Act of Oblivion, page 9
Frances said, ‘She is in bed, sir, ill.’
‘Show me, please.’
Uncle William was beginning to recover from his shock. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘By what authority do you invade our house?’
‘There is a warrant issued for the arrest of Colonel Whalley and Colonel Goffe – as you well know.’
One of the soldiers shouted downstairs, ‘There’s no one up here, Mr Nayler, save some young girls!’
Frances saw Nayler’s mouth briefly set in disappointment. ‘Well, that is no surprise.’ He turned to her. ‘You’ll doubtless tell me you’ve no notion where they are.’
‘I haven’t seen my husband or my father for many months.’
‘Is that so?’ He called upstairs, ‘Search the place thoroughly. Turn it upside down if needs be.’ And then to Frances again, ‘Take me to Mrs Whalley.’
She led him into the parlour. Her mother had drawn her blanket up to her chin and was staring at the ceiling. Nayler bent to examine her. He passed his hand above her eyes. There was no reaction. ‘How long has she been this way?’
‘Since she was put out of her house into the street with nothing to her name.’
‘You’ve no brothers or sisters to help you?’
‘One brother and two half-brothers, but they are not in England.’
‘Where are they?’
‘I do not know.’ It was true. John and Henry were said to be in France, Edward in Ireland. The family was entirely broken.
The baby began to cry. Frances moved towards him, but Nayler was there before her. He lifted Dickie out of his cot and held him at arm’s length, turning him from side to side, appraising him like a piglet at market. ‘Now he is a fine little fellow. It must be a splendid thing to have a healthy baby boy.’
There were thuds upstairs, a splintering of wood. One of the girls was screaming. Frances held out her hands. ‘Give him to me, please.’
Nayler cradled the baby against his chest and inhaled the scent of his downy hair. He began to rock him, stroking his back. The crying stopped. ‘There, you see? I have a gift with infants. Tell me where your husband is, Mrs Goffe,’ he said softly. ‘Life will be better for your baby and for all of you.’
‘I cannot tell you what I do not know.’
‘Then I will tell you what I think.’ He nodded towards Uncle William, who was watching from the doorway. ‘I think Goffe and your father have gone to Mr Hooke’s friends in America. That is my suspicion.’ He called past him to the kitchen. ‘Captain Weaver! Come and search in here, if you please.’ Uncle William was shouldered out of the way. Weaver came in with two more soldiers. ‘Start with the bed. Take your sword to the mattress.’
The captain glanced doubtfully at Katherine Whalley. ‘What shall we do with her?’
‘If she won’t move, tip her out.’
Frances could hear seven-year-old Frankie upstairs calling, ‘Mama! Mama!’
Aunt Jane said, ‘This is not human, Mr Nayler!’
‘What is not human is to kill your King in cold blood. Get on with it, Captain.’
In that instant, when time seemed to her suspended, Frances saw three things at once and with perfect clarity. They knew about America. They would find Will’s note. The man was still holding her baby.
‘Wait,’ she said.
She untied the string around her mattress and rolled it out. She knelt and put her hand into the cut and extracted the note, the picture and the lock of hair. She offered them to Nayler. He looked at her, briefly mystified. Her hand was shaking. Finally he gave her the baby in exchange. She took her son and held him tight, and watched Nayler as he read the note.
‘This is from your husband?’
She nodded.
‘Frances!’ warned Uncle William.
‘When did you receive it?’
‘A week ago.’ The lie came easily.
‘Who brought it?’
‘I did not see. It was delivered in the night. It was here in the morning when I awoke.’
‘And the likeness is his?’
‘Yes.’
He read the message through again, noting the ornateness of the script. He studied the miniature portrait closely. He grasped the lock of hair between thumb and forefinger and held it to the light. To see such precious keepsakes in his hands made her feel faint. She tried to control her trembling.
‘Good,’ he said at last. ‘The note and the picture I shall take. The hair you may keep.’
As soon as the door closed behind him, even before the soldiers had remounted their horses, Frances ran upstairs to the girls. Frankie was sitting with her legs stretched out, propped against the wall, holding Nan in her lap, trying not to cry. Judith had climbed into bed with Betty and pulled the blanket over their heads. Their few childish clothes and possessions had been tipped out onto the floor. Some of the boards had been prised up. One mattress had been slashed twice, crossways, and turned on its side. Straw had been trampled everywhere. The room smelled like a stable.
She went from one to another, hugging them, whispering the same reassurances to each: ‘Don’t be afraid . . . The men have gone . . . We are safe now . . .’
Frankie said, ‘Why were the soldiers looking for Papa and Grandfather?’
‘I will tell you one day. But always remember they have done nothing wrong.’
‘When can we go home?’
‘Wherever we are together is our home. Put all the things away, there’s a good girl. I’ll fetch needle and thread and we’ll gather the straw, and the bed will soon be right again.’
Downstairs, Aunt Jane was in the parlour comforting Katherine. Her low, soothing voice carried through the doorway. Uncle William was seated at the kitchen table. His Bible was open, but he was staring straight ahead. She had only known him since he returned from America four years ago, to serve as one of Cromwell’s personal chaplains, a position her father had obtained for him. His expression was stern. As soon as she entered, he stood. She was braced for a rebuke – in truth, she had always been a little frightened of him – but instead he held out his arms. ‘Come here, child.’
‘You’re not angry with me?’
‘Angry? Not at all. You thought quicker than I did.’
She fell against him in relief, rested her cheek against his shoulder. He felt as solid and immovable as stone. ‘Even though I broke a commandment and told a lie?’
‘The Bible says thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. That man was no neighbour. He was the Devil. You threw salt in his eyes, which is not to be accounted a sin. Although I fear he will be back when he discovers he was tricked.’
At eight o’clock the following Monday morning, Nayler presented himself at Worcester House and asked to see the Lord Chancellor. He waited in the reception room to be summoned, and then followed Mr Secretary-Fop upstairs. The young nobleman was subdued for once, and there seemed to Nayler to be a strange atmosphere in the place – whispered conversations at the ends of passages, doors left ajar that were quietly closed as he went past. As they entered the gallery that led to Sir Edward’s study, Anne Hyde, the Chancellor’s daughter, appeared hurrying from the opposite end, accompanied by a maid. Nayler had not seen her for several months. He stopped and took off his hat and bowed. Her appearance shocked him. Her pretty face was fat and flushed, her figure gone to ruin – she looked unfortunately like her father – and as she fled past without acknowledging him, he had a fancy she had been crying.
Sir Edward was seated in his usual place at the end of the table. He had taken off his wig and was leaning forward with his head in his hands. He spoke at the carpet. ‘What is it, Mr Nayler?’
‘It can be kept for a better occasion, my lord, if this is an inconvenient moment.’
‘No.’ Hyde raised his head wearily. ‘Proceed.’
‘It concerns Colonel Whalley and Colonel Goffe.’ Hyde groaned. Nayler continued regardless. ‘I have evidence they may be in England.’
At that, the Lord Chancellor looked up. ‘What manner of evidence?’
‘I have hunted down their families and found them living in Clapham. This is a message Frances Goffe says she received a week ago from her husband, delivered by an unseen hand.’ He laid it on the table. ‘The writing is most distinctive, similar to his signature on the death warrant.’
Hyde scanned it quickly. ‘And you believe her?’
‘I do. She’s a frightened, artless creature, schooled by her religion not to lie. Moreover, her story fits the facts. No mention has been made of Whalley and Goffe in any of the correspondence of the regicides exiled in Europe. I suspect they fled to Holland in May or April but have now secretly returned.’
‘Why would they do something so foolish?’
‘Goffe is amongst the youngest of the regicides – only thirty at the time the King was murdered. He has infant children, one a baby. I suspect his children draw him home.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Hyde, gloomily, ‘children. A destiny no one can escape.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘If they are in England, how do you propose to catch them?’
‘By advertising their names in every town and village in the kingdom. By warning that anyone who harbours them will be regarded equally as a traitor. And above all by placing a reward on their heads. A hundred pounds apiece should do it. There’s a chance we may yet find them in time to put them on trial with the others in October.’
Hyde shook his head. ‘By God, Mr Nayler, I should not like to have you as my enemy!’
Nayler bowed obsequiously. ‘That I shall never be, my lord.’
Hyde stared at him. ‘Strangely, I am inclined to believe you.’ He seemed to be weighing something up. ‘Did you know my daughter, Anne, is to be married today, in this house?’
‘No, Sir Edward, I did not.’
‘It cannot be a public ceremony, for obvious reasons.’ Hyde was watching for his reaction. ‘She is with child – six or seven months gone, so I’m told. She is marrying the father. He claims to love her. He is the Duke of York.’
Nayler gaped. He could not help it. He had an unbidden image of the King’s brother, half naked, in Whalley’s old house.
Hyde said, ‘I note you do not congratulate me,’ and when Nayler started to protest, he cut him off: ‘No, no, don’t lie. I admire your instinct. Fools will think I am making a brilliant connection. But you and I both recognise a disaster. His Royal Highness is bedding half the court – the whole world knows it, apart from her. He’ll make her very unhappy. And it will bring about my ruin. Oh, not at first – the King has been very gracious in the matter – but until he has an heir, my enemies will whisper that I am scheming to put my grandchild on the throne, and in time the King will turn on me. He denies it now, but I know him too well.’ He sighed. ‘Well, there it is. Go and do your business, Mr Nayler. There will soon be heads on spikes all over London. But bear in mind that one day one of them may be mine.’
For the first few days after the raid on the house, Frances’s heart would jump every time someone passed along the lane. But the sinister Mr Nayler, whoever he was, did not return, and gradually the house settled into its former quiet rhythm. Uncle William ventured out occasionally across the river, to meet clandestinely with the Puritan preachers in the city and discover the latest news; no word was expected from America until the end of October. Frances and Aunt Jane stayed in Clapham with the children and Katherine Whalley. They saw no one, except on the Sabbath, when they attended the meeting house in the village, which seemed safe enough. The Puritan community south of the river was small and fearful; no one asked them any questions.
In the evenings, after the girls had gone to sleep and the baby had been fed, Jane would sit sewing by the hearth and tell stories of her life in America. She and William had spent eleven years in New Haven, newest of all the colonies, a religious community more than a hundred miles along the coast from Boston, co-founded by the Reverend John Davenport, ‘a most mighty preacher and inspirer of men’, and Mr Theophilus Eaton, a Puritan merchant of immense wealth. As she described the little wooden settlements enclosed by palisades, the endless expanses of encroaching forest filled with wolves and wildcats, the local native Indians with their burial grounds and heathen customs, the long winters and the hard work of planting and harvesting, Will seemed to Frances to be both closer to her (in that she could imagine him) and yet to recede from her. She wondered why her aunt and uncle had left.
One night, Jane told the tale of the Great Ship, a vessel of a hundred tons that the town had built and that had sailed from New Haven not long after she and Uncle William had arrived – how the colony had filled her hold with goods to trade in England, and had had to break the ice to get her out of the harbour, and how a few months later a vision of the ship appeared faintly in the starlit winter sky, and that was how they learned she had sunk, taking seventy of the town’s citizens down with her. ‘It was a tragedy from which it was hard to recover. Why does God punish the faithful so? How had we sinned?’ She must have noticed Frances’s horrified expression, for she suddenly broke off and said, ‘How foolish of me to tell such a tale. Dear Will is safe, I am sure.’
A month or so after the soldiers’ visit – it was hard sometimes to keep track of the days, when there was so little to differentiate them – Frances walked along the lane to Clapham to buy food for dinner. It was autumn, the leaves were falling in rustling red and golden showers, and she dawdled, gathering horse chestnuts into her apron for the girls to play with; they were gleaming, waxy, as if Nature had polished them. When she reached the lychgate of Trinity church, she saw that a notice had been pinned up on the board beside it. There was a crown at its head – a royal proclamation no less. She stepped closer and began to read.
Forasmuch as the execrable traitors Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, having absented and withdrawn themselves beyond the Seas, are now, as We certainly understand, lately returned into Our Kingdom of England, and do privately lurk and obscure themselves in places unknown, We do hereby Require and Command Our Judges, Justices of the Peace, Mayors, Sheriffs, Bailiffs, Constables and all Our Subjects whatsoever, to be diligent in Inquiring, Searching for, Seizing and Apprehending them . . .
And We do hereby further Declare and Publish, That if any Person or Persons after this Our Proclamation published, shall Directly or Indirectly Conceal, Harbour, Keep, Retain, or Maintain the said Edward Whalley and William Goffe, or either of them, or shall Contrive or Connive at any means whereby they or either of them shall or may Escape from being Taken or Arrested We will proceed against them with all severity . . .
And lastly We do hereby Declare, That whosoever shall discover the said Edward Whalley or William Goffe, and shall cause them, or either of them, to be Apprehended, and brought in alive or dead, shall have a Reward of One hundred pounds in money for each of them.
Given at Our Court at Whitehall the Two and twentieth day of September. Charles R.
It was such a shock to see their names in print that for a while she could not move, but stood staring at the same few words: Edward Whalley and William Goffe . . . alive or dead . . . One hundred pounds . . . Her eyes travelled back to the top of the poster: We certainly understand, lately returned into Our Kingdom of England . . .
We certainly understand . . . This must be her doing. The King of England had sat in his palace and issued a proclamation because of her.
She felt weak at the implications and glanced around to see if anyone was watching her. The church appeared to be empty. On the common, a man with a boy and a dog was herding sheep into a pen. She let the horse chestnuts drop from her apron, tore down the proclamation, folded it and tucked it away, then turned and walked quickly back to the cottage to warn her aunt and uncle.
Chapter Eight
IN MASSACHUSETTS, IT was harvest time, the crops ripe, the wooded hills a distant, drawn-out fiery sunset of russet and pink, orange and gold, vaster and more vivid than anything they had ever seen in England.
‘We are able-bodied,’ said Ned to Daniel Gookin one day. ‘Employ us in honest labour. Let us earn our keep.’
From then on, each weekday morning at first light, Ned and Will left the house to labour on the farm – bringing in the wheat and maize, and when that was done, digging ditches, mending fences, herding the sheep and cattle, stacking hay, felling trees, cutting logs in readiness for the winter. Their hands roughened with the use of scythe and axe, hoe and shovel. Their muscles hardened. If they were to survive, Ned thought, they would need to be fit. It was useful training.
And this labouring from dawn till dusk had another benefit: it dulled the pain of homesickness. At night, when they went up to bed exhausted, they fell into sleep so deep that even dreams of England did not disturb them. They received no word from home. On the Sabbath, they attended the meeting house. Three times they dined with President Chauncey at Harvard College. They visited their neighbours: men such as the Elder Beale, who suffered so much from the kidney stone he confessed that when he tried to pass water it tested his faith in God; and the Elder Frost, who received them with such love and kindness in his squalid house that Will declared as they were walking home, ‘I would rather abide with this saint in his poor cottage than with any prince in the world.’
They confined themselves to Cambridge and kept clear of Boston. In any case, there were no more invitations. Whenever strangers visited the Gookins, the officers withdrew discreetly to their attic.
Gradually, it seemed possible that the outside world had forgotten them. Ned even began to wonder if they might yet live out their days as simple New England farmers. Perhaps they could send for their families? Frances and his grandchildren would take to the life, although it was hard for him to picture Katherine in America.
He kept an occasional eye on the bridge through his telescope. The days shortened. The air turned chilly.
