Act of Oblivion, page 29
‘Then perhaps a hundred or so in all.’ He collapsed the telescope. ‘What would you do in their place?’
‘If I was going by the book? I’d start with the town. Post sentries on the roads to stop anyone entering or leaving while every house is searched. Then I’d move out into the country.’
‘And as you’re not a dull fellow?’
‘I’d do it the other way round. Post sentries to seal the town but begin with the country, hope to drive us towards New Haven.’
‘So what should we expect them to do?’
‘We should obey the first rule of warfare – assume that your enemy’s not stupid.’
They spent the rest of that day and the whole of the next morning clearing their camp – filling in the latrine, replacing their tools in the hole Ned had dug three years earlier, burying their bags and food and logs, covering the traces of their fire – so that by the time they had finished, there was no evidence of their presence except the marks Will had scratched on the rocks to record the passage of the days during their first summer: there was nothing they could do to erase those. Then they walked into the nearby woods and used Sperry’s old rope to climb a massive oak, its lower branches wide and straight enough for them to each lie full-length, head to toe. They kept their swords and pistols with them in case it came to a fight.
Showers overnight soaked them to the skin. By morning, Ned’s teeth were chattering with the beginnings of a chill.
In the afternoon, through his fever, he heard men’s voices. Lifting his head, he saw four redcoats emerging along the ridge from the west, carrying muskets with plug bayonets fitted to the ends of the barrels. They circled the great rocks, prodding at the ground and the nearby undergrowth. They halted. One of the soldiers climbed up to the highest boulder, took out a telescope and scanned the surrounding trees. His vantage point was higher than their hiding place. Ned pressed his cheek to the rough bark and clamped his jaw tight shut to stop it rattling. Someone shouted, ‘Captain, look here!’ Ned raised his head again and risked a sideways glance. The officer had put away his telescope and was clambering down to inspect something. It sounded as though they had discovered Will’s calendar. Their conversation became more animated. Ned listened to them removing their bayonets, priming their muskets. They advanced towards the trees and passed in single file directly beneath the oak.
The sounds faded. After a few minutes, Will whispered, ‘D’you suppose they’ve gone?’
‘I doubt it. There’s barely three hours of daylight left. They’ll most likely return the way they came so as not to get lost.’
‘Should we try to take them?’
It was tempting. But if four men went missing, the rest would surely come in numbers looking for them. ‘Only if they see us.’
A gunshot echoed through the woods. Instinctively Ned pressed his head down again. Two more followed in rapid succession. Shouts. The noise of bodies crashing through the undergrowth, then a long silence. Ned hardly dared to breathe. Finally he heard voices again – angry now, an argument. The soldiers passed back below them.
‘I’m telling you I saw something!’
‘Aye – a ghost.’
‘Last night’s rum, most likely!’
Someone laughed. The first man continued to protest. Their voices faded.
The colonels stayed in the tree till nightfall.
By this time, Ned was shaking so much it was hard for him to climb down. He went and lay on the ledge while Will dug up some skins to wrap him in, brought him a cup of water and some cold meat. They continued to speak in whispers and dared not light a fire in case the soldiers were camped nearby. O Lord, prayed Ned, forgive my weakness. I cannot endure it. Let me die tonight.
But the next morning, he was still alive.
For three days the fever continued. He was conscious of Will tending him as if he were a child. On the fourth morning, he woke without a temperature. Beside him, Will was snoring. He managed to stand, and walked unsteadily across to the trees to relieve himself. Afterwards, he felt much better – the wonderful euphoria that follows an illness. He took his telescope and carefully climbed to the top of the rocks. A milky mist was rising off the plain, but the sea was clear, lit by the sunrise.
The harbour channel was empty. The warships had gone.
That afternoon, they had their first friendly visitor for two months.
William Jones brought them provisions – freshly baked bread, cheese, ham, beer and tobacco. The Welshman seemed almost surprised to find them still alive. He apologised for leaving them alone so long. He said it had been judged too risky to venture out of the town with so many soldiers in the area. He sat on the lowest rock with the colonels, and while he watched them eat, he told them what had been happening.
Stuyvesant had surrendered the Dutch colony to the English expeditionary force without a fight. New Netherland no longer existed. New Amsterdam had been renamed in honour of the King’s brother. It was now New York. Once their military mission had been accomplished, the redcoats had searched for the colonels in New Haven, Milford, Guilford and the surrounding countryside. They had treated himself, Reverend Davenport, Mr Leete and the magistrates with considerable roughness, which suggested they had come armed with good intelligence. But they had discovered nothing. Frustrated, they had set sail back to Boston the previous day.
‘Meanwhile, we have not been idle on your behalf. Funds have been raised among your friends in America. Mr Hooke has also sent money collected in London. A new refuge has been prepared for you both.’
Ned was smoking his pipe, savouring the taste. ‘This is for the winter?’
‘No. This is to be permanent at last.’
‘In a cellar? An outbuilding?’
‘No. In a house, with a family. Richard Sperry will return tomorrow with horses. He’ll guide you.’
‘Horses?’ Ned had assumed they would be returning on foot to New Haven. ‘Where are we to go?’
‘Hadley, Massachusetts.’
He glanced at Will, who shrugged. ‘We’ve not heard of it.’
‘Nobody has, that’s the beauty of it. Hadley’s a new community, eighty miles north of here on the Connecticut – the farthest point of English settlement in the whole of America. It’s all arranged. You are to lodge with the minister, John Russell, an old friend of Mr Davenport’s. There are only some fifty families in the entire place. No one will disturb you there. As far as the outside world is concerned . . .’ Jones smiled and opened his hands, as if releasing a bird at the end of a conjuring trick, ‘you will have ceased to exist.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
SPERRY CAME WITH the horses soon after dawn the next morning, and they left at once, taking as many of their possessions as they could carry, leaving the rest behind without bothering to conceal them. Whatever their fate, Ned promised himself, they would never return to the rocks.
They trekked through the burnt-out forest with handkerchiefs tied around their faces to protect them from the ash thrown up by the horses’ hooves. Here and there, curls of smoke rose from fires still burning underground. Yet it was amazing to see how many trees had survived. Already green shoots were beginning to spread across the blackened earth. Now they understood why so much of New England had the appearance of English parkland. By nightfall they had reached the Connecticut River.
The following day they pressed on northwards. In the clear late-autumn light, the forests were a profusion of reds and golds, interrupted occasionally by large patches of black, like holes burnt in a Turkish carpet. Occasionally they spotted the Indians’ camps in the distance. After a detour through the woods around Hartford to avoid being seen, they returned to the river at Windsor – the first time they had showed themselves in public for years. To see a dozen faces at once, gathered around the ferry station, was disconcerting. Beneath his coat, Ned kept his hand on the butt of his pistol. No one paid them any heed. Once the ferry had taken them across, they stuck to the path, with the river always on their left, and ended the day camped about five miles south of Springfield.
At sunset on the third day, they finally reached a sweeping bend in the Connecticut, in the crook of which nestled a tiny settlement. That, Sperry announced, must be Hadley, although he could not be certain: he had never been this far north before. He told them to wait out of sight while he went in search of Reverend Russell.
It was a beautiful spot. They could see that even in the gathering dusk – a meadow with pine trees, huge willows along the riverbank, a mountain forest beyond, a pair of eagles circling very high. But the very remoteness of it, and the silence, was haunting, melancholy. Ned studied the hamlet through his telescope. ‘Such a small place,’ he said. ‘They must live in fear of attack.’
‘So far from the rest of humanity,’ replied Will, ‘is it any wonder?’
An hour later, when it was almost dark, Sperry returned. ‘Mr Russell is ready to take you in. The town seems already asleep, so there’s no risk of being seen.’
‘What sort of a man is he?’ asked Ned.
‘A fine Christian gentleman, Colonel. You’ll like him.’
‘So I hope, if we’re to spend the rest of our lives with him.’ He meant it good-humouredly, but the words came out with a slightly desperate edge.
‘Only a year,’ corrected Will, ‘until 1666. And then we shall be saved.’
They remounted and followed Sperry along the track, across the meadow, towards the town.
There was just sufficient light to make out the shapes of the timber houses on either side of the wide grassy street. Each stood in its own fenced lot with a wide distance between them. They rode on for several minutes, past a dozen properties, a few with candles in the windows, until they came to a large house on a corner. Sperry dismounted and opened the gate. The colonels climbed down from their horses and led them by their reins into the yard, where a man with a lamp was waiting – tall and broad-shouldered, long-haired, in the prime of life. He shook their hands with a hard grip more like a soldier’s than a minister’s.
‘John Russell. Thanks be to God for your safe deliverance.’
On the night of their arrival, Reverend John Russell was thirty-eight. Born in Ipswich, England, and brought to Massachusetts when he was a child as part of the Great Migration of religious independents opposed to the policies of Charles I, he had been only the fourteenth student to graduate from Harvard. Like his friend and mentor Davenport, he had fallen out with the more moderate Puritans in New England, particularly on the issue of baptism for all infants whose parents desired it – a lack of strictness that he opposed – and had led his congregation out of Wethers-field, Connecticut, to form a new community in Massachusetts, far from the interference of the church authorities.
But here, Ned was glad to observe, his similarities to Davenport ended. He had four young sons: John, aged fourteen, born to Russell’s first wife, Mary (later killed like so many first wives by childbirth); and a further three boys by his second, Rebecca – Jonathan, nine, Samuel, four, and a baby, Eleazer, barely one year old and still being nursed by his mother. The household was completed by two black slaves in their twenties, Abraham and Martha, a married couple, bought at auction in Rhode Island and taught the tenets of the Christian faith. They slept in one of the outbuildings, their bondage briskly justified by their master on the grounds that the Bible condoned the taking of slaves from among the heathen: ‘I assure you, there would be many more slaves in England if they were as short of labour as we are.’ Russell had none of Davenport’s dreamy fanaticism. He could handle a gun, an axe, a hammer, a plough and a Bible with equal dexterity. He had built his house with his own hands and had modified it over the past month to accommodate his expected guests.
The main part of the dwelling, where the family had their chambers, was to the north. Added onto its south side was a newer wing, some forty feet long by twenty, with a hall and a parlour on the ground floor, positioned either side of a staircase and a large fireplace. As soon as they had unloaded their bags, Russell shepherded them up the stairs. On the upper floor he showed them two good-sized bedrooms, where candles had been lit. ‘These will be entirely for your own use,’ he told them. ‘And now look at this. I finished it last week.’
He opened a door onto a narrow connecting passage running behind the chimney between the two bedrooms. It exuded a smell of fresh paint and sawdust. Halfway along, he pulled up a couple of loose boards. He beckoned them to come and see, and shone his lamp over a ladder leading down into the darkness. ‘There’s a small chamber hidden behind the chimney on the ground floor. If anyone comes looking for you, you can conceal yourselves there.’
‘Most ingenious,’ said Ned. That is the hole where I shall crawl to die, he thought.
After Russell had withdrawn for the night, promising to introduce them to the rest of the household in the morning – ‘You may rely on them to keep your presence secret’ – the two colonels sat on one of the beds.
Will said, ‘He is truly a man of God. One can sense it.’
‘He is,’ replied Ned wearily, ‘no doubt.’
‘Then what could be more perfect? We have shelter, food, company, space, a hiding place, a room each. We even have windows.’ ‘That is true.’
‘And yet you are not content?’
Content? Ned wanted to cry aloud. How can we be content? We are at the very edge of civilisation! Do you not understand? This is the end of our wandering. We shall never see England again. He longed for his house in Whitehall, for Katherine and his sister, Jane, for Frances and his grandchildren, for the noise of King Street, for his friends and comrades, for Cromwell and the army, for his old life at the centre of events. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I am just very tired.’
It was agreed that they would keep to their rooms and take their meals separately from the rest of the household to minimise their contact with the children and avoid any questions about their identities and the reasons for their presence. At dusk they were permitted to go out into the Russells’ eight-acre lot for exercise, providing they took care not to be seen. But the houses were so widely spaced, and with winter coming on there were so few people lingering outdoors, there was little danger of that. The first snow fell in November, the wind sweeping down off the mountain and across the freezing river, and Ned was sure he had never known such cold.
The only other person in Hadley let in on the secret of their presence was the town’s magistrate, the deacon of the church and Russell’s effective deputy, Peter Tilton. He was a Warwickshire man originally, a few years older than Russell, quieter but of a similar stamp. He came over to the house twice a week, on the Sabbath and on a Thursday, to pray with the colonels and study the Bible.
At the beginning, they slept a lot, recovering from their exhaustion. In December, Will asked to be given useful employment, and was set to work chopping firewood in the barn, releasing Abraham to work in the fields. Both Ned and Will found the notion of slavery unchristian – for every verse in the Bible that was supposed to justify it, Will could cite two or three that said the opposite – and shortly afterwards, so that Abraham could come in again from the cold, he volunteered to go back to his old trade of salting meat. There was no general store in Hadley, nor even yet a meeting house. Families bartered goods with one another: cloth for firewood, firewood for meat, meat for corn . . . If anyone was curious as to why the Russells suddenly had a surplus of salted pork, it was never mentioned. The priority in winter in that remote spot was simply to stay alive.
Ned spent the days huddled close to his fire, a blanket over his knees, a tray on his lap upon which rested the manuscript of his memoir. He had nothing to do except write, and he had a premonition that not much time remained to him. Yet for hours that winter he simply stared at the burning logs, sometimes listening to the Russell boys throwing snowballs in the yard. Fighting the Civil War came more readily to his temperament than describing it. But surely if he had found the courage for the one, he must be able to summon the resolution for the other? He glanced at the window, the snow piling on the sill, and thought about those terrible dragging winters of the mid forties, when victory seemed forever to elude them. How could he explain it all to Frances – the steps that had led inexorably to the King’s execution and the destruction of their lives together? Finally his pen began to move again.
In the winter of 1646–7, General Cromwell was afflicted by a fever so severe it was thought likely to prove fatal. He told me afterwards that he gladly received the sentence of death, that he might thereby learn to trust in the Lord, for all things of the flesh are lighter than vanity.
That spring, I was with the army, encamped at Saffron Walden, when news arrived that Parliament had voted to disband half the regiments. My men, unpaid for many months and suspecting their cause was about to be betrayed, raised a petition of grievances. Every regiment felt likewise, and a great meeting of their delegates was held in St Mary’s church to which General Cromwell and other army leaders came to hear the men’s complaints.
He stopped. It was in the crowded pews at Saffron Walden that he had first set eyes on Will, then a captain in Colonel Pride’s regiment of foot. He had been among the most militant of the protesters, mingling demands for the impeachment of their opponents in Parliament with apocalyptic descriptions of God appearing to him in a dream, demanding not negotiations but the destruction of the King. Ned could hear him now, chopping wood in the outhouse. How fortunate the man who never knew doubt.
After hearing the views of the army in St Mary’s, and promising his support for their demands, General Cromwell returned to London. At the end of May he invited me to a small private meeting at his home in Drury Lane. The King was living under Parliamentary supervision at Holdenby House in Northamptonshire. Fearful that they might reach an agreement with him and use it as a further pretext for disbanding the regiments, General Cromwell proposed that the army should take His Majesty into its own custody.
Who had been present? Ireton, certainly, by now married to Cromwell’s daughter, Bridget. The preacher Hugh Peter. John Thurloe, Oliver’s secretary. Perhaps half a dozen more officers were praying for guidance in the next-door room. He remembered Betty Cromwell coming in and out with plates of food and jugs of beer. Pipes being smoked. Mutinous, dangerous talk.
‘If I was going by the book? I’d start with the town. Post sentries on the roads to stop anyone entering or leaving while every house is searched. Then I’d move out into the country.’
‘And as you’re not a dull fellow?’
‘I’d do it the other way round. Post sentries to seal the town but begin with the country, hope to drive us towards New Haven.’
‘So what should we expect them to do?’
‘We should obey the first rule of warfare – assume that your enemy’s not stupid.’
They spent the rest of that day and the whole of the next morning clearing their camp – filling in the latrine, replacing their tools in the hole Ned had dug three years earlier, burying their bags and food and logs, covering the traces of their fire – so that by the time they had finished, there was no evidence of their presence except the marks Will had scratched on the rocks to record the passage of the days during their first summer: there was nothing they could do to erase those. Then they walked into the nearby woods and used Sperry’s old rope to climb a massive oak, its lower branches wide and straight enough for them to each lie full-length, head to toe. They kept their swords and pistols with them in case it came to a fight.
Showers overnight soaked them to the skin. By morning, Ned’s teeth were chattering with the beginnings of a chill.
In the afternoon, through his fever, he heard men’s voices. Lifting his head, he saw four redcoats emerging along the ridge from the west, carrying muskets with plug bayonets fitted to the ends of the barrels. They circled the great rocks, prodding at the ground and the nearby undergrowth. They halted. One of the soldiers climbed up to the highest boulder, took out a telescope and scanned the surrounding trees. His vantage point was higher than their hiding place. Ned pressed his cheek to the rough bark and clamped his jaw tight shut to stop it rattling. Someone shouted, ‘Captain, look here!’ Ned raised his head again and risked a sideways glance. The officer had put away his telescope and was clambering down to inspect something. It sounded as though they had discovered Will’s calendar. Their conversation became more animated. Ned listened to them removing their bayonets, priming their muskets. They advanced towards the trees and passed in single file directly beneath the oak.
The sounds faded. After a few minutes, Will whispered, ‘D’you suppose they’ve gone?’
‘I doubt it. There’s barely three hours of daylight left. They’ll most likely return the way they came so as not to get lost.’
‘Should we try to take them?’
It was tempting. But if four men went missing, the rest would surely come in numbers looking for them. ‘Only if they see us.’
A gunshot echoed through the woods. Instinctively Ned pressed his head down again. Two more followed in rapid succession. Shouts. The noise of bodies crashing through the undergrowth, then a long silence. Ned hardly dared to breathe. Finally he heard voices again – angry now, an argument. The soldiers passed back below them.
‘I’m telling you I saw something!’
‘Aye – a ghost.’
‘Last night’s rum, most likely!’
Someone laughed. The first man continued to protest. Their voices faded.
The colonels stayed in the tree till nightfall.
By this time, Ned was shaking so much it was hard for him to climb down. He went and lay on the ledge while Will dug up some skins to wrap him in, brought him a cup of water and some cold meat. They continued to speak in whispers and dared not light a fire in case the soldiers were camped nearby. O Lord, prayed Ned, forgive my weakness. I cannot endure it. Let me die tonight.
But the next morning, he was still alive.
For three days the fever continued. He was conscious of Will tending him as if he were a child. On the fourth morning, he woke without a temperature. Beside him, Will was snoring. He managed to stand, and walked unsteadily across to the trees to relieve himself. Afterwards, he felt much better – the wonderful euphoria that follows an illness. He took his telescope and carefully climbed to the top of the rocks. A milky mist was rising off the plain, but the sea was clear, lit by the sunrise.
The harbour channel was empty. The warships had gone.
That afternoon, they had their first friendly visitor for two months.
William Jones brought them provisions – freshly baked bread, cheese, ham, beer and tobacco. The Welshman seemed almost surprised to find them still alive. He apologised for leaving them alone so long. He said it had been judged too risky to venture out of the town with so many soldiers in the area. He sat on the lowest rock with the colonels, and while he watched them eat, he told them what had been happening.
Stuyvesant had surrendered the Dutch colony to the English expeditionary force without a fight. New Netherland no longer existed. New Amsterdam had been renamed in honour of the King’s brother. It was now New York. Once their military mission had been accomplished, the redcoats had searched for the colonels in New Haven, Milford, Guilford and the surrounding countryside. They had treated himself, Reverend Davenport, Mr Leete and the magistrates with considerable roughness, which suggested they had come armed with good intelligence. But they had discovered nothing. Frustrated, they had set sail back to Boston the previous day.
‘Meanwhile, we have not been idle on your behalf. Funds have been raised among your friends in America. Mr Hooke has also sent money collected in London. A new refuge has been prepared for you both.’
Ned was smoking his pipe, savouring the taste. ‘This is for the winter?’
‘No. This is to be permanent at last.’
‘In a cellar? An outbuilding?’
‘No. In a house, with a family. Richard Sperry will return tomorrow with horses. He’ll guide you.’
‘Horses?’ Ned had assumed they would be returning on foot to New Haven. ‘Where are we to go?’
‘Hadley, Massachusetts.’
He glanced at Will, who shrugged. ‘We’ve not heard of it.’
‘Nobody has, that’s the beauty of it. Hadley’s a new community, eighty miles north of here on the Connecticut – the farthest point of English settlement in the whole of America. It’s all arranged. You are to lodge with the minister, John Russell, an old friend of Mr Davenport’s. There are only some fifty families in the entire place. No one will disturb you there. As far as the outside world is concerned . . .’ Jones smiled and opened his hands, as if releasing a bird at the end of a conjuring trick, ‘you will have ceased to exist.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
SPERRY CAME WITH the horses soon after dawn the next morning, and they left at once, taking as many of their possessions as they could carry, leaving the rest behind without bothering to conceal them. Whatever their fate, Ned promised himself, they would never return to the rocks.
They trekked through the burnt-out forest with handkerchiefs tied around their faces to protect them from the ash thrown up by the horses’ hooves. Here and there, curls of smoke rose from fires still burning underground. Yet it was amazing to see how many trees had survived. Already green shoots were beginning to spread across the blackened earth. Now they understood why so much of New England had the appearance of English parkland. By nightfall they had reached the Connecticut River.
The following day they pressed on northwards. In the clear late-autumn light, the forests were a profusion of reds and golds, interrupted occasionally by large patches of black, like holes burnt in a Turkish carpet. Occasionally they spotted the Indians’ camps in the distance. After a detour through the woods around Hartford to avoid being seen, they returned to the river at Windsor – the first time they had showed themselves in public for years. To see a dozen faces at once, gathered around the ferry station, was disconcerting. Beneath his coat, Ned kept his hand on the butt of his pistol. No one paid them any heed. Once the ferry had taken them across, they stuck to the path, with the river always on their left, and ended the day camped about five miles south of Springfield.
At sunset on the third day, they finally reached a sweeping bend in the Connecticut, in the crook of which nestled a tiny settlement. That, Sperry announced, must be Hadley, although he could not be certain: he had never been this far north before. He told them to wait out of sight while he went in search of Reverend Russell.
It was a beautiful spot. They could see that even in the gathering dusk – a meadow with pine trees, huge willows along the riverbank, a mountain forest beyond, a pair of eagles circling very high. But the very remoteness of it, and the silence, was haunting, melancholy. Ned studied the hamlet through his telescope. ‘Such a small place,’ he said. ‘They must live in fear of attack.’
‘So far from the rest of humanity,’ replied Will, ‘is it any wonder?’
An hour later, when it was almost dark, Sperry returned. ‘Mr Russell is ready to take you in. The town seems already asleep, so there’s no risk of being seen.’
‘What sort of a man is he?’ asked Ned.
‘A fine Christian gentleman, Colonel. You’ll like him.’
‘So I hope, if we’re to spend the rest of our lives with him.’ He meant it good-humouredly, but the words came out with a slightly desperate edge.
‘Only a year,’ corrected Will, ‘until 1666. And then we shall be saved.’
They remounted and followed Sperry along the track, across the meadow, towards the town.
There was just sufficient light to make out the shapes of the timber houses on either side of the wide grassy street. Each stood in its own fenced lot with a wide distance between them. They rode on for several minutes, past a dozen properties, a few with candles in the windows, until they came to a large house on a corner. Sperry dismounted and opened the gate. The colonels climbed down from their horses and led them by their reins into the yard, where a man with a lamp was waiting – tall and broad-shouldered, long-haired, in the prime of life. He shook their hands with a hard grip more like a soldier’s than a minister’s.
‘John Russell. Thanks be to God for your safe deliverance.’
On the night of their arrival, Reverend John Russell was thirty-eight. Born in Ipswich, England, and brought to Massachusetts when he was a child as part of the Great Migration of religious independents opposed to the policies of Charles I, he had been only the fourteenth student to graduate from Harvard. Like his friend and mentor Davenport, he had fallen out with the more moderate Puritans in New England, particularly on the issue of baptism for all infants whose parents desired it – a lack of strictness that he opposed – and had led his congregation out of Wethers-field, Connecticut, to form a new community in Massachusetts, far from the interference of the church authorities.
But here, Ned was glad to observe, his similarities to Davenport ended. He had four young sons: John, aged fourteen, born to Russell’s first wife, Mary (later killed like so many first wives by childbirth); and a further three boys by his second, Rebecca – Jonathan, nine, Samuel, four, and a baby, Eleazer, barely one year old and still being nursed by his mother. The household was completed by two black slaves in their twenties, Abraham and Martha, a married couple, bought at auction in Rhode Island and taught the tenets of the Christian faith. They slept in one of the outbuildings, their bondage briskly justified by their master on the grounds that the Bible condoned the taking of slaves from among the heathen: ‘I assure you, there would be many more slaves in England if they were as short of labour as we are.’ Russell had none of Davenport’s dreamy fanaticism. He could handle a gun, an axe, a hammer, a plough and a Bible with equal dexterity. He had built his house with his own hands and had modified it over the past month to accommodate his expected guests.
The main part of the dwelling, where the family had their chambers, was to the north. Added onto its south side was a newer wing, some forty feet long by twenty, with a hall and a parlour on the ground floor, positioned either side of a staircase and a large fireplace. As soon as they had unloaded their bags, Russell shepherded them up the stairs. On the upper floor he showed them two good-sized bedrooms, where candles had been lit. ‘These will be entirely for your own use,’ he told them. ‘And now look at this. I finished it last week.’
He opened a door onto a narrow connecting passage running behind the chimney between the two bedrooms. It exuded a smell of fresh paint and sawdust. Halfway along, he pulled up a couple of loose boards. He beckoned them to come and see, and shone his lamp over a ladder leading down into the darkness. ‘There’s a small chamber hidden behind the chimney on the ground floor. If anyone comes looking for you, you can conceal yourselves there.’
‘Most ingenious,’ said Ned. That is the hole where I shall crawl to die, he thought.
After Russell had withdrawn for the night, promising to introduce them to the rest of the household in the morning – ‘You may rely on them to keep your presence secret’ – the two colonels sat on one of the beds.
Will said, ‘He is truly a man of God. One can sense it.’
‘He is,’ replied Ned wearily, ‘no doubt.’
‘Then what could be more perfect? We have shelter, food, company, space, a hiding place, a room each. We even have windows.’ ‘That is true.’
‘And yet you are not content?’
Content? Ned wanted to cry aloud. How can we be content? We are at the very edge of civilisation! Do you not understand? This is the end of our wandering. We shall never see England again. He longed for his house in Whitehall, for Katherine and his sister, Jane, for Frances and his grandchildren, for the noise of King Street, for his friends and comrades, for Cromwell and the army, for his old life at the centre of events. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I am just very tired.’
It was agreed that they would keep to their rooms and take their meals separately from the rest of the household to minimise their contact with the children and avoid any questions about their identities and the reasons for their presence. At dusk they were permitted to go out into the Russells’ eight-acre lot for exercise, providing they took care not to be seen. But the houses were so widely spaced, and with winter coming on there were so few people lingering outdoors, there was little danger of that. The first snow fell in November, the wind sweeping down off the mountain and across the freezing river, and Ned was sure he had never known such cold.
The only other person in Hadley let in on the secret of their presence was the town’s magistrate, the deacon of the church and Russell’s effective deputy, Peter Tilton. He was a Warwickshire man originally, a few years older than Russell, quieter but of a similar stamp. He came over to the house twice a week, on the Sabbath and on a Thursday, to pray with the colonels and study the Bible.
At the beginning, they slept a lot, recovering from their exhaustion. In December, Will asked to be given useful employment, and was set to work chopping firewood in the barn, releasing Abraham to work in the fields. Both Ned and Will found the notion of slavery unchristian – for every verse in the Bible that was supposed to justify it, Will could cite two or three that said the opposite – and shortly afterwards, so that Abraham could come in again from the cold, he volunteered to go back to his old trade of salting meat. There was no general store in Hadley, nor even yet a meeting house. Families bartered goods with one another: cloth for firewood, firewood for meat, meat for corn . . . If anyone was curious as to why the Russells suddenly had a surplus of salted pork, it was never mentioned. The priority in winter in that remote spot was simply to stay alive.
Ned spent the days huddled close to his fire, a blanket over his knees, a tray on his lap upon which rested the manuscript of his memoir. He had nothing to do except write, and he had a premonition that not much time remained to him. Yet for hours that winter he simply stared at the burning logs, sometimes listening to the Russell boys throwing snowballs in the yard. Fighting the Civil War came more readily to his temperament than describing it. But surely if he had found the courage for the one, he must be able to summon the resolution for the other? He glanced at the window, the snow piling on the sill, and thought about those terrible dragging winters of the mid forties, when victory seemed forever to elude them. How could he explain it all to Frances – the steps that had led inexorably to the King’s execution and the destruction of their lives together? Finally his pen began to move again.
In the winter of 1646–7, General Cromwell was afflicted by a fever so severe it was thought likely to prove fatal. He told me afterwards that he gladly received the sentence of death, that he might thereby learn to trust in the Lord, for all things of the flesh are lighter than vanity.
That spring, I was with the army, encamped at Saffron Walden, when news arrived that Parliament had voted to disband half the regiments. My men, unpaid for many months and suspecting their cause was about to be betrayed, raised a petition of grievances. Every regiment felt likewise, and a great meeting of their delegates was held in St Mary’s church to which General Cromwell and other army leaders came to hear the men’s complaints.
He stopped. It was in the crowded pews at Saffron Walden that he had first set eyes on Will, then a captain in Colonel Pride’s regiment of foot. He had been among the most militant of the protesters, mingling demands for the impeachment of their opponents in Parliament with apocalyptic descriptions of God appearing to him in a dream, demanding not negotiations but the destruction of the King. Ned could hear him now, chopping wood in the outhouse. How fortunate the man who never knew doubt.
After hearing the views of the army in St Mary’s, and promising his support for their demands, General Cromwell returned to London. At the end of May he invited me to a small private meeting at his home in Drury Lane. The King was living under Parliamentary supervision at Holdenby House in Northamptonshire. Fearful that they might reach an agreement with him and use it as a further pretext for disbanding the regiments, General Cromwell proposed that the army should take His Majesty into its own custody.
Who had been present? Ireton, certainly, by now married to Cromwell’s daughter, Bridget. The preacher Hugh Peter. John Thurloe, Oliver’s secretary. Perhaps half a dozen more officers were praying for guidance in the next-door room. He remembered Betty Cromwell coming in and out with plates of food and jugs of beer. Pipes being smoked. Mutinous, dangerous talk.
