Act of Oblivion, page 17
It was noon by the time he reached the bridge over the Charles. He stopped halfway across, his eye caught by a long, narrow boat with six men hunched over their paddles, heading towards him from upriver. An Indian canoe. He recognised the description from Raleigh’s book – a vessel carved out of a single tree trunk. It flashed beneath him so rapidly he barely had a chance to register the bronzed, muscled figures – naked, as it seemed to him – and then they were fifty yards downriver, sped along by the current.
He transferred his gaze to the opposite bank, to the settlement of wooden houses dominated by a much grander building. That must be Harvard College, where they produced the stern young sectaries who spread their dour religion across New England. A strange country this, he thought, where two such conflicting races and philosophies, heathens and fanatics, existed side by side. What good could ever come of it?
He rode on to the end of the bridge, across low marshland divided by a creek, up the road towards the first house on the right, which Kirke had told him was the Gookins’. It had been his intention to walk his horse slowly past it, complete a circuit of the town and then return to Boston. But as he drew level, a well-built man in shirtsleeves and a leather jerkin came out of the barn carrying a bundle of hay and stopped to look at him. Their eyes met.
‘Are you lost, friend?’
Nayler drew up his horse. He could not resist the opportunity. ‘I’m looking for two acquaintances of mine, Mr Richardson and Mr Stephenson.’
‘There are none of those names here.’
‘You are Mr Gookin?’
‘I am, sir.’
‘Then you might know them better as Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe.’
Gookin shook his head. ‘Those two have long gone.’
‘How long ago?’
‘December, I believe.’
‘December? Yet that is a full six months after they were declared wanted men by Parliament.’
‘News from Parliament reaches us very slowly.’
‘In truth, were they not still here in February? I’m told there was a fight.’
‘There’s no proof that was them. Most probably it was vagrants sheltering in the barn. I know nothing more of the business.’
‘Vagrants armed with pistols? Come now, Mr Gookin – is it not an offence against your faith to lie?’
Gookin lifted his burden, smiled, and gestured with it towards Nayler. ‘You see I must get on. Good day to you.’
Nayler felt his anger rising. He tried to staunch it, but the condescension of that smile was infuriating. ‘You must give up where they are, sir, otherwise you too will be found guilty of treason by reason of harbouring them – and the penalty for that is not pretty, let me assure you.’
‘Who are you? You say you are acquainted with the colonels? How?’
‘From a Christmas Day some years ago. They’ll not remember me, but when you see them next, you may say that I have not forgotten them. And I shall find them.’
He had said too much. He pulled hard on the reins, turned his horse around and trotted back down the slope towards the river, cursing his short temper.
He locked himself away after that, sent the potboy out to buy him whatever the booksellers had to offer on the history of America – he returned with Maverick’s Brief History of New England, which proved to be most useful – and then set about writing the various letters he needed to begin his expedition. Between times he met Kellond and Kirke, followed the progress of their recruitment and provisioning, and authorised the settlement of various accounts. He also drafted a handbill to publicise the reward money on offer for the capture of the regicides ‘dead or alive’ – he liked that phrase: he asked for it to be set in a particularly large type – and had it taken to Stephen Daye, the colony’s printer, with an order for two hundred copies.
A little over a week later, on the morning of Tuesday 7 May, when all was at last in readiness, he donned his best suit of clothes, retrieved the royal mandate from beneath his bed, and set off to visit Governor Endecott. He stopped a passer-by and was told he would find him in the State House, the grand new public building close to the Boston First Church. The ground floor was an enclosed market crowded with stalls, thick with the smells of fresh fish, herbs and spices. Chickens squawked in a cage. A flight of wooden stairs led up to the chamber where the State Court met. At the top, a secretary asked him to give his name and business, to which Nayler replied that he had come from London and what he had to say was for the governor’s ears alone. The man went away and returned to say Mr Endecott would see him, but only briefly.
The room was large and airy, with high mullioned windows on all four sides that let in a good clear morning light. At the end of a long table, surrounded by papers, ink, pens, sealing wax and a lit candle, in his accustomed Elizabethan lace collar and black cap, sat Endecott.
Nayler removed his hat. ‘Good day to you, Governor.’ He bowed. ‘My name is Richard Nayler, clerk to His Majesty’s Privy Council, lately arrived from England on the Prince Harry, under instructions from the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State to present you with this mandate in the name of the King.’
He laid it on the table and took a step backwards.
Endecott poked the royal seal with a mittened forefinger. He was plainly discomfited. ‘Please be seated, Mr Nayler.’
‘Thank you, sir, but I am happy to stand.’
Endecott stared up at him, half blind. With his hollow, hairy cheeks and sucked-in toothless mouth, he might have been a hundred.
‘As you wish.’
He held the document very close to his eyes. ‘“To our trusty and well-beloved the present governor, or other magistrate or magistrates of our plantation in New England . . .”’ His head moved back and forth. ‘This concerns Colonel Whalley and Colonel Goffe?’ He peered more closely. ‘“Our will and pleasure is, and we do hereby expressly require and command you forthwith upon the receipt of these our letters, to cause both the said persons to be apprehended.” That is very princely language, sir. Very princely. But we have already set the matter in hand.’ Nayler watched impassively as the governor searched among his piles of papers until finally he pulled out the document he wanted. ‘I issued a warrant for their arrest two months ago.’ He pushed it across the table.
Nayler read the title. Minute of the Council of New England, directing the Secretary to issue a warrant to Edward Michelson to make diligent search for the apprehending of Whalley and Goffe. Boston, 1661, March 8.
He replaced it on the table and pushed it back. ‘May I ask, sir, what has been the effect of this warrant?’
‘As yet they have not been found.’
‘How many men have you sent out searching?’
‘I have sent messengers to all the towns in New England.’
‘Messengers? Such men are hardly to be caught by messengers.’ Nayler opened his case. ‘I have taken the liberty of preparing a new warrant, which may bring a little more urgency to the matter.’
He stepped forward and placed another document in front of the governor. Endecott’s hand hovered over it, as if it was dangerous even to touch it, but at length he picked it up.
This business with his eyes, thought Nayler. It’s all a trick. He can see as well as any man. But it buys him time.
He was starting to lose patience. ‘You will see it appoints two citizens of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Captain Kirke and Mr Kellond, to lead a search party. You know the gentlemen?’
‘I do know them, and I do not care for them.’
‘Well, I have interviewed them and found them suitable.’
‘You have interviewed them, sir? Pray, how long have you been in Boston? You say you arrived on the Prince Harry – that has been at anchor a week, at least.’
‘That is correct.’
‘And in all that time you have not done me the courtesy of announcing your presence?’
‘Read the warrant, Mr Endecott. It’s addressed to all the magistrates of New England. It will explain the position better than I.’
For a moment, he thought the governor was about to hand it back and order him to leave. Instead, after working his toothless jaw in irritation for a few moments, he began to read aloud again, in a tone of mounting anger and disbelief. ‘“To desire them to have thorough search made for Whalley and Goffe, and if found to bring them into the Massachusetts jurisdiction, impressing sufficient men well accoutred and horse to enable them to do so. To make diligent enquiry what Whalley and Goffe have been doing, and where they have been, so that the King may have a true account thereof. To give bills for their expenses, which will be discharged by the Treasurer. All military commanders, constables, and other officers and inhabitants, are to be aiding and assisting them, as they will answer for the contrary at their uttermost peril. In case Whalley and Goffe be gone into the Dutch jurisdiction, they are to deliver the letter and enclosure to the Governor there and request he will deliver them up . . .”’ He looked up. ‘You wrote this?’
‘I did, with the authority of the Privy Council.’
Endecott laid down the warrant and stared over Nayler’s shoulder. Eventually he muttered, ‘We shall obey, of course. But all this will take us time to organise.’
‘No more time is necessary. It is done.’
‘Done?’
‘We have the men, the horses, the supplies and the weapons. All that is required is your signature.’
‘And when do you propose to begin?’
‘Today. I mean to leave no time for word of our expedition to reach Whalley and Goffe ahead of us.’
‘And if I do not sign?’
‘Then we will go ahead in any case. I shall report back to London, and His Majesty will draw his own conclusions about the loyalty of this colony and its ruling officers.’ Nayler pulled out a pile of letters from his case. ‘All these will also require your seal and signature. Perhaps you’d care to summon your clerk?’ He smiled. ‘I think now I will take up your kind offer of a seat.’
Kellond and Kirke were sitting downstairs in the rooming house when he returned. Nayler patted his document case. ‘I have it all. The warrant signed and executed. Letters from Endecott to the governors of Connecticut, New Haven and Plymouth, enclosing a copy of the King’s mandate. They are ordered to assist us. He’s even signed a letter to Stuyvesant, director of New Netherland, requesting the cooperation of the Dutch.’ He laughed, he could not help it; the old man’s reluctance had been so comical. ‘He tells them all he “doubts not they will faithfully discharge their duty to His Majesty as is desired”. I swear it cost him blood to write it. Come, let’s not waste another moment.’
He fetched his money, sword and pistol from upstairs, paid Shadbricke half a sovereign to keep his room until he returned – how long he would be away he could not say – and walked with the others to the harbour.
By now it was mid afternoon. The hunting party had been waiting all day, along with their horses, arms and supplies, in a warehouse belonging to Kellond. As Nayler entered, the men were sprawled on bales of wool, playing dice. It was the first time he had met them. Kirke made the introductions, beginning with their guide, John Chapin – trim-bodied, sharp-faced, with jet-black hair and eyes: Nayler could see why he was rumoured to have some Indian blood. The four Scotsmen, all taken prisoner after the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, were in their early thirties: John Stewart, who had spent some years as a forced labourer in the iron foundry at Lynn until he had been purchased and set to work as a blacksmith in Springfield; William Mackwater, also from the Lynn ironworks; Niven Agnew, who had been sent to the sawmills in Maine, where he had lost two fingers of his left hand; and John Ross, who had laboured for nine years in the graphite mine near Sturbridge.
Nayler shook hands with each of them. He liked the look of their leanness, their sinewy muscled arms, and especially the hatred in their eyes. They were like a pack of hungry hounds. ‘So,’ he said, ‘are you men all eager for the chase?’
A ragged chorus of ‘Aye, sir.’
‘Good, because so am I.’
Never had he felt more alive. He could not stop laughing. He swung himself up onto his horse. Kirke pulled open the door. Chapin went first, then Kellond, Nayler and the Scotsmen. Kellond locked the warehouse behind them and spurred his mount to catch up. They clattered over the cobbles as people turned to watch, out of the harbour, up through the streets of Boston, and when they reached the open country, they turned westwards – my life tends ever westwards, thought Nayler – the sun in their faces, across the plain towards the dark line of the forest.
Chapter Seventeen
ONLY EIGHT PEOPLE knew the secret of the colonels’ return to New Haven: the three members of the Davenport family; the Davenports’ two servants; the assistant minister, Nicholas Street; William Jones, the son of the regicide; and Governor Leete.
Yet they had lost their peace of mind, and the first few days were worse even than winter in Cambridge, which at least had been quiet. Now, if they heard a distant gunshot, doubtless fired by some hunter in the woods, they imagined it to be the beginnings of a raid; the sound of more than one horse in the road had them reaching for their pistols. They stayed in their rooms most of the time, and for exercise walked up and down the passageway in their stockinged feet to be sure of not making a noise. Davenport invited them to browse the shelves in his study, which was on the same floor and full of improving religious tracts, but these were more to Will’s taste than Ned’s.
Because of Davenport’s pre-eminence in the colony, there were too many visitors in the habit of dropping by unannounced for them to risk venturing downstairs during daylight. The only time to which they could look forward was nightfall, especially the hours around midnight, when the town was asleep and it was safe to step out into the Davenports’ lot, feel the fresh air on their faces, inhale the smell of the springtime honeysuckle, and listen to the chaffing of the night birds and the constant rustling movement of the sea. But gradually the tediousness of their predicament began to weigh upon them more than its peril, and after the first week they became bolder. Sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, they risked hurrying across the road – it was precisely sixty feet wide, whether for some Biblical reason or not Ned didn’t dare enquire, in case he invited another of Davenport’s lectures – where they could walk through the minister’s large meadow to the shore and look at the lights of the lobster traps.
Their lives, without them being conscious of it, became semi-nocturnal: retiring to bed just before dawn and sleeping until noon, when their dinner was brought up to them.
There is nothing more calculated to expose a person’s true character than enforced proximity, and the more Ned saw of Davenport, the less he cared for him. The minister’s moods could veer three times in a day – sometimes in an hour – between brooding silence, manic high spirits, and tyrannical rage, his shouts resounding from one end of the mansion to the other. It was a necessary part of his duties to hand out punishments – Ned understood that: he had ordered his fair share of floggings in the army. But Davenport seemed to take a peculiar relish in passing judgement on offenders, imposing fines and imprisonment, confinement in the pillory, and whippings. Under Mosaic Law, which applied throughout the colony, the Sabbath began at sundown on Saturday and extended right the way through until dawn on Monday, during which time all work and travel – except to the meeting house – was forbidden. It was easy to break the law inadvertently, and there were plenty willing to inform on their neighbours. And if that was not sufficient, Davenport was also always on the lookout for witchcraft as a cause of illness or crop failure; twice women were brought to the house to be questioned.
At least once a week, Mr Street and Mr Jones would call on the colonels in the middle of the afternoon, often together, and the four men along with Davenport would pray in the study and discuss texts from the Scriptures. It was during one of these meetings that Ned became aware that the unpleasant smell that often permeated the house seemed to be emanating from Davenport himself. None of the others appeared to notice, so he merely took care to sit as far from the minister as possible, and to lean forward over his Bible, with his hand covering his nose and mouth, giving an appearance of intense concentration.
Increasingly his mind took refuge in the past. He would lie on his bed with some theological tome or book of sermons resting unread on his chest and relive the tumultuous episodes of his life, so vastly different to his present non-existence. The things he had seen! The battles and sieges, the feasts with the King at Hampton Court, and then His Majesty’s trial and execution, the eviction of Parliament at gunpoint, the splendour of the Lord Protector in Whitehall Palace and Hampton Court, Cromwell’s death . . .
It was while he was indulging in one of these waking dreams that it occurred to him that he might better pass the endless crawl of time by writing them down. But would that not be sinful vanity? Who cared about the life of Edward Whalley apart from Edward Whalley? A memoir should have some usefulness.
And then he was struck by an altogether better notion.
After turning it over in his mind for a while, he walked down the passage to Davenport’s study and knocked on the door. The room was empty. The desk, beneath the window, was the kind a schoolmaster might use. He raised the lid, took one of the sheets of paper upon which the minister composed his thunderous sermons, picked up a pen from the rack, dipped the nib in the inkwell, and wrote:
Some Memories of the Life of
His Highness, the Late Lord Protector,
Oliver Cromwell
by his cousin
Col. Edw. Whalley
That was as far as he got. He had scarcely lifted his pen from the paper to compose his thoughts when he sensed Oliver at his back, leaning over his shoulder, demanding to know what impertinence was this?
