Act of Oblivion, page 1
Map
Dedication
To Gill
Contents
Cover
Map
Title Page
Dedication
Dramatis Personae
Part One: HUNT: 1660
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Part Two: CHASE: 1661
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Part Three: HIDE: 1662
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Part Four: KILL: 1674
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Robert Harris
Copyright
About the Publisher
Dramatis Personae
The regicides
Colonel Edward Whalley
Colonel William Goffe
In Massachusetts
Daniel Gookin a settler in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Mary Gookin Daniel Gookin’s wife
Mary, Elizabeth, Daniel, Samuel, Nathaniel the Gookins’ children
John Endecott governor of Massachusetts
Jonathan Mitchell Cambridge minister
John Norton minister of the Boston First Church
Captain Thomas Breedon Boston merchant, shipowner, Royalist
Thomas Kellond shipowner, Royalist
Captain Thomas Kirke Royalist
John Chapin Nayler’s guide
John Stewart, William Mackwater, Niven Agnew, John Ross Scotsmen, members of Nayler’s hunting party
John Dixwell regicide
In New Haven
Reverend John Davenport minister and co-founder of New Haven
Nicholas Street assistant minister and headteacher in New Haven
William Jones resident of New Haven
Hannah Jones William Jones’s wife
William Leete governor of New Haven
Dennis Crampton resident of New Haven
Richard Sperry farmer
In Connecticut
John Winthrop governor of Connecticut
Simon Lobdell guide
Micah Tomkins general store owner in Milford
Captain Thomas Bull Puritan in Hartford
John Russell minister in Hadley
In London
Richard Nayler clerk to the Privy Council
Katherine Whalley Edward Whalley’s wife
Frances Goffe William Goffe’s wife, Edward Whalley’s daughter
Frankie, Betty, Nan, Judith, Richard the Goffes’ children
Reverend William Hooke Edward Whalley’s brother-in-law
Jane Hooke William Hooke’s wife, Edward Whalley’s sister
Colonel Hacker former commander of the troops guarding King Charles I
Isabelle Hacker Colonel Hacker’s wife
Sir Edward Hyde (later Earl of Clarendon) Lord Chancellor
Sir William Morice Secretary of State
Sir Arthur Annesley, Sir Anthony Ashley-Cooper Privy Councillors
Barbara Palmer (later Lady Castlemaine) Charles II’s mistress
Samuel Nokes Nayler’s secretary
Duke of York King Charles II’s younger brother
Samuel Wilson merchant
In Europe
Sir George Downing His Majesty’s ambassador at The Hague
Sir John Barkstead, John Dixwell, Colonel John Okey, Miles Corbet, Edmund Ludlow signatories of the King’s death warrant
James Fitz Edmond Cotter, Miles Crowley, John Rierdan Irish Royalist officers
Sir John Lisle lawyer who managed King Charles I’s trial
In the Civil War
Oliver Cromwell Edward Whalley’s cousin
Henry Ireton Cromwell’s son-in-law
General Fairfax Parliamentary commander
Cornet George Joyce soldier who arrested the King
John Bradshaw president of the court at Charles I’s trial
John Cooke prosecuting attorney at Charles I’s trial
Thomas Harrison signatory of the King’s death warrant
Part One
Hunt
1660
Chapter One
IF YOU HAD set out in the summer of 1660 to travel the four miles from Boston to Cambridge, Massachusetts, the first house you would have come to after crossing the Charles River would have been the Gookins’. It stood beside the road on the southern edge of the small settlement, just past the creek, midway across the marshy land between the river and Harvard College – a confident, two-storey timbered property in its own fenced lot with an attic in its steep roof commanding a clear view of the Charles. That year, the colony was building its first bridge across the river. Thick wooden piles were being driven into the mud close to the ramp where the ferryboat ran. The sound of hammering and sawing and the shouts of the workmen drifted up to the house on the drowsy midsummer air.
On this particular day – Friday 27 July – the front door was flung wide open, and a childish sign reading Welcome Home had been nailed to the gatepost. A passing student had reported that a ship from London, the Prudent Mary, had dropped anchor that morning between Boston and Charlestown. Among her passengers was believed to be Mr Daniel Gookin, the master of the property, returning to America after an absence of two years.
The house, spotless enough to begin with, had been quickly swept and tidied, the children scrubbed and forced into their best Sabbath clothes. By early afternoon, all five were waiting with Mrs Gookin in the parlour: Mary, who was twenty and named after her mother; Elizabeth, eighteen; and their three younger brothers, Daniel, ten, Samuel, eight, and four-year-old Nathaniel, who had no memory of his father and was fidgeting in his chair.
Mrs Gookin knew it was the prospect of the meeting, rather than being cooped up indoors, that was making him so fretful. She took him onto her lap, stroked his hair and spoke of the man who would soon walk through the door – of his goodness and kindness and his important work for the government in London, where he had been summoned by the Lord Protector himself. ‘He loves you, Nat, and God will make it so that you love him.’
‘What’s a Lord Protect Her?’
‘Protector, child. He was the ruler of England and America.’
‘Like a king?’
‘Yes, like a king, only better, because he was chosen by Parliament. But the Protector is dead now. That’s why your father is coming home.’
Nat’s eyes widened. ‘If the Protector is dead, then who will protect us?’
It was a question that had defeated the cleverest minds in England, and Mrs Gookin found herself stuck for an answer. She spoke over Nathaniel’s head to her daughter. ‘Mary, go to the attic, will you, and see if your father is coming.’
Mary ran upstairs, and returned a minute later to report that the ferryboat was still moored on the opposite bank and there was no sign of anyone on the road.
From then on, the children took it in turns every quarter-hour to climb up to the attic and be the lookout, each time descending with the same answer. An awful conviction began to grow in Mrs Gookin’s mind that her husband would not be coming after all – that his ship had not arrived, or that it had anchored but he was not on board. Perhaps he had never embarked from London, or some calamity had befallen him during the crossing. The shrouded body, the brief prayers, the corpse weighted at the neck sliding head-first down the gangplank into the waves – she could see it all. It had happened twice during their original voyage from England nearly twenty years before.
‘Go outside, boys, and wait for him there.’
Nat scrambled off her lap and all three darted for the door like cats released from a sack.
‘But don’t dirty your clothes . . .’
The girls remained in their places. Mary, who was most like her mother in her stolid good sense, and who had acted the man’s role in the household over the past two years, said, ‘I’m sure there’s no need to worry yourself, Mama. God will have watched over him.’
At which Elizabeth – prettier and always grumbling about her chores – burst out, ‘But it must be seven hours since his ship arrived, and it’s only an hour to Boston.’
‘Don’t criticise your father,’ said Mrs Gookin. ‘If he is delayed, he’ll have good reason.’
A few minutes later, Daniel called from outside, ‘Someone’s coming!’
They hurried out of the house, through the gate and onto the dried rutted mud of the road. Mrs Gookin squinted in the direction of the river. Her eyesight had worsened since her husband’s departure. All she could make out was the dark shape of the ferry, like a water beetle, halfway across the bright ribbon of water. The boys were shouting, ‘It’s a cart! It’s a cart! It’s Papa in a cart!’
They dashed down the road to meet it, Nat’s short legs pumping to keep up with his brothers.
‘Is it really him?’ asked Mrs Gookin, peering helplessly.
‘It’s him,’ said Elizabeth. ‘See – look – he’s waving.’
‘Oh, thank God.’ Mrs Gookin fell to her knees. ‘Thank God.’
‘Yes, it’s him,’ repeated Mary, shielding her eyes from the sun, before adding, in a puzzled voice, ‘but he has two men with him.’
In the immediate flurry of kisses and embraces, of tears and laughter, of children being tossed into the air and whirled around, the pair of strangers, who remained throughout politely seated in the back of the cart among the luggage, were at first ignored.
Daniel Gookin hoisted Nat up onto his shoulders, tucked Dan and Sam under either arm and ran with them around the yard, scattering the chickens, then turned his attention to the shrieking girls. Mary had forgotten how big her husband was, how handsome, how large a presence. She could not take her eyes off him.
Finally, Gookin set down the girls, placed his hand around her waist, whispered, ‘There are men here you must meet; do not be alarmed,’ and ushered her towards the cart. ‘Gentlemen, I fear I have plain forgot my manners. Allow me to present my wife, the true Prudent Mary – in flesh and blood at last.’
A pair of weather-beaten, ragged-bearded heads turned to examine her. Hats were lifted to reveal long, matted hair. They wore buff leather overcoats, caked with salt, and high-sided scuffed brown boots. As they stood, somewhat stiffly, the thick leather creaked and Mary caught a whiff of sea and sweat and mildew, as if they had been fished up from the bed of the Atlantic.
‘Mary,’ continued Gookin, ‘these are two good friends of mine, who shared the crossing with me – Colonel Edward Whalley, and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe.’
Whalley said, ‘Indeed it is a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Gookin.’
She forced a smile and glanced at her husband – two colonels? – but already he had withdrawn his hand and was moving to help the pair down from the cart. She noticed how deferential he was in their presence, and how when they put their feet to the ground after so many weeks at sea, both men swayed slightly, and laughed, and steadied one another. The children gawped.
Colonel Goffe, the younger one, said, ‘Let us give thanks for our deliverance.’ Beneath his beard he had a fine, keen, pious face; his voice carried a musical lilt. He held up his hands, palms flat, and cast his eyes to the heavens. The Gookin family quickly wrenched their fascinated gaze from him and lowered their heads. ‘We remember Psalm One Hundred and Seven. “O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters. These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.” Amen.’
‘Amen.’
‘And who do we have here?’ asked Colonel Whalley. He moved along the line of children, collecting their names. At the end, he pointed to each in turn. ‘Mary. Elizabeth. Daniel. Sam. Nathaniel. Very good. I am Ned, and this is Will.’
Nathaniel said, ‘Did you know the Lord Protect Her, Ned?’
‘I did, very well.’
‘He’s dead, you know.’
‘Hush,’ said Mrs Gookin.
‘Yes, Nathaniel, that he is,’ replied Ned sadly. ‘More’s the pity.’
There was a silence.
Mr Gookin clapped his hands. ‘Boys, fetch the colonels’ bags for them.’
Until that moment, Mary Gookin had nursed a hope that her husband had merely offered the men a ride. Now, as she watched them unload their luggage from the cart and hand it to her sons, she felt dismay. It was hardly the homecoming she had dreamed of – to feed and shelter two senior officers of the English army.
‘And where are we to put them, Daniel?’ She spoke quietly, so they could not hear, and took care not to look at him, the easier to keep her temper.
‘The boys can give up their beds and sleep downstairs.’
‘How long are they to stay?’
‘As long as it is necessary.’
‘What is that? A day? A month? A year?’
‘I cannot say.’
‘Why here? Are there no rooms to be had in Boston? Are colonels too poor to pay for their own beds?’
‘The governor believes Cambridge a safer lodging place than Boston.’
Safer . . .
‘You’ve consulted the governor about their accommodation?’
‘We’ve been with him half the day. He gave us dinner.’
So that was why his journey from Boston had taken him so long. She watched the boys struggling under the weight of the large bags, the two colonels walking behind them towards the house, talking to the girls. To her feelings of dismay and irritation was suddenly added an altogether sharper emotion. Fear.
‘And why,’ she began hesitantly, ‘why does the governor believe Cambridge is safer than Boston?’
‘Because Boston is full of rogues and royalists, whereas here they will be among the godly.’
‘They’re not visitors from England, then, so much as . . . fugitives?’ He made no answer. ‘From what is it they run?’
Gookin took a while to reply. By the time he spoke, the men had gone inside. He said quietly, ‘They killed the King.’
Chapter Two
IN ENGLAND, IT was almost nine in the evening, the sun just setting. Isabelle Hacker, her plain blue Quaker dress coated brown with dust after two days on the road, was riding into her home village of Stathern, Leicestershire.
Close behind her rode another figure. His constant proximity unnerved her. So did his silence. He had followed her all the way north from London. Even when they broke their journey for the night, he had barely directed a word at her. In his pocket she knew he carried a commission from the House of Lords issued three days earlier. He had shown it when he came to her door in London: Hereupon it is Ordered, That Colonel Hacker do forthwith send his Wife into the Country, to fetch the said Warrant; and that the Gentleman Usher attending this House do send a Man along with her for that Purpose.
He said, ‘I am that man.’
Mrs Hacker had agreed at once to accompany him to the country. She was ready to do anything to help her husband, at that moment held in the Tower on suspicion of treason, for which the punishment was a death of an almost unimaginable and protracted horror: to be hanged until the point of unconsciousness, cut down, revived, castrated, disembowelled – the entrails dragged out and burned in front of the living victim – then beheaded and his body cut into four quarters for public display. Unimaginable, yet she could not stop tormenting herself by picturing it. Almost the worst part was that he would leave this world in a welter of agony and at the end she would not even have a body to lay to rest.
She had said goodbye to her children and within the hour they had been on the road. By surreptitious observation, she guessed the man to be roughly forty – a few years younger than herself – and that he had suffered some wound or defect at birth that caused him to walk with a barely perceptible limp. His torso was broad, his legs short, his voice when he chose to use it oddly soft. He had told her his name was Richard Nayler. She gathered he was some kind of clerk to the Privy Council. He rode well. More than that she could not say.
The day had been hot, the evening still warm. A few villagers strolled in the lane or idled at their cottage gates. When they heard the clip of horses’ hooves, they swung around to stare then quickly looked away. Men who a month ago would have swept off their hats or touched their forelocks were now too afraid, or appalled, to acknowledge her existence. Isabelle Hacker, pious Quaker and lady of the manor though she might be, was also the wife of a revolutionary. She stared down at them with contempt.
Stathern Hall, the grandest house in the village, stood close to St Guthlac’s church. The ninth chime of the hour was just dying away as she turned off the road and passed through the open gate. In the weeks she had been away rallying support for the colonel, she saw weeds had taken hold in the vegetable garden. The grass around the orchard was a meadow. In the gathering dusk, the big house loomed dark and seemingly abandoned.
Her horse picked its way along the drive towards the front. She dismounted, tied the reins to the iron railing beside the entrance, and without glancing back at Mr Nayler, took her key from her pocket and unlocked the heavy door. She wanted to be done with this man as fast as possible.
