Charles the King (35 page)

The King's camp was at their mercy, and Cromwell and Fairfax led their men in to take possession of it. It was deserted except for a few sentries who were quickly taken, and Cromwell stood in the middle of the King's tent, watching Ireton and two other officers opening the boxes of letters and secret correspondence which the King had left behind. Colonel John Oakey, who had commanded the dragoons that morning, interrupted the General to tell him that numbers of women had been discovered in the camp and waiting in carriages outside it.

“We have no orders, General. What is to be done with them?”

Cromwell looked up at him and frowned. “Make haste with those boxes,” he told Ireton. “They must be sent back to London for examination. Of what degree are these women, Oakey?”

“Prostitutes mostly. I think they must be Irish, General; no one can understand a word they speak. There are some Englishwomen of the same sort, and others are gentlewomen—wives and daughters of the officers. What must we do with them?”

“What is it Oliver?” Fairfax looked up from some of the papers he was reading and putting in order.

“Camp-followers,” Cromwell explained. “We might have expected something of this sort in such a place. I'll deal with it; there's no need to disturb yourself.”

Fairfax went back to his reading without further interest. He had found a letter from Henrietta to the King promising to ask for French troops. He did not even trouble to listen to Cromwell's orders concerning a few hundred useless women.

Cromwell turned to Oakey.

“This was the Lord's victory, and it must not be profaned by tolerating evil, in whatever shape it dwells. Have the Irish whores put to the sword and cut the noses off the rest. Then turn them loose. We've no provisions to waste on them.”

For several hours on that bright afternoon Cromwell and Fairfax and their officers were disturbed at their business of collecting the King's private papers by the shrieks of the women their men were killing and mutilating with Godly fervour. The wretched Irishwomen, among whom were many Welsh, were murdered without exception, and by the evening the English whores and the ladies of rank who had followed their husbands to the battle were driven out into the empty countryside to die of their frightful wounds. Contented, exalted by the customary prayers and psalms of thanksgiving, Cromwell and his Commanding General Fairfax dined quietly and soberly in their quarters that evening.

Naseby had been the King's last battle. That little village in the heart of Midland England had given its name to the final encounter between Charles and his Parliament, and Charles had lost for ever. They stood and drank a toast to their victory, and Cromwell said slowly, “When I saw the enemy draw up and march in gallant order towards us today, and we a company of poor ignorant men …” He paused and his eyes shone with holy joy, fanatical, triumphant, prouder in its humility than the unforgivable sin of Lucifer. “Then,” he went on, “then I had a great assurance of victory, because God would, by things which are not, bring to naught things that are. And God did it.”

The Louvre was unoccupied that hot and baking summer a year after Naseby; the French Court had left Paris and gone to St. Germain to escape the heat, leaving behind them the Queen of England with a diminishing retinue of friends and refugees from England. Her quarters were sumptuous, but the splendid rooms were bare of furniture and the sound of her footsteps echoing in the vast Palace drove her to hide in a small portion of it where the sense of isolation was less painful. Her allowance was considered generous by the Cardinal, who frequently remarked that it would have to be cut down. France could not afford to support the homeless, bickering English nobility who came crowding across the Channel to live off the bounty of their exiled Queen. It was difficult enough to meet the expenses of Henrietta herself, without encouraging a tribe of foreign beggars. For a few months she had lived in the style due to her rank, with footmen and servants and lords and ladies in attendance, but now her household was a miserable collection of those who were too loyal to leave her and those who had no better place to go.

It was a sad little gathering in the middle of so much splendour and security, and the French nobility avoided it. And then, during the endless stifling weeks, made more unbearable by the total absence of news from England, Henrietta heard that her son, the Prince of Wales, had escaped and was on his way to join her in Paris.

It was nearly three years since she had seen him; when he came into the room, she hardly recognized the lank, sallow boy who hesitated shyly, staring at his mother as if she were a stranger. She had aged and she seemed even smaller than his memory of her; a little, thin woman in a bright red dress that was as old as their last meeting.

“My son!”

She ran to him with a cry, and falling on his knees he put his arms around her, and for a moment they embraced and Henrietta felt him tremble.

“You are not to do that,” she said quickly, as if he were still the child she had left behind. “Princes do not weep. Get up, my son, and let me look at you.”

He was very tall, and she searched in vain for anything that reminded her of Charles. It was difficult to believe that this dark-skinned, black-eyed youth with his irregular features and silent air was the son of the being she loved best in all the world. She had waited for him in a fever of excitement, imagining that some part of Charles would be restored to her through their eldest son, and she stepped back from him in disappointment.

“You have grown,” she said. “You are a man now. Come and sit with me and let me present my household to you.”

Harry Jermyn, the faithful steward, still as fat and cheerful as ever, and Mademoiselle Orpe, a new confidante whom the Prince had never seen before, saluted him and then withdrew. Mother and son were alone.

“Where is your father? I have been without news for nearly two months and I am almost out of my mind with anxiety!”

She had not asked him anything about himself; his news, his journey, even the dangers which might have threatened his escape to France—none of these things interested his mother, and he had not expected that they would. She had always loved his father best, and his father had always loved her. Their children had grown up with the feeling that their presence was almost accidental.

“He is in Newcastle,” the Prince said. “He asked refuge of the Scottish army.” He saw his mother's face flush and an expression of incredulous alarm crossed it, turning quickly to suspicion that her son must be mistaken.

“Refuge with the Scots! Refuge from what, in the name of God! I wish you wouldn't talk so wildly, Charles. Make yourself plain and don't distress me …”

“Refuge from the Army of the Parliament, Madam. After Naseby, Oxford was surrounded—our forces were defeated and scattered—all our strongholds reduced or surrendered. The King escaped from Oxford disguised as a servant with Ashburnham and Ollens to accompany him. He was fortunate to reach Newcastle and the Scots army, rather than fall into the hands of Cromwell. I myself left England for the same reason, at his express command.”

For a moment Henrietta did not answer him; she was unaware of the dark, unhappy eyes of her son, or of the slight movement he made to take her trembling hands in his own and try and comfort her. He did not exist for her as a personality, only as a messenger of her beloved's shattering misfortune and increasing danger.

“What will they do with him,” she said at last. “Is he a prisoner? Who is with him? Oh, my God, my God, why must we be separated now…?”

She walked up and down, weeping and exclaiming to herself, and her son sat with his head bent, unwilling to watch her futile, lonely grief, suffering himself because he had never been allowed to come close enough to her to offer what help and sympathy he could. He would have been just as useless to his father.

“What was the last you heard?” she said at last.

“I had a message from Ashburnham,” the Prince answered. “He assured me that the King was well and treated with all honour by the Scots, and that he would soon be able to write to you direct as the Lords of the Commission were coming straight from Edinburgh to negotiate with him. Ashburnham said they'd ask him to swear to the Covenant, and if he did that, he'd be allowed to return with them to Scotland as a King in his full power again.”

Henrietta came to him and stopped in front of his chair. “If your father takes their miserable Covenant oath, they will restore him? Is that what Ashburnham thinks?”

“Yes, Madam. And he must know; he was with the King day and night at Newcastle when some of the first of the Commissioners arrived.”

“Then all is not lost!” she exclaimed. “Thank God, he has this chance at least!”

“Mother—” He came towards her and Henrietta looked at him in surprise.

“Mother, listen to me before you raise your hopes too high. Ashburnham said all that and more, but he also said my father had refused.”

She stared at him and she seemed to shrink before his eyes; she looked so white and haggard that he pulled a chair up and put her into it.

“Refused?” It was a whisper, and the Prince knelt beside her and took one of her hands in his; in her confusion and collapse she felt a clumsy kiss upon it.

“He won't abandon the English Church and make it Presbyterian,” the boy said. “That's what he told Lord Lothian who came to see him first. He'll do anything they wish except deny his faith. You know the King, you know he will never betray his religion, even to save himself …”

“Betray his religion!”

From agony she turned suddenly to blind and shaking rage; rage with the man she loved so desperately who was throwing his life and freedom away for what seemed to her a worthless quibble. “Religion! One form of heresy against another, that's all it is! And he sacrifices everything for that! His throne, our re-union,
your
inheritance … Merciful God, is there not one honest friend to tell him what he's doing?”

The Prince released her and said slowly, “It's not heresy to him, Madam. The King believes in his Church as strongly as you do in yours. He will not abandon it.”

“And you,” Henrietta said fiercely, “does it mean so much to you, that you can talk so glibly while your father puts himself in mortal danger!”

“No,” her son answered. “I believe in nothing; not even God, when I think of how some men interpret Him. But I am not my father. I only wish I were.”

“Oh, what is the use of talking to you,” Henrietta turned away from him in despair. “You're only a child, how can you judge … I must talk to Jermyn; I must write to the King at once … Ring for Jermyn and go to your rooms. You must be tired, my son. Orpe will take you and see that you have everything you need. I will send for you later.”

The Prince bowed and she kissed him absently on the cheek; he could sense that she was impatient at his presence in the room. And suddenly he was impatient too; so impatient and so hurt and angry that he could not wait to get away from her. She loved his father but she did not understand him in that fundamental which was obvious even to his children, with whom he had never been intimate. She would sit down and write a long impassioned letter, urging him to do the one thing of which he was incapable, as she had urged him years ago to sacrifice Strafford to his enemies.

But this time, Charles would not yield. He was alone and defeated. He was a prisoner of the Covenanters without any resource but the bargaining power of his own person, and without any strength but the strength of his own convictions. Henrietta had overcome them once when she persuaded him to abandon Strafford. She would not prevail again, though the consequence was the loss of his own life. His son knew it, though she did not, and when they met again that evening, there was a coolness between them which was to last for the rest of their lives.

“It is not our intention to force Your Majesty.” The Earls of Lauderdale, Lothian and Hamilton were standing in the King's presence in the old City fortress at Newcastle. They had made many visits to that room in the months which had passed since he first came among them, and not one of them had ever seen him less serene than he was then. Lothian was their spokesman; he was a cold, aggressive man who had begun the negotiation with a violent prejudice against the King whose form of religion he detested and whose word he regarded as worthless. He was less arrogant and less hostile now in the face of that gentle, yet unswerving resistance to the demands he had made day after day without success. The King had never lost his temper or his patience; if Lothian had been less convinced of his sovereign's religious heresy, he would have described him as sustained by truly Christian fortitude.

“I repeat,” he said, “that the Commissioners are not trying to force you. But if you refuse to sign the Covenant and declare yourself in agreement with the faith of your Scottish people, there is nothing we can do to help you.”

“I understand your difficulty,” Charles said quietly. “But you must also appreciate mine. I have no wish to dictate the terms of conscience to any man, but I reserve the right of freedom for my own.”

“And what of the Prayer Book,” Lauderdale interrupted angrily. “What was that, Sire, but an attempt to interfere with the conscience of the nation!”

“I recognize that,” the King answered. “And if it was a mistake, and I admit it, then you must also grant that I have paid for it. Paid dearly, if you consider my position now.”

“Recriminations are no use at this time,” Hamilton said quickly. “You put yourself under our protection, Sire, and we have given it. Now the time has come when that protection can't continue. The English Parliament has paid us the subsidy they promised for our troops and they are demanding our withdrawal. Our armies cannot stay another day on English soil without the risk of war. And they are demanding
you
, Sire, with the same threat.”