Traitor's Field (17 page)

Oliver Cromwell: Member of Parliament but the greatest threat to that Parliament; the most devout of men, and the most brutally effective in war; the pre-eminent General of the age, victor of innumerable battles and two wars; the man with the word of the Lord in his mouth and the scourge of the Lord in his hand. Oliver Cromwell, staring up at him from behind the table, two great dark eyes glaring out of the heavy features.

John Thurloe stood silent, slowly unclenched and then clenched one hand, tried to hold the mighty stare.

‘Master St John reports you a man of tact, a man of intellect, a man of determination.’ The voice seemed to come from the heavy timbers of the table.

‘I owe Master St John much.’

‘You neither challenge nor endorse his description.’

What game is this?
Cromwell the man of prayer. Cromwell the man of war. Thurloe thought for a second, and then shook his head very slightly.

‘St John reports you a man to be trusted to the uttermost.’

‘I own a duty to my masters, and a duty to my God, and I hope that I know when and how to choose between them.’

A nod. A pause. ‘You are not a voluble man, Master Thurloe.’

Thurloe smiled slightly.

Cromwell nodded again. ‘I like that.’

[SS C/S/48/23]

Colonel Thomas Rainsborough died many times, and had lived many lives, in the letters and pamphlets that recorded his death. Each page, each leaf in the whirling autumn storm, told its own particular truth.

Colonel Thomas Rainsborough had been a coward and a warrior, a traitor and a crusader, a monster and a saint. He had lived a life of humility, of kindness, of purity, of peace, of passion, of hatred, of debauchery, and of blood.

He was killed by knives, by swords, by pistols, by a fall from his horse, and by a strange and terrible pox that crept over his flesh in the course of one night and left his whole body cankered and grotesque. His last words were for God, and against God, for a King and for a Republic, of defiance and of fear, and when he opened his mouth only a vile grey phlegm oozed out.

He was left a blooded, broken mess in the Doncaster street, and carried into the sky with face perfectly unmarked.

Angry men in mobs tell their own truth, and thousands of them – it may have been two thousand or it may have been ten thousand – marched through London in Rainsborough’s funeral. It had rained for two days, and continued to rain, drooping the rosemary sprigs in their hats and the soggy ribbons of remembrance. The roads were mud, an oily treacherous swamp under their boots that only encouraged them to huddle closer together, arms around shoulders or hands clutching the coat in front. Snaking through the ancient streets, the crowd steamed and splashed – a stumbling, cursing, seething organism looking for a way.

From an upstairs window, Thomas Scot watched the procession with bright, exultant, calculating eyes.

‘Those trepidatious men in the Parliament shall not ignore us now,’ he said. ‘This land has seen its last King.’

The man beside him nodded fervently.

The crowd slithered on past them through the street. ‘Equal justice under God!’ rose thin and strong from somewhere ahead, and then thousands of voices gave the echo: ‘Justice!’

John Thurloe arrived in Doncaster more than a week after the death of Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, but the death still hung humid in the air. He could feel its weight in the attentive performance of the guards at the gate; he could see it in the sullen faces; he caught it in the first glances of alarm whenever he entered a shop or a room.

Thurloe did not know soldiers. They were increasingly present in his life, standing inappropriate on the edge of discussions or disfiguring doorways, surprising rough colours and heavy boots and the embarrassed clatter of metal. But they remained alien and out of place, like wild creatures or coarse language in the chapels and chambers he inhabited, their brutal honesty and anonymity unsettling.

He did not know them, but he could sense the strains in the behaviour of these men: the melodramatic performances of routine with musket and gate; the over-loud interrogation of his name, his purpose, his hostel, his purpose again; and the sour black discontent in the faces. Uniforms and walls were becoming less reliable indicators of allegiance, and it discomfited these violent worshippers of order.

He found a room in an inn – he’d be sharing, but the landlord wanted to encourage quiet-seeming, thoughtful men who weren’t soldiers, and so he’d only have a preacher and a horse-dealer for company – and reported to the garrison commander.

The General looked tired and harassed: a large bright uniform at a small drab desk; a body and a face for joviality, now sagging. He stared into the order from the Council for half a minute, and Thurloe watched his thoughts: irritation at interference, suspicion at a civilian, unease at the break in routine, worry at the further impact on his disgruntled men of a stranger prodding around their lives, relief at being able to pass on to someone else the taint of this unhappy case.

Eventually he looked up, and just nodded. ‘Well, there it is then,’ he said. ‘Look, Master. . .’ He peered at the paper again.

‘Thurloe.’

‘Thurloe. There’s a war on, you know that?’ Thurloe just looked at him. ‘Damned difficult affair this. No need for more trouble, you understand? Men are unhappy.’ He waved a fist in a slow thoughtful circle, as if stirring a pot of his troubles. ‘Radical ideas. Hot tempers. Difficult business, a siege.’ He nodded to himself at this wise precept. ‘Sickness. Expectations.’ He looked up at Thurloe again. ‘London!’

Thurloe thanked him, hoped politely that God would add his sinews to a speedy victory, and left.

The reports began to creep towards Shay from the extremities of the country, hidden or crudely encyphered or anonymous. From Cornwall and the Highlands and all points between, men wrote of their loyalties and their fears, their strengths and their vulnerabilities. In his head, Shay began to draft a map of his own private kingdom, a kingdom with its resources and its strongpoints and its lines of communication. Then, at first cautiously, he began to feel his way around this kingdom, and to reckon its possibilities.

Thurloe walked one irregular loop of the town to absorb the layout and the atmosphere. He was here to enquire into a business among soldiers, which made him uncomfortable, and he invented suspicion and hostility in each crowd of uniforms that he passed in the street, every impassive sentry whose eyes followed him.

From fences and door-knockers across the town hung sodden sea-green ribbons: memorial tokens for Rainsborough; the badge of the Levellers. In a square, in front of an inn, a mane of the ribbons hung from a pole, and sprigs of rosemary had been stuck into the cracks and hinges of the inn gate. This, then, was where it had happened. The gate was closed, the inn nursing its shame. Thurloe walked on, out of Doncaster.

He had been given a rough outline of the raid, and followed its course: from the open fields, through the St Sepulchre gate in the west and so back into the town again. He watched the scattered clusters of soldiers in the fields, trying to understand why they were placed as they were, and they watched him in return. He observed the routines at the gate, trying to ignore the fidgeting sentries. He walked into the town, saw the street leading to the violated inn, saw the other streets, down which other Royalist horsemen had ridden in diversion. Some of the raiders who had sallied out of nearby Pontefract and raced back in triumph would have been local men; they would have known Doncaster’s streets.