Act of Oblivion, page 4
Daniel bowed his head. ‘Blessed by thy holy name, O Lord, for these thy good benefits wherewith thou has refreshed us at this time. Lord forgive us all our sins and frailties, save and defend thy whole church in these times of trouble, and grant us health, peace, and truth, in Christ our only Saviour. Amen.’
‘Amen.’
Daniel looked up, smiled, and spread his hands. ‘Eat.’
It was a simple enough supper – fresh-baked bread, cheese, pickled tongue – and their visitors set about it like men half starved, although they tried to show the residue of good manners, breaking their bread into small pieces and finishing each mouthful before wolfing down another. Daniel fetched a jug of beer. Ned accepted, but Will declined, and Daniel remarked to his wife, as if in explanation of his abstinence, ‘Will’s father was a minister of strict Puritan principles.’
‘Is that so, Colonel Goffe?’ she asked politely.
Will swallowed his bread before replying. ‘Most strict. He refused to make the sign of the cross during baptism, or permit the exchange of rings in the marriage service, or wear a surplice. He signed a petition to the King objecting to such practices and lost his living in Sussex because of it. He was obliged to move to Wales.’
‘Now that is a harsh punishment for any man,’ said Ned.
Will smiled and shook his head. ‘You must excuse him, Mrs Gookin. I’ve had to suffer these jokes for years. I was born in Wales, you see – as you may perhaps tell from my voice.’
Mary smiled. ‘Then you are not Welsh, I take it, Colonel Whalley?’
‘No, God be thanked, I am a Nottinghamshire man.’ Ned drank his beer. ‘But Wales breeds good preachers, I must grant them that, and Will here is blessed with the gift. Oliver thought him the finest speaker in the army.’
Oliver. The easy familiarity with which he dropped the name silenced the table, and Gookin couldn’t resist explaining to the children, ‘Ned was the Lord Protector’s cousin.’
He regretted it at once. Mary gave him a sharp look, while the young ones lit up with interest.
‘What was he like?’
‘Did you see him often?’
‘Tell us about the Protect Her, Ned . . .’
Ned laughed, held up his hand. ‘Too many questions all at once.’
‘But you knew His Highness well?’
‘Aye, aye, well enough.’
He could have said that they had been born within a year of one another, were friends from boyhood, went around together at university, rode and hawked and gambled together – this was before Oliver’s conversion – shared a house in London for a time before they were both married; that Oliver had persuaded him to become a soldier, promoting him in time to be commissary general of the entire English cavalry, that they had fought together at Marston Moor and Naseby and a dozen other battles, that during Cromwell’s rule he was in charge of the Protector’s military security, that he was a witness at his deathbed, that but for Oliver he would have lived an obscure life as an unsuccessful cloth merchant and a failed farmer, he would never have signed the King’s death warrant, and therefore would not have found himself here in his old age on the other side of the world sleeping in an attic.
Instead, he merely said, ‘I shall speak of him some other time.’
Gookin said quickly, to change the subject, ‘Perhaps you will favour us with a lecture in our meeting house here, Will? We should be glad of your instruction.’
‘Is that wise?’ asked Mary. ‘For them to show themselves so openly?’
‘A fair point,’ agreed Will. He glanced at Ned for guidance. ‘And I am out of the habit of public speaking.’
‘We came to Cambridge to be with men and women of like mind,’ said Ned. ‘If they invite us to join them in studying the Scriptures, we should do so, else why are we here? After all, Mrs Gookin, although your attic is a splendid place, we cannot spend the rest of our lives locked up like prisoners in a single room.’
Mary opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it.
After they had finished their meal, the officers wished their hosts goodnight and retired to their attic.
Ned stood smoking his pipe, looking down at the river, bluish grey in the fading light, the dark piers of the unfinished bridge piercing the surface like the spars of a shipwreck at low tide. He opened the window. A slight breath of air rippled the drifting layers of smoke. Often in the past, at just this time of an evening, he would walk from his house next door to Whitehall Palace to share a pipe with the Protector, who loved tobacco almost as much as he did music – sometimes, if he heard someone playing, or better still singing, he would roam his official residence until he found the source, and stand there listening with tears in his eyes.
If you want to know what he was like, there is something for you; something that you might not have expected.
Will sat nearby at the table, bent over the small pocket notebook in which he kept his journal. He wrote in shorthand, both for privacy and to save paper: he had managed to bring only a few volumes with him and had no idea when he would be able to acquire more.
27 July 1660. We came to anchor between Boston, and Charlestown; between 8. & 9. in the morning: All in good health through the good hand of God upon us: oh! That men would praise the Lord for his goodness, as psalm 107.21, &c.
He was too exhausted to write more. He blew on the ink to dry it, then knelt by the bed to pray for Frances and their five children. The eldest was only six, the youngest a baby born while he was on the run, whom he had never even seen. ‘Dick, Betty, Frankie, Nan and Judith – protect and preserve them, Lord, from evil, and deliver them into thy holy grace.’ Ned was right: it was foolish to dwell on them too often. He must have faith that they would meet again. Their separation could only be God’s plan. But the sight of the Gookins’ children had brought his own to the forefront of his mind. And yet he found that their images were becoming hazier with each passing day. The little ones must be walking now, and talking. They could not be as he remembered them. He saw them as if through fog.
A tapping sound recalled him to the present. Ned was knocking the bowl of his pipe against the windowsill. Will’s mind had seized with tiredness. It was all he could do to drag himself up onto the bed. The strangeness of lying on a mattress rather than in a hammock – the solidity of it, the absence of the motion of the sea, the lack of shouts or footsteps on the deck above; the silence. He was barely conscious of the mattress creaking as Ned stretched out beside him, and in an instant, he was fast asleep.
Chapter Four
RICHARD NAYLER LET himself out of Stathern Hall on Saturday morning as soon as it was light. As a precaution, he carried his pistol tucked into his belt. Colonel Hacker might well have left weapons on the property. Who knew what his wife in her desperation might be capable of? He closed the door quietly behind him.
He untethered his horse and fetched her a bucket of water. While she grazed on the long grass in the orchard, he wrapped the death warrant in a piece of cloth, placed it carefully in one of the saddlebags and strapped it tight. Just before he mounted, he took a final glance back at the house. The windows were dark and blank, as lifeless as a mausoleum. By five, he was on his way.
He rode at a gallop, leaning forwards in the summer morning, up out of his saddle, elbows close to his knees, eyes fixed straight ahead, along the twisting deserted lanes, through villages only just starting to wake, and he didn’t let up until he had put a couple of miles between himself and Stathern Hall. By nine, he was at the ruins of the old Roman fort that marked the crossing point of the Fosse Way and Watling Street. The ancient road stretched straight to the south.
As the day went on, he changed his exhausted horses twice, first at Burbage then at Towcester, and the only time he slowed his pace was early in the afternoon, when he recognised from the milestones that he must be passing close to the battlefield of Naseby. He trotted for a mile or two, peering left across the flat Northamptonshire countryside, trying to identify a landmark from that dreadful June morning fifteen years ago. Somewhere near here, Prince Rupert’s cavalry had charged uphill towards the enemy through a tangle of furze bushes and rabbit warrens, only to find a thousand Ironsides roaring ‘God is our strength!’ thundering down upon them from their flank through the early-summer mist – commanded, he discovered afterwards, by Colonel Edward Whalley. He had managed to fire off a shot before the Roundhead cavalry smashed into their front line and his mount was cut from under him.
He had lain among the dead all day, trapped beneath his slain horse, bleeding, his ribs shattered, hip broken, unable to move, listening to his fellow wounded moaning and expiring. At nightfall, he fell unconscious. The next thing he remembered was the sound of gunshots and the agony of something sharp prodding his chest. When he opened his eyes, two Roundhead musketeers were standing over him with their weapons loaded, discussing whether to finish him off or not. ‘Hold on,’ said one. ‘He’s looking at us.’ They had slung him into a cart, and he had survived, although often in the following months he wished that he had not. But here he was, against all odds, alive and on the winning side, and he would not make the mistake of showing mercy.
He spurred his horse and resumed his southern dash – a streak of dust, an avenging fury.
He passed that night at St Albans, twenty miles north of London, sharing a bed in the White Hart inn with two other travellers – a corn merchant from Lincoln and a captain of foot on his way to join his regiment in Yorkshire – and left on Sunday while both were still snoring. By the middle of the morning, he was riding down Ludgate Hill through the City of London, the bells of St Paul’s ringing in his ears as if to welcome him home in triumph. He made directly for Worcester House on the Strand, but had barely gone ten paces past the entrance when he was stopped by one of the Lord Chancellor’s guards.
‘Richard Nayler,’ he announced, ‘to see Sir Edward Hyde.’ He was grubby, unshaven, clutching his dirty saddlebag, sweating from the pain of old wounds and cramp. He tried to step around the guard, who moved at once to block him.
‘Sir Edward is at worship with his family.’
‘As soon as he is finished, then.’
The guard looked him up and down. ‘You know it is a day of rest?’
‘I know you are a dolt. Tell him I have the warrant – exactly that, you understand? He will grasp the meaning.’
He limped across the passage to a reception room and lowered himself into a chair. He was not offended by the guard’s rudeness. He was used to passing unrecognised. Indeed, he preferred it. A man could be more effective anonymous. People talked and gave themselves away. Prior to his present position, he had been confidential secretary to the Marquess of Hertford; when the King was restored, it was the marquess who had secured him a place in the new administration as a reward for his long years of loyal service.
He could have had any post he wanted, within reason – at the Exchequer, the Navy, the Chancery Department – but he had requested the Privy Council, and in particular the committee established to apprehend the regicides. The work suited him. He had no wife or children to distract him. Leisure he had no time for. His reputation was already growing. He was one of those shadows who moves, anonymous, along the private passages and through the council chambers of every nation in every age – a word here, a warning there, a secret imparted, a person betrayed – a most useful shadow; a shadow who causes things to happen. He stretched out his leg and began massaging his aching muscle.
After a few minutes, one of the Lord Chancellor’s secretaries appeared, a foppish, indolent-looking young fellow, doubtless some courtier’s relative. ‘Sir Edward is presently at dinner.’ He held out his hand; lace at the wrist, fingers heavy with rings. ‘However, he wishes to see the document you mentioned.’
Nayler hesitated before taking the warrant from his saddlebag, then watched with some envy as it was carried off upstairs. Knowing the foibles of great men, he had hoped to place it in Sir Edward’s hands himself. But as time passed, he was gratified to observe the effect it seemed to be having. The great mansion suddenly roused itself from its Sabbath torpor, with shouted summonses and a glimpse of messengers rushing past the open door. After about a half-hour came the noise of a coach pulling into the courtyard, and the long-nosed, bloodhound figure of Sir William Morice, Secretary of State for the Northern Department, went shuffling down the passage. He was followed shortly afterwards by Sir Anthony Ashley-Cooper and Sir Arthur Annesley, both Privy Councillors, who as usual arrived together, and soon after that the foppish secretary reappeared in the doorway, his manner now more deferential.
‘Sir Edward sends his compliments, Mr Nayler, and requests your attendance at a committee meeting of the Council.’
Nayler picked up his bag and followed the secretary’s slim hips into the galleried hall, up the central staircase and through a succession of reception rooms looking out over the garden to the Thames, until they reached the Lord Chancellor’s private study, where the secretary stood aside and indicated that he should enter.
He was struck, as always, by how small it was, little more than a closet – wood-panelled, low-ceilinged, airless, gloomy, with one leaded window so tiny that even on this summer day there were candles burning. Yet it was from here that England was run. A heavy table covered with a Turkish rug occupied most of the floor. He took in the committee at a glance: Morice on one side, Ashley-Cooper and Annesley opposite him, and at the head of the table facing the door, the King’s first minister, Sir Edward Hyde. Immensely fat, he sat away from the table and sideways to the others, his arthritic, gout-swollen legs propped up on a stool. He was reading the warrant. He did not look up.
‘What kind of man preserves such a document, even when his enemies have returned to power and he knows it must hang him? Can you answer me that, Mr Nayler?’
‘A fanatic, my lord.’
‘Well then, I believe he has met his match in you.’ Hyde lifted his gaze from the warrant and studied Nayler out of the corner of his eye. ‘Leicestershire and back in four days – that is a feat. You did not think of sending someone else?’
‘I considered it too important.’
Hyde nodded. ‘It is. You are forgiven for disturbing our Sabbath.’ He resumed his examination of the warrant and at the same time lifted a pudgy hand and pointed to a seat at the end of the table. ‘Join us.’
Nayler removed his hat and took his place. ‘Thank you, my lord, but in truth I am merely the messenger. The credit all lies with Sir Arthur and Sir Anthony for their skill in persuading Colonel Hacker to reveal the existence of the warrant.’
Persuaded – now that was a pretty euphemism. While Nayler had sat taking notes in a corner during Hacker’s interrogation, it was Annesley and Ashley-Cooper who had ordered the Tower’s guards to beat the manacled colonel with clubs until he vomited up what he knew. Both were lawyers who had served under Cromwell before smoothly transferring their loyalties to the King. He glanced across at them. They nodded in acknowledgement. He knew they were anxious to demonstrate their zeal in tracking down their former comrades.
Hyde said, ‘Hacker is even more of a dead man than he was before. And what of these other two officers who received the warrant – Phayre and Huncks?’
‘Both in custody, my lord, and both insistent that they refused to obey the order. Huncks claims Cromwell abused him for his cowardice. Both put all the blame on Hacker.’
‘We are now obliged to surrender the warrant to the House of Lords, I suppose?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ said Annesley. ‘It must go first to the Lieutenant of the Tower, who will show it to Hacker and have him swear its authenticity, and then he is under instructions to provide it to the Lords.’
‘And this must happen at once? Tomorrow?’ Annesley and Ashley-Cooper both nodded. Hyde sighed. ‘This will stir up Parliament again.’ He trained his eye back on Nayler. ‘How many of these signatories are still at liberty? That is the first question we shall be asked.’
‘With your permission, my lord?’ From his bag Nayler extracted the list he had made on Friday night in Hacker’s study. ‘I have been through the warrant. You will see that fifty-nine traitors signed it. By my reckoning, of these, twenty have since died. Twenty-five are in our custody, either surrendered or captured. One – Colonel Ingoldsby – has been granted a pardon by His Majesty in return for his assistance in catching the others. Which leaves thirteen still at large.’
‘And who are they?’ asked Morice. Like Hyde, he had been with the King throughout his years in exile. But he was an old man, somewhat addled in the head and unlikely to last very long as secretary of state. Still, Nayler regarded him with more respect than he did Annesley and Ashley-Cooper, clever though they were. Let him serve out his time; he had earned it.
‘Whalley,’ he replied, running his finger down the names, ‘Livesey, Okey, Goffe, Hewson, Blagrave, Ludlow, Barkstead, Dixwell, Walton, Say, Challoner and Corbet.’
‘And how close are we to catching them?’
‘Livesey we believe to be in the Low Countries with his wife and children. Okey and Barkstead have been sighted in Germany; so has Walton – very ill and old, by all accounts. Hewson is in Amsterdam. Blagrave, Challoner and Corbet are also rumoured to be in the Netherlands. Say is in Switzerland. The rest we do not know, as yet. We are keeping watch on their families.’
Hyde threw the warrant onto the table. ‘There is no end to it. Only four men were to die for murdering the King – that was our agreement when we negotiated the Act of Oblivion. Then we found the records of the trial – or rather you did, Mr Nayler – and the four became eight, then the eight twelve, and now there are dozens of them. Every man in Parliament has some enemy he wishes to see excluded from pardon.’
Morice’s pendulous jowls quivered. ‘You are not suggesting we should leave these thirteen at liberty, my lord?’
‘No, Sir William, indeed I am not. We must hunt them down. But in the meantime, we must move this business on more quickly, so that we can turn our minds to other matters.’ Hyde lifted his wig and scratched his sweating scalp as he weighed the matter up. Finally he settled it carefully back on his head. ‘I propose we now concentrate our efforts on those we have in custody. The discovery of the warrant will help us close the case against them.’ He turned to Nayler again. ‘Those who surrendered in the hope of mercy – they are all still held without charge at Lambeth House rather than the Tower?’
