Yet his sister only remembered the ending of that day with gloom. For it was only after Moody had left them, and Mary Godfrey had taken Samuel upstairs, that Nathaniel walked up the slope with Margaret on the edge of the high ground and there confided to her:
“I think our cause is lost.”
“But the king is winning everywhere. Soon he will march on London, and Parliament is near to surrender. Or is it the Scots you fear?”
For there had been so many demands for a settlement with, or rather a surrender to the king that the leader of the opposition had even begun a new negotiation with the Scots, who were now demanding that their own Presbyterian rule should be made compulsory in England – to Obadiah Shockley’s delight.
But Nathaniel shook his head.
“No. Parliament will court the Scots but never agree with them.” He grinned. “Poor Obadiah. Our Parliament has grown used to ruling the church. In Scotland, it’s the Presbyterian church which rules. The English Parliament can pretend what it pleases, but it will never submit to that. No,” he explained, “the king and Parliament will not agree, nor will Parliament submit and see her leaders hanged. But as time passes, only Parliament can win.”
“Why?”
“Firstly, our strategy is flawed. The king means to advance from the north and west upon London. But always in his rear he will have the ports and the cloth towns – Hull in the north, Plymouth and Gloucester in the west. He cannot advance safely, nor will London easily submit.”
“But his army is better trained.”
“So far, yes. But the Eastern Association is growing, and there is a new commander there, a cousin of Hampden’s, a squire like ourselves called Cromwell. ‘Ironsides’ they call him. He is training a new force that will make Lord Essex’s cohorts look like rabble. Fairfax in the north, too, is a skilful commander. Wait until these men take the field.”
It was true that, up to date, the Parliamentary forces had, like the Royalists, been led almost entirely by aristocrats and gentlemen, some of them dedicated, some cynical, but very few trained in warfare. So far this had given the king an advantage.
“Perhaps the king will find larger forces to oppose them.”
“He can’t. No money.” Nathaniel sighed. “A long war is always won by wealth, sister – and the trouble is, Parliament has the purse strings.” He kicked a stone irritably. “Do you not know, every time the king’s men buy provisions, even arms for their men, they pay duties on them. And the duties go to London where they are held by Parliament. All our taxes go to Parliament. We Royalists actually pay our own opponents, who besides, being merchants, have always more ready money than we have. ’Tis a phantasm, a ghostly thing, this victory of the king. Whatever appears today, will vanish tomorrow.”
It was a dark insight. She looked at him thoughtfully.
He was silent for a little time. He seemed to be brooding about something else.
Finally he said:
“I had a dream.” He paused. “About Edmund.”
“You fought?”
He frowned.
“We met. Somewhere. Perhaps in battle, I cannot tell.”
“What happened?”
“I cannot remember. I know only that we met. I suppose it must have been in battle. And then . . . I woke, unhappy.”
She said nothing for a few moments.
“If you met in battle, what would you do?” She asked slowly.
He stopped and stared at the ground.
“I do not know.” He sighed. “Each day I have prayed it may not happen.”
“But you fear it will?”
He nodded. “I feel we shall meet.”
They walked a little further. How melancholy he looked.
“But you still believe, don’t you, in your cause?”
He stared at the ground moodily.
“Oh yes. Of course.”
Then he kicked another stone.
1644:
OCTOBER
All that year in England, the balance of advantage swung from side to side.
At Sarum, the Royalists seemed to have triumphed. Local Parliamentary commanders – Hungerford, Baynton, Evelyn – either deserted, intrigued with the king, or were disgraced. Fifteen miles to the west, the gallant young Edmund Ludlow had finally had to give up the Arundels’ Catholic stronghold of Wardour Castle and yield it back to the Royalists. The strongholds were nearly all held for Charles.
But away in the north of England, where the Royalists had been so strong, the fearsome new army of Cromwell and Fairfax, using Prince Rupert’s cavalry methods but with their own iron discipline, together with the Presbyterian Scots had utterly crushed the Royalists at Marston Moor.
“We ran like rabbits in the end,” Nathaniel ruefully told his sister afterwards. “Parliament has the north now, and it bodes ill for the king.”
But in the south west, the Royalists were still strong. For although in June, Lord Essex and his Parliamentary army hurried through Sarum swearing boldly that they would crush the Royalists of the south west, only last month word came that Essex had capitulated in Cornwall.
There was constant movement.
To and fro across Wiltshire the various armies had gone: Parliamentary Ludlow and Waller, Royalist Goring.
Two days before the king himself had clattered through the city’s streets, leaving a strong force of artillery at the great house beside Clarendon Forest on the east side of Salisbury, and a large garrison at Wilton on the west. Margaret had heard he was coming, and, curious, made her way down to the city, taking little Samuel with her.
“See,” she told him as the long cortege of horses went by, “right or wrong, there is the king.” And although he was only four, Samuel always remembered the tired-looking man with the fine, oval face and long nose who rode thoughtfully down the high street.
Nathaniel was at Wilton.
But it was not Nathaniel she found at the farm on her return.
It was Edmund.
She had not seen him for nearly two years. He had changed so much that for a moment, she scarcely recognised him. His hair which, like most of the gentlemen, including Cromwell, in the Parliamentary forces, he wore long before, had now been cut to the short fringe that gave the Roundheads their name. It was not the haircut that struck her most though, but the fact that so much of his hair was gone. His face was haggard, his clothes worn almost threadbare.
But there was something else about him – a look in his eyes that she could not explain, but which troubled her.
“I need rest and food,” he told her, then looked nervous. “Or are you Royalist now?”
“I am your sister,” she replied. “But you must not be seen. Royalist troops are everywhere.” And turning to little Samuel beside her, who was staring curiously at the stranger she told him: “Say nothing to anyone about your uncle. It’s a secret.” Then she put him in her own room upstairs and locked the door. He slept for fifteen hours.
“Lord Essex gave up,” he told her bitterly, as they sat together in her room the next day. “We want no more aristocrats leading us now: we need Cromwell and his men.”
How haggard he was. He seemed to be almost mumbling to himself, and again, she was conscious of some deeper alteration in him: it was as if, where her dear Nathaniel might secretly doubt the success of his cause, her older brother had begun to doubt himself.
Apparently reading her thoughts, he looked up sadly.
“I have changed,” he said.
And then, in a voice sometimes weak from fatigue, sometimes strangely urgent, he told her something of what he had seen: of the rich nobles who fought only for profit, hoping to gain confiscated Royalist estates if they won; of the Presbyterians, like Obadiah, who wanted to substitute their own religious tyranny for that of the king.
“But I have seen better men than these – simple, godly men, who fight for a noble cause,” he went on. “Better men, Margaret, than Obadiah: better men than I. True religious men who fight for freedom to worship as they please. These are the men who fight for Cromwell. And so shall I.” He spoke with a new humility, born of mental suffering; she liked him better for it.
“You mean the Sectaries?”
“Call them what you will.”
There were many such men in the army, she knew, and their voice was getting stronger: political and, more often, religious radicals: men who believed they were fighting to establish a new order in England, led by tough, professionally-minded officers – Cromwell’s “plain men” – who might not be gentlemen but who knew their business, which most of the gentlemen in the Parliamentary Army had shown they did not. Their exact political aims were not yet clear; but they were increasingly powerful.
Margaret looked at him thoughtfully, wondering where this would lead.
“How long will you stay?” she asked.
“Until tomorrow.”
The morning passed quietly. Only Mary Godfrey and a servant girl were in the house, and neither was aware of Edmund’s presence.
During the afternoon he slept again.
It was in the late afternoon that the soldiers came. They were led by Nathaniel.
“We are searching the area for Roundheads,” he told her cheerfully, as he stood in the hall. “Some were seen yesterday.”
Margaret looked at him steadily.
“What will they do with them when they catch them?”
“Hang them probably. But we haven’t found any yet.”
“I have seen none,” she said. “But your men should search the barn and outhouses.”
They did, thoroughly, for a quarter of an hour, and found nothing, while Nathaniel and his sister chatted quietly in the hall.
It was just as Nathaniel was turning to leave that little Samuel, coming down the stairs from his afternoon’s sleep, and seeing Nathaniel’s friendly face, ran forward with a happy cry and whispered as Nathaniel swept him up into his arms:
“Shall I tell you a secret?”
The two men stood opposite to each other in her bedchamber. Little Samuel, smiling with innocent pleasure, stood at Nathaniel’s side.
She had been forced to unlock the door since Nathaniel had calmly offered to break it down if she did not.
A strange contrast they made: the younger brother in his handsome tunic edged with lace; the elder, who had hurriedly dressed, hoping to escape, seeming shrunken from his former state, in his plain brown jacket and the ugly Dutch breeches, like long shorts cut off abruptly at the knee, which many Puritans favoured. His grey wooollen stockings, she noticed, were full of holes.
They looked at each other in silence. Then Nathaniel spoke.
“Well, brother Edmund, they have cut thy hair in an abominable fashion.”
Edmund tried to smile. His eyes looked hunted. Nathaniel turned to his sister.
“I remember, sister, that you told me, when some wished me to leave, that no brother of yours should be refused a place in this house.”
“I did,” she replied, “nor shall they.”
“Very well.”
And then, with that charming smile she knew so well, he turned back to Edmund.
“Forgive me if I do not stay to greet you, brother Edmund, but my men await me outside.” His eyes twinkled. “We are looking for Parliament men.”
He strode from the room.
Nathaniel. She loved him.
1645:
JANUARY
But it was that winter little Samuel remembered best of all.
For that was when his sister Margaret, while both her fighting brothers were far away, put on armour, took up her sword and went into battle herself.
First, though, came his own dramatic part in the battle of the belfry.
The new city in the valley, unlike its predecessor on the hill, was never designed to be defended. Now, for the only time in its history, the military had actually made the city into a temporary fortress. Or rather, since there was no other area with an existing wall around it, the Royalists had tried to fortify the cathedral close. It had not worked. In a small skirmish near Christmas, a contingent of Ludlow’s Roundheads had easily fired the gates and taken the tiny garrison prisoner. Now they held it, using the high belfry as a watch tower.
It was generally expected that the Royalists would return, but no one knew when.
It was foolish of Margaret to go into the city that day; but without Nathaniel for company, she had grown tired of the farmhouse and decided to seek a change of air.
It was a crisp, cold day and she and Samuel had taken the cart into Salisbury. She had made a few purchases and stopped to talk to one or two acquaintances in the market place, while the little boy watched her with increasing boredom. There was an air of lassitude about the town that day. Finally, thinking to amuse him, she led him down the High Street towards the cathedral close. The gate of the close was open. By the belfry, she knew, there would be half a dozen soldiers lounging about, and the sight of armed men never failed to interest him.