Treason's Daughter (39 page)

The fishermen call to each other in their peculiar dialect, urgency evident despite their exaggerated quietness. He looks up and sees the low-lying, treacherous ground of the estuary marshes.

The bottom of the boat where they huddle is wet, with water that stinks of old fish and seaweed. He feels the nausea rising again, and he fights to keep it down.

At last, at long last, he hears the crash of breakers, the unmistakable sound of surf grinding stones. They come closer, the wind on their quarter and the land dark and silent ahead of them. Suddenly, the sails shudder. Sam, with his rudimentary grasp of sailing, realizes the wind has shifted, and that soft, dark mass ahead of them is now a real danger. Bringing the boat off again with the wind blowing straight to shore would be hard enough in the best of boats – but this unweatherly tub could be in trouble.

The Frenchmen are arguing behind him. At last, the biggest comes forward and puts his hands together as if in prayer.

‘Swim,' he whispers. ‘You swim'.

Sam nods. This will be the least of the dangers to come. He looks towards the dark smudge ahead. Not too far, and he's sodding soaked through already. He slips over the side into the icy, black water. The waves roar about his ears, and the cold slams the air out his body in a shocked gasp. He strikes out for land.

It is the king, Ned realizes with an intake of breath. Here he is, made flesh, stepping out of a curtained sedan chair. He shivers, the chill January air catching him. A small reminder, if they needed it, of the mortal ordinariness of this man they are taking to his trial.

He is even smaller than Ned remembers, hunched over. Colonel Thomlinson hands him into his barge, a work-a-day craft of little gaudiness, which seems in keeping with the general tone of the day. The barge tosses on the choppy Thames, as if impatient to be off. It slaps against the St James's steps, and Colonel Thomlinson reproves the waterman, whose eyes are fixed on the king's face. The king!

Streaks of white stripe the king's long hair and unkempt beard. His face is as grey as the water, hatcheted with lines. If you knew nothing about this man, you would see the stress etched in his skin, sense the misery in his hunched shoulders.

Ned pulls himself straighter in his seat at the prow of the guard boat and fashions a scowl. It would not do to have his men see this weakness in him, this strange sympathy. His troop fidget in their seats, fighting to keep their eyes straight ahead and away from the king's person. They're nervous on the water, some of them, used to the certainties of soil beneath their boots. And here is the king, in person, to add to their fretfulness.

The king thanks Colonel Thomlinson for handing him into the barge, and then sits. In the second guard boat, Ned hears his chief, Colonel Hacker, calling out a warning.

Shit. Ned curses himself for his inattention. A flotilla of small craft is heading towards them. He raps an order and his men hoist muskets to their shoulders.

‘Keep off!' shouts Ned. ‘Or we will fire.'

They keep coming. The faint sound of cheering crosses the water. ‘God save the king! God save the king!'

Ned looks down into the barge, where the king sits straighter now, gripping the sides of his seat with whitened knuckles.

‘We will fire,' Ned shouts again. The king looks up at the sound of his voice, and their eyes meet. He cocks an eyebrow, as if to say: ‘And now what, boy?'

The order to fire lodges in Ned's throat. He feels his cheeks burning. The king's eyes are steady, his brows still raised. There is a hint of a smile at his mouth. Ned forgets to breathe.

The colonel calls out from behind him, and he wrenches his eyes away.

‘We're just pulling along a few yards, captain. Cover them, and fire if entirely necessary, but not before. We don't want to provoke anything.'

A good man, Colonel Hacker. Godly. A pleasure to serve.

Skippon will have nothing to do with this trial. He has withdrawn. At the last, some of the older men are becoming squeamish. Fairfax too, by all accounts.

The small craft bob alongside as the king is pulled along to his lodgings for the trial. If Ned finds it was one of his men who leaked the king's route from Windsor, there will be blood. The king is to be lodged in Cotton House, a merchant's house next to the Palace of Westminster, where the court is convened. It has been chosen because it will allow them to keep him secure on the
daily walk across to the court, where Ned and his men will help protect proceedings.

The court functionaries will be processing to the palace now, according to the timetable Ned has seen. Will is there. He has helped John Cooke, the solicitor-general, prepare the case. They are dressing it all with processions and pomp and finery, to give this thing the outward show of legitimacy.

Will thinks it is necessary; Ned is not so sure. The army is all the legitimacy that this trial needs. The men are camped outside the walls expectantly, looking in at the lawyers' dance.

No one noticed my father's trial, he thinks. There was no pomp then. No solemn processing. Ned remembers Hen's mad ride across the country to find him and bring him home. She would not do it now. Motherhood seems to have diminished his fiery sister. She didn't want Will to be involved. But we're all involved, one way or another, Ned thinks.

They're landing now, and the king is taken into Cotton House to prepare. Ned watches him walk away, up the steps and through a plain, wooden door. What is he thinking? Is he sorry?

Ned takes his men through the rear approach into the Palace of Westminster. In the hall, they join the guards lining the walls. At the front, on a small raised platform, John Bradshaw, the lord president, sits on a scarlet chair, flanked by his two assistants. They wear their barristers' robes. Ned allows himself a small smile. Will has told him that Bradshaw's headgear is not really a hat but an iron helmet shaped as a hat and covered in black felt. He had it specially commissioned when he was catapulted out of the ranks of junior judges above more cowardly heads and into the raised scarlet chair.

A second red velvet chair awaits the king within the bar. The commissioners and barristers, all dressed in their black robes, cluster like ravens waiting to pick over the king's words.

The scarlet coats of Ned and the other New Model officers stand out in this place of dark wood and black cloth.

The clerk calls for silence and begins to read the Commons Act, which commissioned the court to try the king. He reaches the part that caused the ructions when the act was passed two weeks since.

‘The Commons of England assembled in Parliament declare that the people under God are the origin of all just power. They do likewise declare that the Commons of England assembled in Parliament, being chosen by and representing the people, have the supreme authority of this nation.'

It is no less shocking now it is familiar. Ned tries to think back to the days before the first war. We would never have even dreamed such thoughts – that the people are the origin of all power, not the king, and that Parliament can claim the divine authority once monopolized by the king. Were we fighting for this all along, but knew too little to articulate our cause? Or has our cause grown monstrous with each pint of blood spilled?

He imagines his father's reaction to the claim. ‘The fucking people! The lumpish, lead-pated blockheads who mill about whining. And they are the source of just power?' Ned can picture his father's face growing puce, the invective soaring. He almost laughs, then remembers where he is.

The clerk is calling out the names of the commissioners, the men who have convened this court. As each man is called, he is to stand and answer to his name.

The clerk sonorously calls out: ‘Sir Thomas Fairfax.'

Silence. Then from the gallery a woman's voice shouts: ‘He had more wit than to be here!'

The ravens crane their necks around, eyes swivelling. A woman is bustled out, and there is a rustling of feathers as word of her identity spreads: Lady Fairfax herself.

Ned is glad that he does not have to police the great and the good that were allowed into the gallery. Manhandling aristocratic ladies is not for him, although Lucy would like the tale. Perhaps he will stretch the truth and tell her it was him gripping Lady Fairfax's arms. What harm?

The other commissioners stand and answer to their names. Henry Ireton, Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Pride… Most are filled with conviction. Now they are here, the job must be done. Others are more tremulous, as if the awfulness of their undertaking is only just becoming clear. Their eyes flit to the door, their legs twitch with the urge to flee.

The king is late, and the ravens mutter among themselves. Ned sees Will, deep in a book, and feels a sudden rush of affection for his friend. He looks just as he did at Oxford, engrossed in an almanac of stars. The other lawyers meld into one. It takes a familiar face to rise above a uniform.

Suddenly, here he is. The king. He looks more as Ned would expect now, in this setting. He is imperious, haughty. He sweeps into the court. All Ned can see is his arrogance, not his bravery. He is dressed in black, with a collar of brilliant white lace. A diamond-studded silver star holds his cloak. He walks to his seat and sits, not deigning to look to the right or to the left of him. He keeps on his tall, broad-brimmed hat.

Suddenly he stands again and slowly turns. He looks at the soldiers guarding the hall. He looks into the enclosures at the back, brimful of curious spectators, and the gallery where the privileged few sit. He looks at them all, and Ned wonders if he is the only one who quails at the king's stare. The people's claim seems hollow, hopelessly brash. This is the Lord's anointed one. What are we doing here?

There is a shuffling of papers. Ned does not want to look anyone in the face, so he finds a point on the wall opposite to stare at and fixes his gaze on it.

There is a frightened ripple of conversation in response to the king's challenge. The court crier calls for silence. Into the silence, John Bradshaw, the lord president, speaks.

I bet he's practised this a thousand times, thinks Ned. I'll bet he pulls his best judge face at the mirror. We're all boys here, playing a game.

‘Charles Stuart, King of England; the Commons of England assembled in Parliament, being deeply sensible of the calamities that have been brought upon this nation (which is fixed upon you as the principal author of it), have resolved to make inquisition for blood, and according to that debt and duty they owe to Justice, to God, the Kingdom and themselves, and according to that fundamental power that rests in themselves, they have resolved to bring you to trial and judgement.'

John Cooke stands and unrolls a parchment containing the charge.

Suddenly the king speaks. ‘Hold,' he says.

Cooke ignores him and continues to unravel the document.

‘Hold.'

Cooke resolutely refuses to look at the king. There is a strong silence in the hall, a universal holding of breath.

‘Hold.' The king reaches out with his silver-tipped cane and raps Cooke on the shoulder. Once, twice. At the third blow, just as the king is saying ‘Hold!', the silver ball at the end of his cane falls off and clatters to the floor.

From Ned's vantage point he can see it rolling to a point on the floor between the king and the lawyer. For a pause as long as a century, the two men eye each other. Ned cranes forward to see, and has the sense that the entire crowd is doing the same. Necks are stretched, and toes are stood on, all the ravens and ghouls and soldiers leaning forward to where the king and Cooke stand immobile, watching each other. Cooke does not bend. And the king, to astonished murmurs, bends his knee. He stoops, the king of England, Scotland and Ireland, in front of John Cooke, the farmer's son, and he picks up his own silver bauble.

At Hen's house, they snatch news of the trial where they can. Patience, Will's sister, is staying with them. Lucy is there too, waiting until after the trial to set up home with Ned. Since Ned was commissioned to guard the king, Lucy has puffed up like a bullfrog. Every sentence she utters that winter begins with: ‘His Majesty told my husband . . .'