the violence on the streets, the threats gathering in shadows as the men play their daft legal games.

When did she become so frightened? She watches the blue veins scribbled under Blackberry's translucent scalp. She did not understand before how love can incapacitate you. She starts at shadows; she reaches for Blackberry in the night just to hear his breathing.

Is that the soldiers' boots she can hear? She fancies she can see the walls trembling. Blackberry starts crying and fussing, pulling at his ear. She settles him onto her breast for a feed, listening for sounds of danger. He gives her a half-smile, still feeding. She smiles back, but it doesn't reach much further than her lips.

How can there not be a reckoning? How can the three Challoner children be unscathed when so many are dead? How can Blackberry be alive and thriving when so many others wither as soon as the cord is clamped? She has started to believe that God must be saving something for them, some terrible retribution for their luck. How did Job stand upright? How did he not just curl into a ball and whimper?

Blackberry rolls off her breast and sighs, contented and entirely secure. She wraps him up and climbs out of the bed, leaving him swaddled on the blanket. Automatically she checks for the rise and fall of his chest.

She crosses over to the trunk and lifts out her case of pistols. Dear Sam. Where is he? Was he with Rupert and his ships, which they chased back across the sea?

Ned taught her to use the pistols before he left for the recent fighting. She tries to remember, and the commands pop into her head in his deep, sombre voice. Powder. Shot. She pours a
measure of powder down the barrel, and then pops a bullet in, pushing both down with the ramrod kept in the case. Priming powder in the flash pan. Flint in the jaws. She pulls the catch to half-cock, listening to the sear clicking into position. Ned says that when you fire a pistol, there is a pause between the pull of the trigger and the blast of the bullet. The spark from the flint striking the frizzen must touch off the priming powder, which sets off the main charge, which forces out the lead ball. A chain reaction, consequence following consequence with no chance of stopping the sequence once you have started. What was the trigger for all of this mess? she wonders. Strafford's execution? Laud and his blasted altar rails? The death of Charles' big and glorious brother Henry, who would have been king? Where to stop? Perhaps when Adam turned to Eve and took the apple.

She lays down the pistol where she can reach it. She is exaggeratedly gentle, despite the half-cock. Having Blackberry has given her a new sense, a heightened awareness of danger. She can't saunter by the river without imagining him toppling in, or walk by a window without imagining him toppling out. As she lays the pistol down, a dozen images flash through her head of ways it could accidentally discharge itself, hurting her boy in her zeal to protect him. God likes those kind of cruel jokes.

The moon hangs stark and white over the sea, a silver trail marking their way. At another time he might savour it and conjure poetical fancies about the lunar path leading him home to England. But it's too bright and too dangerous, and the sharp, choppy waves
of the Channel are swilling that greasy, French pottage around his stomach. A miserable, cold and nauseous way this is to start an adventure.