Cromwell’s Blessing. Peter Ransley

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СКАЧАТЬ my brief, snatched visits during the war, what for me had been love, for her had been desperation, followed by the continual, gnawing fear of being barren, and of further rejection from Lord Stonehouse’s favour. Had I not seen the straw on the floor, or realised they were burning chopped-up furniture for me?

      She had tried to find out if the entail on Lord Stonehouse’s will had been removed. The entail was the contract by which the landed classes double-locked and bolted the estate to the eldest son. Mr Cole knew most things, but that was a secret only Lord Stonehouse and his lawyer knew.

      Her voice grew hoarser. I could not stop her. I did not want to. It was like a boil being lanced. She had not slept much because of Liz. She wore no paint. Lines I had barely noticed before cracked her beautiful skin. Her hair hung lifeless. She was so thin she looked as though she would break. Only her blue eyes crackled with furious, burning energy.

      ‘Luke furnished this place. When Lord Stonehouse thought Liz was going to be another boy the stables were built. Those fine horses arrived. Stallions.’ She put some of her old mockery into the word. ‘I do not want to go through having another child, but I will go on and on until we have what we want. I have done all that and I am not allowed my say?’

      Her voice had shredded to a croaking echo. I held her tightly, stroking her, feeling her bones protruding from her skin.

      ‘What we want? That’s what matters. I want you, I want you,’ I whispered.

      ‘Do you?’

      I kissed her. ‘Nothing else matters. We don’t have to have another child. Not yet. I will stay away.’

      ‘But I want – I want you near me.’ She kissed me passionately.

      ‘I’ll be careful.’

      She half-smiled. ‘You never are.’ She stroked the scar on my cheek with a sudden tenderness. ‘Scar-face.’

      ‘Bag of bones.’

      She buried her head in my chest and we held each other close, until the rasping of her breath slowed and I could feel our hearts beating together. ‘We don’t need all this,’ I said, gesturing the house away.

      She said – ferocious again – she couldn’t bear to lose it. Not now. It would be like showing a child a magnificent meal, then snatching it from her. ‘And you need it. To be an MP. Change the world.’ If that was half-mocking, half-serious, her next words were in earnest. ‘And you need Lord Stonehouse.’

      ‘No. I won’t crawl to him. Particularly after what he did to you.’

      She clenched her fists in frustration. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have told you all this!’

      I unpeeled her fingers and smoothed them between my hands. ‘Better we do things our own way.’ I remembered Nehemiah’s words. ‘Be beholden to no one.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘Cromwell will help me.’

      ‘Are you sure?’

      ‘Sure?’ I laughed. ‘He’s the most powerful man in Britain.’

      I told her I must go to the House and see him, and got my papers together. Still she lingered, staring at Richard’s letter. ‘You know why he’s written to you, don’t you?’

      I smiled at her expression of absolute certainty. Sometimes she had the air of an astrologer predicting the future. ‘No. Do you?’

      ‘Because he knows about your quarrel with Lord Stonehouse.’

      Since the Royalists were based in Paris, where Queen Henrietta held court, letters were censored and delayed, if they arrived at all. ‘Unlikely. That was over a fortnight ago. The news would hardly have reached him in Paris.’

      ‘It would reach him here.’

      I laughed. ‘He’d never come here! It’s too dangerous.’ Unlike many Royalists, Richard had never surrendered. He was close to Queen Henrietta, a Catholic, and Cromwell had intercepted papers that proved his involvement in the present Irish rebellion. ‘If he was caught here, he’d be in the Tower. Not even Lord Stonehouse could save him.’

      The French envoy’s address had suggested Paris. But there were no French markings. It was not dated or sealed. The only mark was a posthorn, such as might have been used in any London alehouse. ‘It’s a coincidence. The letter and the quarrel.’

      ‘Do you think so?’

      ‘No.’

      I shivered suddenly, violently. The thick, smeared scrawl, with the savage sword-like crossing of every ‘t’, brought memories flooding back of when he had hired people to kill me, when I used to check every alehouse before I entered, jump at every sound in the street. I crumpled it up.

      ‘I’ll burn it,’ I said.

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘Take it to Cromwell.’

       7

      You could hear the noise in Whitehall, sense the tension in the shops and stalls of Westminster Hall. Cromwell was back. There were rumours that he and the Presbyterian leader, Denzil Holles, had come to blows. That the army was in revolt.

      A coin to the Sergeant got me into the lobby. I waited for an opportunity to see Cromwell, my father’s letter burning a hole in my pocket. The debate grew in intensity. I could hear Cromwell’s voice, rising over shouts of derision. There is no more thrilling place than the House when you are part of it, and no worse, confusing place when you are out of it. I was even jealous of the printers’ runners. Reporting was forbidden and they smuggled out speeches, as I did years before.

      When the debate was adjourned I saw one runner, illegal copy stuffed in his britches, wriggling his way through a crowd of arguing MPs. He was as snot-nosed and eel-slippery as I used to be, but a coin from my pocket stopped him. I deciphered the scrivener’s scrawl. The debate was about the army petition I had seen in Nehemiah’s room, for pay and indemnities. ‘H,’ I read. That must be Holles. I could not believe what he was quoted as saying: ‘The soldiers who have signed this petition are enemies of the state …’

      Enemies of the state? The army that won the war? And was simply asking for its pay?

      There was a shout. The boy snatched the papers and ran.

      ‘Seize him.’

      The MP who gave chase was young and would have the legs on the boy. I felt responsible for having stopping him. And I was a runner at heart. It was instinctive. I stuck out my foot. The MP went flying, arms flailing. I just managed to catch him to break the worst of his fall and help him up.

      ‘I’m terribly sorry.’

      He glared at me angrily, but my suit, if old, was of the finest silk, and I spoke with such concern, in my best Stonehouse, that he stopped short of accusing me. Someone else drew him away, telling him they had a motion to draw up. I recognised the sharp, vinegary tones immediately. I had tripped up Denzil Holles’s bag carrier.

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