Treason's Daughter (16 page)

If they survive this, Lord, I will learn to cook, to manage a house. I will become a better servant, oh Lord.

‘Grandmother,' she says quietly. ‘Will we pray?'

The old lady nods. Hen kneels by her bed and grasps her hand. The familiar words wash over her like a charm, and she feels calmer.

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven
.

Hen thinks of her father, choosing to conjure his irrepressible smile in her mind. She sees Ned, serious and earnest, striving to find his adult self. She imagines Sam, hailing his friends in the crowd, treating the battle as an enormous, elaborate jape. And
she thinks of Will, as she saw him last: mud-spattered and forlorn.

She thinks of Chalk and Cheese, and the Birch boys. And Oliver Chettle; he must be there somewhere too. Is he as good with a sword as with a pen? she wonders.

She kneels next to Grandmother's bed and tries not to bargain with the Lord. Take Robert Birch, but spare Sam. Take Chalk, but spare poor Cheese. Stop, she tells herself. Stop.
Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven
. Thy will be done.

‘For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.'

Even Taffy joins in.

Beside them, the remains of the food lie strewn on the wet grass. There's not much left.

‘We should save some for after,' Ned says, when the prayers are done, and the waiting starts again.

‘There might not be an after.' Taffy reaches for a slice of heavy plum pudding.

‘There will be manna in heaven,' Joe says, eyes raised upwards.

‘Couldn't taste better than that pudding,' Ned replies, without thinking. He looks up to find Taffy looking at him, a wide grin on his foxy face.

‘Pox take you, Taf,' he says, before grinning back.

A captain nearby shouts, and the men around them draw themselves up into a semblance of rank. Ned, Taffy and Joe are the ragtag hangers-on now; their regiment broken at Brentford, they and the other survivors have attached themselves to Philip
Skippon's trained bands. Many of their fellow soldiers are unwilling conscripts, pulled away from their small businesses and their families to face death on a pike's edge. Some are substitutes, paid for by the City's wealthier citizens to avoid taking their allotted place in the line.

And here is Skippon himself, riding past, inspecting his troops. He stops at Ned's cluster.

‘You were Holles' men,' he says.

They nod and murmur.

‘You shall have a chance to serve your fellows out today, I think.'

Skippon is about to ride away when he stops, and stares at Ned.

‘Ned Challoner?' he asks uncertainly. Ned's father served with Skippon under Sir Horace Vere in Bohemia, and Ned had met his new commander in London, before the war.

Ned bows. ‘Yes, sir.'

‘You here? I would not have thought it.'

Ned nods. ‘And proud to be so, sir.'

‘I heard your father, my old friend, is not so keen on our cause.'

‘You heard right, sir. Hence . . .' Ned gestures to his pike, and the collection of muddy rags which now passes as his uniform.

‘Sad times, indeed, when families are divided. But God is with us today, men,' he says more loudly, a rhetorical flourish creeping into his voice. ‘We shall face the idolators, and the papists, and the dissipated fornicators who stand against us, and we shall march with the Lord in our hearts against the servants of Baal.'

Quietly, against a background of muttered approval, he says to Ned: ‘See me after, boy. Come and find me.'

As he leaves, Ned looks awkwardly at Taffy and Holy Joe.

‘Ned, m'boy,' drawls Taffy, aping Sir Philip, ‘I need someone to lick my arse. I hear you have a fine, fine tongue, young man.' He turns and waggles his arse provocatively at Ned, making Holy Joe giggle.

‘Thy mother,' says Ned mildly.

‘And thine.'

‘You'll see us right,' says Joe. ‘Didn't know you were such a plush fellow.'

‘Maybe, just maybe,' says Taffy, ‘he might see us get paid.'

‘Paid! More chance of a kiss off a Cavalier than a payday.' This from a grizzled man next to them.

His words bring a murmuring assent from the pikemen standing by. ‘We do the Lord's work, and what do those bastards give us? Promises, and more promises,' says one boy.

The grumbles are cut short by the report of a gun.

‘For what we are about to receive,' says Taffy.

‘Will you blaspheme in hell, Taf?'

‘That I will, Ned, lad, as you'll see when you're standing there beside me.'

Ned grips his pike, waiting for orders. A ball whistles nearby.

‘Look over there,' says the grizzled man, pointing to the flank where the spectators stand – an incongruous crowd of gawpers and followers.

Father among them, thinks Ned.

‘It ain't a May Day parade we're at,' says Holy Joe.

The report of the gun sends the spectators milling backwards, their panic evident, even from where Ned stands. When it is clear that the ball came nowhere near, they mill forward again.

‘Like sheep when a wolf's in,' says Taffy. ‘Stupid bastards.'

It is a comical sight, the play of a fearful yet prurient crowd, and it cheers the boys up as they stand waiting for the off.

‘There they go,' shouts Ned, as the crowd pedals backwards.

‘Nope, back again,' says Taffy gleefully, as they pull forward.

It passes the time, and they need help with that. The morning drags forward. Still no sign of a move. The boys' feverish energy winds down a little; no one can stay so scared for so long. They've sung psalms, and they've talked chuff at the enemy, and now there is only the waiting.

‘I've had more excitement shovelling shit,' says Taffy, to a morose silence. Noon approaches, and still no move. The king's troops stand opposite them; far enough to be faceless, near enough to be ominous.

‘What's going on, sir?' says Ned to a passing officer, wearing the orange sash of Essex's army. Before he joined up, Ned had not thought that you could stand in the ranks of an army, yet be blind as to its greater movements.

The officer stops and looks at the faces turned to him.

‘We outnumber the papist scummers, but they've got us beat on horses. See there.' He points to a small troop of the king's horses picking its way across the ground in front of the royalist army. ‘They're looking at the ground. Our lady friends in the cavalry tell me it's terrible for the horse, this ground.' He shrugs. ‘So we play chicken, boys. See who moves first.'

A little while later, the word passes down the lines. Stay in formation, keep pikes near at hand, but tuck in. Carts appear from behind them. More food from London's army of goodwives at their backs.

As they obey the rare, welcome orders, more words pass down the line.

The grizzled man comes over, a big grin sitting uncomfortably on his face. ‘Seems those papist bastards over there have no food. And they can smell us.' A cheering rises through the parliamentary ranks. They brandish bread and meat at the enemy. They throw the half-eaten bones of birds into the bleak land between the armies. They blow the steam from the pies they crack open towards the royalists.

Taffy laughs until he weeps at the thought of the royalist boys sitting cold, wet and hungry on the other side of the fields, while they gorge for the second time. He wipes the tears from his eyes and stands tall, waving a great pitcher of ale.

‘See this!' he screams at the opposing lines. He takes a deep draft. ‘Tastes like fucking nectar, you papist cock-munchers!'

At last, sated, they sit back, and silence settles once more.

‘Do you think we'll fight, Taf?' asks Ned, watching the winter sun begin to sink into the layer of cloud that sits obstinately above the horizon.

‘I don't know. It's getting late. Jesus wept, but I wish the sods in the sashes would make up their minds.'

The grizzled man cuts across him. ‘They're on the move!' he shouts.

Sure enough, the pikemen opposite them are wheeling around. Above the royalist heads, a thin crimson ribbon of sky is trapped between the dark clouds and the horizon.

‘Jesus, they're going. They're going!'

The muttering grows along the parliamentary arms. The royalists are leaving. Turning away from London, marching away.
Ned can't work out how he is feeling. Cheated? Relieved?

He drops to his knees, and those around him follow suit. They pray and thank the Lord for their deliverance.

When they are done, Taffy assumes the rasping bark of a sergeant. ‘Men, turn round, face back.'

Wonderingly, those near him do as he orders.

‘Breeches down!' he shouts.

Almost to a man, they obey him. Ned grins as he pulls his down.

‘On three, present arses!' screams Taf. ‘One, two, three!'

Skippon's trained band presents a broadside of backsides to the retreating papists, as twilight falls over Turnham Green.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘G
O ON,' WHISPERS HEN. ‘DO IT.'

Sam looks around him nervously. At the far end of the great hall, a family wanders about quietly. Three children awed into silence by the grandeur of their surroundings. The windows are grimy, and the sun fights to find its way in. A gloomy place now. The walls are dappled dark and light, the pattern betraying where paintings once hung.

In front of them – majestic, awful – is the king's throne. It is bigger by far than their father's great chair. He must have looked small in it, like a child pretending if you weren't close enough to see his face. The wood is interlaid with gold. Hen closes her eyes and tries to imagine the room full of courtiers, Charles sitting here in state as they bow and scrape to him. But the echoing emptiness of the room defeats her imagination.

‘I can't,' whispers Sam. ‘You do it.'

Hen grins, darts to the throne and sits down. For the longest second, it seems, she sits in it, appalled and thrilled at the same time. Then she jumps up and walks away. She feels irrepressibly
naughty, as if she were a child again and has stolen a pie or broken a prized cup.

‘Your turn,' she says to Sam, knowing that he will have to do it, now that she has. He does it quickly, pausing in the chair just long enough to wave his hand and draw Hen into a deep, giggling curtsy.

They amble on through the great empty palace, the royal apartments, the bowling alleys and tennis courts, and the staterooms. Layers of royal history piled up brick by brick in this higgledy-piggledy palace. In the tiltyard, a stake is pushed into the ground where once the bears would have been tethered. Hen wonders what happened to the bears. Surely they have not gone to Oxford too, like the rest of the court?

How peculiar it is, to be sauntering around the palace as if they owned it. Word has rippled throughout the city that the empty buildings are not guarded, that anyone may walk in royalty's footsteps in these strange times.

They are not alone in their amblings. It feels as if half of London is using the break in the incessant rain to visit the palace, empty and forlorn as it is. A skeleton staff gives in to the tide of gawpers, collecting the valuables and the king's collection of paintings in a few, guardable, lockable rooms. The palace resounds with the court's absence. There are no gallants by the King's Gate, no guards. No ladies in wide skirts sweeping along the endless corridors. No gentlemen sauntering with tennis rackets. No musicians hurrying to the Banqueting House. No servants, either, to sweep the floors. Instead, idlers trip through the palace, open-mouthed at the splendour. Even without its tapestries and paintings, the palace awes them. The ceilings are arched and
carved, the fireplaces huge and ornate. Look down, though, and the floor is a riot of muddy footprints, the rush matting peeling at the edges to let in the draughts.

In one particularly ornate room, Sam and Hen find a small crowd gathering in front of a mural. There is King Henry, his legs wide and his eyes burning. He looks as if he could stride down from the walls to berate them. ‘What are you doing here in my palace, you vermin, you dung beetles?'

There is no laughter in this room, just a hush and a fear-edged wonder.
We sent our king away. We sent him away! What have we done?

On their way down to the kitchens, Hen and Sam are passed by a ragtag couple carrying great sacks of coal, raided from the scuttles down there. The woman, pinched and grey, stares defiantly at Hen as she passes her. Hen looks away as she steps aside to let the woman pass. It will be a hard enough winter for London's poor with the king holding the great coal towns, and the price of warmth creeping ever upwards. It is icy cold in the kitchens. The great hearths lie cold and black, and the twins' breath hovers in visible clouds as they exhale. The pantry and butter-room are bare. The stark kitchens sadden her.

They move on to the great Banqueting House, built by the king's late father, the first of the Stuarts. They have passed the outside often enough. The startling modernity of its great stone façade contrasts with the ubiquitous red brick; its size, grandeur and glorious classical lines still shock. Londoners mime insouciance in front of it; out-of-towners crick their necks and stare. Once inside, their feet slap loudly on the floor; echoes bounce off the walls. The tapestries are gone and the walls are bare. Above them, though, is Rubens' great ceiling, depicting the glories of James I.

Hen and Sam stare upwards and then join their fellow Londoners who are lying on the floor to get a better view. Above them, kings and gods tumble and pose, their limbs alive with movement, the light playing on their faces, their robes flowing in folds that capture the shadows.

‘Ned wouldn't like this,' says Sam, his eyes fixed on an angel's plump breasts.

‘Lord, no,' says Hen. ‘Let's hope the king took his ladders to Oxford, or the godly will be up there painting some modesty on.'

‘Hmm,' says her brother, distracted.

A voice from by her head says: ‘Aye, miss, it would be a travesty.'

She swivels to see a small, lined man lying near her, looking upwards with a face of near rapture.

‘Ain't it glorious?' he says, still looking up. He points at one of the oval panels. ‘Look there. Abundance suppressing Avarice, I believe.' A haloed golden figure pins a miserable creature to the floor.

‘And there,' he points again. ‘Wise Government holding a bridle above Intemperate Discord.' Wise Government is a bored-looking woman, and Intemperate Discord a naked, cowed man.

Hen finds herself strangely affected by the painting. She looks at the indifference in the woman's face, and the abject humiliation of the defeated. She doesn't see the allegory she is supposed to see at all; instead she sees ‘Impartial Death vanquishes Brother'. She imagines Ned, out there with the army somewhere, being defeated, so cold and naked and alone.

She reaches for Sam's hand. ‘Let's go,' she says. ‘Please.' They leave the little man lying there still, tracing the lines of genius on the ceiling.

They wander on through the maze of apartments and find themselves in the privy gardens. The bare trees lining the walkways give the garden a tragic, unkempt air. Unswept leaves have turned to sludge, making the paths slippery. Carved wooden creatures peep slyly from behind hedges, silently watching the twins as they walk.

‘Hard to imagine it in springtime,' says Hen, picking an obstinate russet leaf from a tree and twirling it round in her fingers.

‘I'm not sure how long I can last, Hen,' says Sam suddenly.

She adjusts to the sudden swerve in conversation. ‘You cannot go for a soldier, too. Father would break.' And I, she adds, silently.

‘So I must sit and learn to keep ledgers, and understand linen, and try to keep myself from stabbing my eyes out with a pen? When he was my age he ran away to the wars.'

They come to a sundial standing at the centre of the garden. It sits obsolete under the low grey sky.

‘True. But not to fight Englishmen. Do you even know which side to fight for?'

‘Ned's. Parliament's.'

‘Why? Sam, you are not godly. I do not believe you care in the slightest about the king's divine rights, nor Parliament's prerogatives. Without conviction for one side or the other, what need is there to fight?'

‘There is honour. Or rather the dishonour of standing by. Of wandering in pretty gardens with my sister, when good men are fighting and dying.'

‘Honour. Your sex's trump card,' she says, turning from him impatiently. ‘What a thing to die for.'

‘There is nothing else worth dying for, Hen, if you think on it. Why should I die to protest the
Book of Common Prayer
?' He picks up a stick lying on the ground and fences with an imaginary foe.

‘Take back your damned altar rail, sir, or I shall spike you!' he cries, lunging. He turns to her and pretends to stab himself. ‘Or perhaps you would have me die to rid the world of ship money, or tonnage and poundage?' He falls to the floor and lies thrashing on the cold stone. He cocks one eye open.

‘Would you have me lay down my life for the sake of taxation, Hen?' He spits with theatrical disgust and mutters again: ‘Taxation!'

She finds her reluctant smile spreading into a laugh. ‘Beware bedlam, fool,' she says, and taps him with her foot.

He groans, and rolls over onto his front. ‘Kicked,' he says, ‘by my own blood.'

Once home, there is good news: a letter from Anne. But it was borne by a grumbling Nurse, back to resume her tenuous position in the household. As much as she'd hoped to be harassed by over-gallant Cavaliers or rude apprentices on the way home, the road between Oxford and London proved resolutely dull. Cheated of her chance of being heroic or put upon, Nurse hands over the letter with a growl.

‘Trouble, that girl. Mind my words, Henrietta. Trouble.'

She shuffles off, grumbling still, to embellish what little danger there was in her telling to Cook and Milly. Milly sits wide-eyed as
Nurse tells of soldiers and potholed roads, of moments of terror and her own heroic stoicism. Cook, less gullible yet diplomatic, makes the required noises as Nurse whines her way back towards equanimity.

Upstairs, Hen and Sam sprawl by the fire as she reads the letter aloud.

Dearest Hen
,

We are, like Their Majesties, in Oxford! Father decided that the house, being outside the city walls, was too exposed to passing ruffians, too isolated. So we are crammed, all of us, into three rooms on top of his counting house, in the city itself. He has managed to find a pass for your nurse. You are welcome to her, odious witch, though Mother much laments her going
.

There is no room for her here. Mother is flapping and furious about managing us all in such a small space, with but one servant girl who sleeps on the floor of my room, which I also share with my littlest sister. She snores, and is freckled – the maid, I mean
.

Father is never here. He says that having the court in Oxford is supplying him with endless business, but I heard them arguing last night about how the grandest folk are least likely to pay in cash. We have already turned over our plate to the king, and must hide any jewels. Those wearing anything fine on the streets are harangued as traitors for not passing their goods to the king's cause. The king, they say, is light of purse and is trying to prize funds from London using underhand channels. To little purpose, evidently
.

Father is forced, too, to spend one day a week out building defences against the rebels. The king decreed it. He did not think
that what passes for able-bodied in Oxford may not serve – it is a sight to see the stumbling, crooked old fellows prized from the libraries and set to the earth with shovels!

They are arguing much here. I cannot decide if it is because I hear them more in the smaller space or if it is due to the mere fact of more shouting. The littleys are miserable all cooped up in these little rooms. The baby screams and screams. The older ones are just cross, Hen. Now is the time they would be building towers of dead leaves and jumping into piles of them. Here, they just sit indoors and fight, for Mother is loathe to let them out with all the soldiers and the horses marching up and down the street. Christmas is approaching, and how we will make it happy for them, I cannot tell
.

The house next door was lived in by a godly family, who have upped and left for Abingdon with the rest of their kind since the king arrived. Their rooms are now full to overflowing with soldiers: mostly rude fellows, but polite enough to me as I walk past them. I ignore the ones who call out, and step higher. Our area is overrun with Wicked Ladies, now, attracted by the court and the weight of soldiers quartered here. The other night, Prince Rupert led a torch-lit dance down the street outside my window, followed by a troop of women wearing hoods! I didn't, at first, understand, but Mathew told me
.

Mathew has joined to fight for the king. Father would have rather he fought for Parliament, if anyone, and Mathew, I think, did not mind much either, but did not want to be left out. But we all talked it out, and it seemed best to join the king, with the court quartered here and Father's business supplied from royalist pockets. And Mathew was pleased, I think. The Roundheads are most
frightfully severe, and godly, yet not above appalling barbarity. Everyone here talks about their nastiness in battle, particularly in the late sack of Winchester. To desecrate a cathedral!

Mathew has taken to his new life, and roisters in the taverns enthusiastically with his fellow new recruits, much to Father's fury. He talks often about his pretty cuz, Hen, and I'm sure sends you a kiss
.

He will not be happy, he says, until he has a rebel's guts on his sword. (Not poor cousin Ned, I hope.)

The only really happy one, Hen, is me. Oh, how I wish you were here. The excitement! The fun! Did we ever go into Oxford together? Before the court came, it was all serious young men, jabbering in Latin and locked in their colleges come nightfall. But now! The streets throng with gallant soldiers, wearing the sashes of their regiments. The ladies of the court gather in New College's grove, and I go too with my friends, and we wander through the trees as the lutes play and all the men bow to the prettiest of us. I have seen the king, and the queen! And now when I see you, we shall be able to nod wisely about them together, and I shall not have to envy you your sight of them. (Though, Hen, you are in the right of it. How short!!)