Charles the King (30 page)

“I will do it,” Hampden promised, “and I will begin training my own men on your model.”

“Discipline,” Cromwell said slowly. “Discipline and more discipline still. The best soldier in the world is more afraid of God and his Commander than the enemy.”

By the middle of the Spring, Cromwell had begun the formation of his own force, a force composed of cavalry armed with pistol and sword and wearing back and breastplates which earned them the nickname of Ironsides. Their discipline was a phenomenon in any army of that age and wherever they met the King's forces in skirmishes through the countryside, they cut them to pieces. Cromwell was soon famous for winning every fight he engaged in, and infamous for being the first on either side to refuse quarter to the wounded. It was disturbing and the cruelty revolted Charles, but he could not think about it seriously because he was waiting at Oxford for news that concerned him more deeply than the outcome of any battle. After months of delay, Henrietta had set sail for England, bringing eleven transports packed with men and ammunition with her. There was no port in Royalist hands on the South or East Coast where she could land, and there was nothing Charles could do but entrust her reception to Newcastle in the North and wait for her to join him with her army.

Chapter 11

The little Yorkshire fishing village of Bridlington, with its thatched cottages and its small quay, was the place where Henrietta landed in England after an absence of a year. One of the worst storms in living memory had battered her fleet, driving it back upon the coasts of Holland, and only her indomitable courage and inflexible will to rejoin her husband had made her set out again on a second voyage. At last she landed, and slept her first night in a humble cottage at Bridlington, exhausted and exhilarated by a reception from the people such as she had never experienced in her life. A thousand cavaliers crowded into the village, cheering and singing and besieging her lodgings and the ordinary people hurried in from miles outside, carrying food and clothing and provisions. They brought tears to her eyes and she shed them freely, thanking them all for their loyalty in her faltering English, promising to reward every sacrifice made for the King, when the King had won his final victory.

She fell asleep worn out with emotion and excitement, and woke at five in the morning with cannon smashing over the roof of her house and shot peppering the streets. Four Parliamentary ships were bombarding the helpless village in an attempt to kill the Queen it sheltered and Henrietta fled in her nightdress at the height of the bombardment. It was snowing and she lay in a ditch outside for two hours in the freezing cold, covered in dirt and blood from a man who had been killed a few feet away from her. The enemy ships ceased fire only after the neutral Dutch ships which had accompanied her, threatened to blow them out of the water. She had come to Bridlington as the King's emissary and she left it in triumph as a heroine in her own right. The little village lay in ruins and one of the saddest of the many casualties she left behind her was a lady-in-waiting who had gone out of her mind from shock.

At the head of a brilliant procession, riding a fine chestnut mare, the tiny figure of the Queen of England drew the loyalists to her like a magnet. When she arrived at York, where Newcastle and a company of the greatest landowners of the North received her, Henrietta entered the city with three thousand foot soldiers and thirty companies of horse and dragoons.

And at York she met the King's old adversary in the Scottish wars for the first time. The Earl of Montrose was only thirty-one; when he came to her presence chamber in St. Mary's Abbey, Henrietta was surprised to see that the famous soldier and poet was so young. For a moment they looked at each other without speaking. He too was surprised by what he saw. She was so small, and painfully thin and her little pointed face was lined with worry and fatigue, as if a pretty child had grown suddenly old. There was nothing to suggest the militant Papist, the immoral devotee of wicked pleasures that her enemies described. Montrose saw courage and spirit and perhaps a sign of wilfulness in the bright dark eyes and the determined chin, and then she smiled at him, and her face looked young and bright as if the sun were shining on it.

“Welcome, my Lord. Rise, if you please.”

“I am your servant, Madam. I should like to thank you for receiving me.”

Henrietta watched him cautiously. “You may sit down my Lord. Now tell me, why have you come to me?”

“I've come to you for two reasons, Madam. Firstly, to beg you to believe when when I fought against His Majesty I did so from motives which seemed right enough at the time. Now I would give my life to undo what I have done: even if you and the King can find it in your hearts to forgive me, believe me, I can never forgive myself.”

Henrietta knew as she looked at him that he was telling her the truth or he would never have come to York at all.

“You have my pardon,” she said gently, “And I can vouch for the King, he always spoke well of you after his last visit to Edinburgh. What is the second reason?”

“The King's cause is in the greatest peril, Madam. When I left Scotland, commissioners from the English Parliament were trying to persuade Argyle to send an army over the border to attack the King. Argyle would do anything to force England into accepting the Covenanter's religious settlement,” Montrose said gravely. “If they make a treaty, His Majesty will be fighting a fresh army of Scots as well as the rebels here!”

Henrietta got up and stood in front of him, clasping her hands in agitation. She looked very pale and her voice trembled.

“God help us—we cannot fight on two fronts—we will be crushed to pieces! What can we do, my Lord? For the love of God, tell me what can we do?”

“Send warning to the King and let me go back and raise a loyal army.” Montrose stood with her, and on an impulse he caught her hands and held them. “There are thousands of Scots who are true to the King! All they need is a leader. Write to him, Madam, tell him what threatens him and beg him to accept my offer.”

“Better still tell him yourself,” she answered. “You must come with me to Oxford. Will you do that, Montrose?”

“With all my heart,” he said.

“You'll find more enemies than friends at Oxford,” Henrietta said suddenly. “But be sure of one thing. I am your friend for ever. God bless you for coming.”

She slept badly that night and woke before dawn, irritable and unrefreshed, and in no mood for the complacency of the nobles and Cavaliers who talked as if the war were won already and their progress to the King would end with a triumphant entry into London. And there were mutterings and sidelong, jealous looks when Henrietta announced that Montrose was going to Oxford with her. As soon as the cumbrous baggage trains and the troops of her army could be organized, she set out from York on her way through Yorkshire to the Midlands. It was a slow progress, because of the presence of Parliamentary troops in her way, and when she received Charles's loving letters, full of comfort and tenderness, minimizing everything of which she warned him, Henrietta raged at the delay. At Stratford-upon-Avon she was met by Rupert, a Rupert so changed from the buoyant nephew who had cheered her loneliness in Holland that she hardly recognized him.

He was weatherbeaten, his great height accentuated by the flamboyant dress of the English cavaliers, and yet he looked so much a foreigner … There was a peremptory note in his voice and a tough, determined expression in his eyes when he spoke of Edgehill, describing the famous charge of his cavalry. And she detected a strange bitterness in his references to the King. Charles had refused to march on London; he was full of scruples and he detested the war he was fighting, talking of peace and negotiating while his enemies organized into a formidable striking force. He had no stomach for it, Rupert said harshly; when he heard of the death of men he knew, he was depressed for days.

“And they call him the Man of Blood,” Henrietta exclaimed. “Good God, Rupert, does he expect to win without losing lives? What is he doing at Oxford?”

“Living in a dream,” her nephew said. “Listening to a pack of fools who flatter him and tell him he is winning without effort … All he cares about is seeing you again … Forgive me, Madam, but I'm a professional soldier, not a gentleman amateur and I find it hard to stomach sometimes. If he had your spirit, the war would be over in a matter of months!”

She had worked miracles and Rupert knew it. The evidence of her energy was all around them in munitions, money and volunteers drawn from every country through which the Queen had passed. She lacked his uncle's gentleness of spirit, and he had never loved her as he loved Charles, still loved him in spite of what he regarded as his weakness, but Rupert shared Henrietta's suspicion of the English; he had been forced to fight against their jealousy and their inertia and their dislike of his rough, drunken troopers and their rowdy officers. They criticized him for pillaging their enemies as if he were a common mercenary, they criticized his tactics, accusing him of seeking his own glory, and most of all they hated him because he was successful.

“You must make the King listen,” he urged her. “You must make him believe in Montrose and send him back to Scotland before it is too late. These Puritans have good generals too; Fairfax and Cromwell are the equal, if not better, than anyone we've got, except myself. If Scotland attacks us, we're lost!”

“Will he accept Montrose?” she asked him.

Rupert shrugged. “I doubt it. He's put his trust in the Covenanters and I doubt if he'll take Montrose's word. But he's mad if he doesn't.
I
trust Montrose and I'm a fair judge of men.”

They left Stratford early in July, and on the thirteenth of the month the Queen and her army rode down into the leafy vale of Kineton, within clear view of the high ground of Edgehill which was pited with graves after the famous battle, and riding his splendid horse at the gallop to meet her, she recognized the figure of the King at the head of a brilliant escort which stretched as far as the eye could see.

Oxford was decorated like a fairy city, the beauty of the lovely old grey colleges, the bright green lawns and gardens made Henrietta feel as if she had passed from reality into a dream. A dream which was full of the sound of cheers and music, with flowers spread under their horses' feet, garlands hanging from the houses, flags and draperies and loyal addresses. The sun was shining and the swords and breastplates of the King's lifeguards blazed and glittered as if they were on fire. They rode at the head of the procession, the King's white horse and her bay mare walking side by side, with the King's hand on her bridle, and hundreds of happy faces, full of affection and enthusiasm surrounding them, wishing them well.

She had not forgotten that she loved him, she had perhaps forgotten how much he loved her until she came face to face with him and saw his eyes and felt his hands tremble when he touched her, lifting her down from the saddle for a brief embrace before they formed up for the state entry into Oxford. A few words had passed between them, a quick whispering, confused and as unsteady as their hold upon each other, and in both of them, their senses leapt at the contact of hands and lips, and Charles brought her to his Royalist capital as if she were a bride. And like a bride she was conducted to her lodgings in the Wardens' House at Merton, and then at last she was alone with him with the sounds of the cheering crowds outside her windows and the sun streaming through the mullioned windows into the lovely old room.

For some moments he held her to him without speaking. His embrace was so hard that it hurt her and she rejoiced in the pain. She felt the tenseness in his muscles and the passion of his longing for her swept over him, denying him words, making his hands rough and impatient as they stripped off her green velvet cloak and broke the fastenings of her dress.

When he laid his head upon her shoulder she put her arms around him and began to kiss him.

“We should not,” he whispered, “My darling love, my life … this is no time to give you a child … Send me away, before it's too late.”

She did not answer, and he did not ask again. The empty chill which had settled on his heart from the moment they separated, the months of loneliness, the sleepless nights when he could not escape the anxieties of war—everything melted in that moment like snow in sunlight. His passion was a return to life, a reawakening as if for long months he had been dead.

Later they slept like children and the shadows in the room grew longer and the bed became a pool of darkness.

“I am disturbed, but not alarmed,” Charles said firmly. His expression as he looked at Montrose was not hostile, he had been urged by Henrietta to receive the young man and listen to him and after hearing all he had to tell him of the negotiations between Parliament's agents and the Scottish Covenanters, the King merely shook his head and refused to be panicked.

“I am well aware that Parliament has sent Commissioners to Edinburgh,” he continued. “I am also aware that their object is to persuade the Scottish people to join them in this rebellion. But I am perfectly sure they won't succeed.”

“But why, Sire?” Montrose said.” How can you trust Argyle and the others when I have just come from them and I tell you that I
know
they will turn on you if they can get their price from your Parliament? And it's not a price that you would ever be willing to pay them.”

“They gave their word to me,” Charles insisted. “I spent months in Edinburgh and I came to know them all well. I honoured them and granted their wishes for a Scottish Parliament and a Scottish Kirk Settlement. I left them content, my Lord, and I left them bound to me by their word of honour. I am a Scot myself, I must remind you, and I know they will not break it.”

“Saving the Earl of Montrose,” Rupert interrupted fiercely. “I can't see your reasons for trusting them, Sire. They began this rebellion when they first marched into England five years ago! They set themselves and their damned religion above any oaths of fealty to you … And they're not over-careful of their Kings, if I remember the history of your house—my house—for my mother's a Stuart. Is that not true, Montrose?”