Traitor's Field (21 page)

His gaze was out to sea again. The shadow said crossly, ‘He’s ruthless; he’s unprincipled.’

Shay considered the face and then the figure absently, as if looking for Cromwell through them. ‘Ruthless, yes. Of course. But in pursuit of his principles, I think; and that’s the danger. He sees further, he knows where he’s going, and he shows no scruple or sentiment in getting there.’ Hard eyes, and a dark smile. ‘I should like to meet this man.’

The colours and life of Astbury had shrunk away into hibernation. The stones of the house were dulled without the sun, and Rachel Astbury walked through deadened gardens, as if the first cold of winter had scorched every plant and left them as skeletons of ash. Even the greens that endured had somehow hardened and blackened: they crouched low, hung back against dark trunks, reflected no light.

In the frozen landscape there was only one movement: Jacob’s shoulders, rising and falling over a spade. Rachel moved towards him, as if to the last of life. Her exterior was all cold; she was trying to pull away from it.

She watched him a while: the flexing of the old sinews under the jacket; the steadiness.

‘It doesn’t seem possible that it can survive,’ she said. ‘That anything can ever be green again.’

He looked up, nodded respectfully. ‘Oh aye, miss.’ It was agreement and reassurance, and it was all she would get from Jacob. The ancient face nodded at her again, and returned to the spade.

‘Nature. . . kills herself.’

He looked up, and considered this. Then down again. ‘Knows what she’s doing.’

She waited, but there was no more. Just the frosty rasp of Jacob’s breathing, in the wilderness. She turned and walked towards the house, dreaming of a fire and trying not to feel her own body.

On 29th December in that year, the Army Council was visited by Elizabeth Poole of Abingdon, a woman known to speak prophecy rightly, a woman with God’s truth in her mouth.

The Army Council, hungry variously for enlightenment or for exculpation, welcomed her with sober respect. A woman, of course, had no place in politics, and certainly no voice. One had to beware false prophets, and the Council in its experience of the gravity and grimness of the world knew the manifold deceptions and flippancies of women. But God’s providence must be sought and welcomed wherever it may be found.

The Council had her sit on a simple chair, and stood around her, pressed close in their heavy uniforms and reverential glares. The room smelled of wet cloth, and men. 

Among them, Elizabeth Poole seemed insubstantial, almost transparent: thinner, paler, odourless. She wore grey linen, and its elusive folds and shadows inhabited a different spectrum to the tans and blues that circled her.

She confirmed that God was at work in and through the Army. She described a vision: a strong man, capable and careful, healing a frail body. The strong men looked at the frail woman in their middle, and knew that the Army could heal England.

Through the fogged window there was a burst of coarse argument from the riverbank, rough, unrestrained shouts and laughter. The soldiers ignored the distractions, stared harder at the fragile creature in front of them, that their concentration might harden into faith and open them more utterly to the divine.

Elizabeth Poole murmured the rightness of their proceeding against the delegitimate King, urged them politely to fight for the liberty that God had vouchsafed them, whispered of the great test in front of them, and blessed them with the trust of God and the nation.

Slowly, some nods, and murmurs of ‘Amen’.

Thomas Scot had the invidious habit, or so it seemed to Cromwell, of placing himself always at the very edge of a man’s vision. Never in front, never face to face. It made him perpetually a distraction, an irritation.

He was there now, a glimpse of complication, a promise of complaint. Cromwell turned his head to face him square, scowled, and then his eyes dropped again to the report.

[NALSON COLLECTION 24, BODLEIAN LIBRARY]

The mighty Cromwell nose twisted up in a big sniff of distaste, as at an acrid smell that would nonetheless not deter him from taking a full breath. He gripped the report in a slow paw, and thrust it over his shoulder towards St John, standing behind him.

‘How many Scottish armies am I to be obliged to fight?’ Scot’s face opened theatrically at the question, a show of wise wonder at the mysteries of life, as if Scottish armies were an unknowable emanation of divine caprice. Which, it was beginning to appear to Cromwell, might well be the case. ‘Must we inform the Parliament that this is to be a yearly phenomenon, an annual sacrifice, a celebration of harvest time?’

Oliver St John was smoothing out the crumpled corner of the report, stroking at it like a dove in his palm. ‘The politics of it are hardly surprising, and the strength of the words a reflection of the weakness of the real threat. There is no army.’

‘We cannot be sure. The border with Scotland is the broken door of our house, through which cold wind and pestilence will come unless the door be bolted or the pestilence purged.’

‘I would counsel haste.’ Thomas Scot’s thin cracked voice, and both heads turned to him.

Scot smiled weakly, as if embarrassed that his words had carried. ‘There is not yet an army, as Master St John wisely remarks, and there will not be one if we act quickly to remove that which would be its cause and its rallying-post – that is, Charles Stuart. But if we linger, we will permit the divisions and frailties of our weaker supporters to eat at our cause, and we will make such an army a certainty. Some preachers are speaking for the King already – for his character, and for the impossibility of trying him. The Court is dithering. I have reports’ – he laid his palm softly against his chest, as though the reports were kept there; perhaps they were – ‘of their qualms and quibbles. Downes, for example, and Love. There is a cancer of divers men, all inclined to find reasons to oppose us, and if they should have time and place to cohere. . .’ He let the threat hang, but then decided it too subtle. ‘If they should attract leadership. . . the leadership of General Fairfax, perhaps, who is of course much loved among our people, then we should scarce have an army of our own to oppose against what Scotland might throw at us.’

There were just three of them in the room, and in the moment it seemed a small and lonely place. ‘I would counsel haste.’

[SS C/S/49/7]

On 5th January the Army Council called back the prophesier Elizabeth Poole, to hear more of God’s intent. There was snow outside, and the heavy boots dropped slush on the floorboards, and the lattice windows fogged in the heat of the intent room.

Frail and bold, a divine sparrow among the profane herd of cattle, she confirmed their role as stewards of the nation.

She was more confident this time, looking around herself, making occasional darting contact with the glances of the big men. She reminded them that a steward must improve that which is in his care, but must not overreach his station. The King had betrayed his trust, and Parliament had betrayed their trust; the Army must not follow. From somewhere she produced a paper – a few less concentrated minds wondered at the workings of that whispering dress – and with it a clear instruction, which she would not weaken despite increasingly insistent and sceptical questions. The King might be tried, and convicted of breach of trust, but his person must not be harmed.

The soldiers shifted, uncomfortable in their heavy boots and coats, swapped glances, looked darkly at the glowing woman, looked away.