Cromwell’s Blessing. Peter Ransley
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Название: Cromwell’s Blessing
Автор: Peter Ransley
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007463596
isbn:
The clerk checked the amount of pay I was owed in a ledger and completed the army warrant. He wore a fine linen shirt, rolled back at the wrists to protect it from ink splashes. It was the splashes, rather than the man, that I recognised.
‘Mr Ink,’ I cried, flinging my arms round the man whom I had known as a humble scrivener at Westminster, when he had smuggled out Mr Pym’s speeches for me to run with them to the printer, speeches which had begun the great rebellion against the King.
‘I am Mr Clarke,’ he said. ‘William.’ There was a hint of reproof in his bow. His dark grey doublet was severe, but fashionably unbuttoned at the waist to show the quality of his linen.
‘You have a new name and fine new clothes,’ I said.
He told me Clarke had always been his name. It was I, as a child, who had christened him Mr Ink, but now he had risen in the world he would appreciate being called William Clarke, Esq. It was said with a wink to show that somewhere inside those new clothes was my old friend Mr Ink, but it added to my feeling that everyone was rising in the world but me.
When I left that feeling stayed with me, and the army warrant in my pocket only reminded me of my humiliation. I walked slowly but reached Drury Lane all too soon. As I went through the passage, I thought of my father, wanting to answer his letter.
Anne looked at me expectantly as I was going into my study.
‘I did not tell Cromwell,’ I said. ‘Whatever he’s done, Richard is my father. I’ll write to him. See if he is sincere.’
I went to close the door but still she stood there. ‘Is that all?’
Silently I gave her the army warrant. She stared at Mr Ink’s elegant hand, and the rolling loops of Cromwell’s signature. For four months’ back pay I had been awarded eleven pounds, six shillings and threepence.
‘You fool,’ she said.
I thought she was going to tear it up. I snatched it from her so it did tear. There was a rush of blood to my head. A roaring in my ears. I gripped her by the shoulders and God knows what I would have done to her if I had not seen Luke staring from the hall.
Anne turned away and, without a word, took Luke by the hand and led him upstairs.
My power with words deserted me when it came to answering Richard’s letter. I balked at the first hurdle. Dear Richard? Dear Father? Dear Sir Richard? The coldly formal Sir?
In the end, I opted for the last. I wrote:
Sir,
I do not know what to write (true). After what you have done to me in the past you will forgive me for feeling suspicious (to put it mildly). I believe you are in London. I should report you to the authorities. I have not given you away (at the moment) because I would like to meet to find if you are writing ab imo pectore (the Stonehouse motto: from the heart). I shall be at the Exchange, at the sign of the Bull, tomorrow, Thursday and the following day, at noon.
I remain, Sir, yr humble servant,
Thomas Stonehouse
I waited at the Exchange on those two days with a strange, growing eagerness which gradually turned into disappointment and disillusion. When mail came my heart beat a little faster; but there was no reply. Perhaps Richard had returned to France. Or feared a trap. On one of the visits to the Exchange, being near London Bridge, I remembered my promise to take money to Scogman’s wife and children. My prayers for his survival had been answered and he had become a kind of folk hero to me. I crossed the river to Bankside and went to the address from the regiment list. It was a brothel.
When I was woken that night by Liz’s coughing I could still see the whores wiping their eyes as they laughed.
‘Scogman? Married? Give the money to me, dear. I’ll see she gets it! Kids? He scarpers too quickly to give his name to any kids. Scoggy? Give him my undying love, darling.’
I winced as I remembered how, previously, I had lent him an angel, which he still owed me, to send to this starving family.
I tried to forget my humiliation by helping Jane to nurse Liz and, since Dr Latchford seemed at a loss, the next morning rode to Spitall Fields to get a herbal syrup from Matthew, the cunning man who had brought me up. Late in life he had had a stroke of good fortune. Unwilling to disappoint anyone, he had always promised a cure for everything, from the plague to a broken heart. Too erratic to be trusted, his business was on the point of failure when he met an apothecary, Nicholas Culpepper, who separated those remedies of Matthew’s which worked, from those which didn’t. And he put his finger on Matthew’s unique ability. While his remedies were unreliable, his knowledge and collection of herbs, from aloe to vervain, were unrivalled.
Together they produced simple herbal remedies for the poor. Culpepper infuriated doctors like Latchford by setting himself up as a doctor in Spitall Fields, outside the City, where the College of Physicians had no jurisdiction. Matthew had a room in the apothecary’s house, which, on a gloomy day, was like walking into summer, the air smelling of rosemary, lavender and sage.
When I arrived, Matthew was chopping herbs on a bench. One of his eyes was milky blue, and he stooped like a goblin, but he was as lively as ever, and his optimism unquenched.
‘Little Liz! The poor mite! I know exactly what will cure her. It drew three infants back from the grave last week.’ He caught Culpepper’s eyes staring sternly over his spectacles, swallowed and toned down his promises. ‘It will soothe the cough so she can eat more easily and sleep.’
I put the jar of syrup in my saddle pouch and rode back through the City. Crowds were building up, and it was increasingly difficult to get through. They were thickest round the bookstalls and hawkers: there were more pamphlets sold that day than hot pies.
From one pamphlet I learned how badly Cromwell had lost the debate. Half the army was to be disbanded, receiving a miserable six weeks’ money in lieu of their long arrears of pay. Another gave an ominous response from the soldiers: not a petition this time, but a set of demands. One called for an apology from Holles for the soldiers being called enemies of the state they had fought for. Another was for full pay. It was signed not by the soldiers, but by men who called themselves agents, or agitators. Levellers. One of the signatories was Nehemiah.
Going down Cornhill, there was such a press of people I found it difficult to control my horse and was forced to dismount. The trouble came from a bookshop displaying the sign of the Bible. More people came to it to argue than to buy books. A Presbyterian minister called Edwards was haranguing the crowd. He had written a series of books called Gangraena, the latest an attack on the sins of Cromwell’s army. The gangrene lay in the heresies the army was supposed to spread.
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