Traitor's Field (23 page)

Today, where they watched him dine they will watch him die. His death will end their suffering, heal their wounds, and purge their sins. It is his last touch of divinity, and what is a King for if not to live the life of his whole people in public and splendour? In a moment or two, he will step out through one of the impressive windows onto a makeshift platform, to a block of wood, to a man, to an axe. There is some uncertainty about the identity of the man; the axe is real enough.

A voice. I must move. If I move forwards perhaps I will content them more; I must try to content them more. Honestly, gentlemen, I am a man who desires you no inconvenience. 

I am to step through this window and die. Will there be no more demands beyond that? What a sweetness, that I may at last satisfy this insatiable demand of me, this constant strife of fifty years, that I must always conform. How much must I do to keep you happy? Always there is someone, some voice, some requirement to conform, some inconvenience, some intrusion of other men into my world. Was it so much to ask that I could be alone and at peace? Lord, will I be alone and at peace?

The window is one blaze of light. Is this death, oh God, am I coming nigh to you at last? Accept my soul, oh God, for it is a soul that desires nothing but your love and I have fought for nothing but this, and into this golden glow I offer myself, oh God, receive me I beseech you, take me from this world for I am blithe to come to you.

But still I see my foot upon the boards. A little foot, I was known for a dancer, in Madrid they clapped me once, still a buckle and a shoe and this corrupted world. I live yet!

I have not escaped. I am still in the nightmare. How vast is this place, how infinite this multitude? They are about to laugh, they must surely laugh at such a tiny man on this vast platform.

I am going into the light and I leave behind me this darkness, and with my last breath I curse you foul multitude that you may all for your many torments of me know nothing but darkness and blood for the eternity that is left to you for you have been nothing but cruel to me and I tried so hard.

It is very simple. I need not worry about going astray in front of these people. When I move my hands forward, the axe will fall.

My hands are small. Henry: you have a girl’s hands. These delicate hands will kill me. God has forbidden self-slaughter, and I am forced to break his sacred law. Oh Christ, is this the final torment, that I must cause my own death? That cannot be fair, that surely is not fair, that a man may damn himself against his will. Am I never to be given a chance of purity, am I never to be granted peace? I was forced to betray my friends to the mob to win support, I was forced to raise armies to fight for peace; and now I must damn myself to escape this hell.

It is very simple, the sign to the headsman. I have lived a life of ritual and command. When I move my hands forward, the axe will fall.

All the people of England are here to watch me. I have asked them to believe in me, and now they have come to see for themselves that I am real. And now likewise they will see that I am dead. If these are still the people of England, then I am still the King of England. Is this my last privilege, the uniqueness of my humiliation, the public destruction of me? My father the King: let your countenance smell of courage, Charles. But my countenance has never but betrayed me, father. It is no countenance for a King, nor yet for any littler courage. Your Majesty, I have dreamed for all my life that once you would look at me with love and pride. Father, what would I not do for your love? Ask me anything. Ask me anything but to be brave in front of this multitude.

What? Why do you stare? What more must I do to satisfy you? Why this sudden silence from the mob? Oh God, I must speak, they will not be satisfied with me unless I speak. God, why will you not bring me into your light already? God, grant me your peace, for I am full done with this world and I neither yearn nor care for one crumb of it, my God, I am your faithful servant and I know that in your mercy you alone will grant me grace for my loyalty.

On the scaffold, at last, Charles Stuart did not stutter.

When I move my hands forward, the axe will fall. I must not get it wrong. My cloak— Who is— How dare— But of course they must take my cloak. And today I must wear this foolish cap, because I am a fool and I must look a fool, and I must satisfy them and so my hair must not impede the blade. Henrietta loved me for my hair. She was wont to stroke it. But that was not in this life, I fancy.

I have never appeared so bare in front of other men. But shoes and hose and breeches and a shirt. My journey down from majesty must be seen also in my dress. Two shirts – why? This morning, of course. Being dressed for the last time. The last. The last, the last. And which shirt will your Majesty wear? I shall wear – but what will happen to the other? It is mine! Christ’s garments were torn by the soldiers. My shirt will immediately be stolen, even while I live. None shall have it. I shall wear both.

I must keep moving, or they will be angry. The hands, forward. Oh God, I am your faithful servant. The block. Oh God, I am your faithful servant. The block. Oh God, grant me dignity at this last. Oh God, grant me the littlest pain that my faults have deserved. The block. I kneel before you, my father, I am blithe to come to you. Receive me oh God for I am thrust out into the void and I trust nothing but your arms outstretched to receive me. Father, why will not you love me? Father, will you love me once merely? The block. My hands, my little hands, Henry, when I stretch forth my hands the axe – reaching for the block – that is not the movement! I am not stretching forth my hands to die – will I never be understood in my life? Oh God receive your frail and humble servant, for I am yours alone. The block. I reach for – I will not touch the block for it is too solid and I am melting away into the light at last, oh God grant me the light for all I have done was in the hope of your love. The block. I bow my head before you oh God, oh God my father will you bless me? The block looms in my eyes, this clumsy lump of the world, the cuts, the blood, oh God my neck will not touch the block because it is too solid and I am light alone, oh God unto your arms I offer my sinful heart, oh God my father will you receive me, oh God my father grant that once I may satisfy you, oh God my father love me I beg of you, I open my heart, I open my shoulders, my arms are reaching for you God, oh God my father will you receive me, shoulders, arms, elbows, hands are moving, I am reaching for you oh God my father the light.

T
he news of the execution of the King reached Astbury House on galloping hooves, drumming up the driveway and stuttering to a halt at the front door. It passed by hand from courier to servant and servant to master, who received it red-eyed and heavily wrapped against the February morning, while the courier trudged round to the back of the house to beg some breakfast, breath hoarse and boots creaking on the frosted earth.

Anthony Astbury received regular letters of news from London, and as usual his daughters heard the world from his lips, his eyes blinking tears at this final affront to the dignity of the society he knew.

Mary and Rachel stopped listening after the first sentences, and stared at each other. A King was the pinnacle of the structure of the world, the keystone of its proper order. If a King could be killed, then the world was now without margins. It knew no bound or restraint, and anything was become possible. Without margins, the world above them was chaos; without margins, their world was bottomless.

Rachel Astbury stared hard at the table, trying to believe in a spoon, a beaker and half a loaf of bread. Through the morning windows, the world was blank white.

A life: the Reverend Roger Kempe was born in Witham, in Essex, and baptized there in February 1604. Little is known of his time as an undergraduate at Emmanuel College in Cambridge in the mid-1620s, although concern is expressed in one record that he had ‘fallen to the company of critical boisterous men, and to loose practices’ – with the implication that this referred to religious more than social habits. By 1630 Kempe was a vicar in a comfortable living near Bedford, known among the local gentry as a good companion, of essentially conservative outlook. He gained a certain notoriety as the probable author of a series of sermons published in 1637,
The Lord’s Realm is a Garden; or, The Right Husbandry of the Kingdom of Earth
, which seem to criticize on behalf of local interests the impositions of Charles I’s autocratic government.

In 1640 he was advanced to the living of St Matthew’s Church in Northampton – almost certainly thanks to the influence of the Bishop of Oxford, since the Bishop of Peterborough, in whose diocese Northampton sits, was suspicious of Kempe but at that time politically weak. Despite his previous apparent criticisms of the King’s rule, what survives of Kempe’s preaching and writing from the first half of the Civil War reflects moderate Royalism – whatever the King’s faults, he did not think it lawful to fight him. But in 1647, and certainly by 1648, Kempe’s attitude swung significantly against the King: in his infrequent sermons he focused increasingly on the proper obligations a ruler owed to God; after the defeat of Hamilton’s invading Royalist force at Preston in August 1648 he preached on the plagues of Egypt and the divine destruction of the forces of Sennacherib before Jerusalem. He may have been influenced by Charles I’s desperate manoeuvrings to save his throne, but it seems significant that at the same time Kempe was given the entirely nominal post of Chaplain to the County Committee of Northamptonshire – very much part of the new administration.

Finally, during the winter of 1648–9 and the King’s trial, three sermons were published in pamphlet form anonymously, but with Kempe widely suspected of having been the author.
The Lord’s Justice, Being a Description of the True Duties of the People of God
was an explicit denunciation of Charles Stuart’s deceits and sins, and a theological justification of the judicial process against him.

On the evening of February 5th, 1649, Richard Kempe attended a small and convivial supper with several of the influential men of Northampton, returning home after his household had gone to bed. On the morning of February 6th, Kempe’s servant found his master seated at his study table, his throat cut and a blooded knife on the floor beside him.

It looked, of course, like a suicide. But there was surely no cause. And there had been strangers in the town. Such are the times.

Sir Mortimer Shay disappeared into the Welsh hills with the old feeling of release. His road dropped discreetly into forgotten valleys, wound past a ruined castle, twisted and split, opened out into fields, was lost on grey rock slopes, and found again by a wood. At last, the morning sky fragile over the squat peaks, he came home to the rusty brick manor under the hillside.

It was morning, so she was in the garden. He saw her first through the bean frames, and then bent over a line of colewort shoots. Darkest blue working dress, and a shawl of the same. As she stood, her back to him, he remembered the turns and slopes of shoulders and hips, like the hills. Under the cap, silver in the darkness of her hair.

His boots crunched on the path’s stones and she stopped still. The night-blue shoulders tensed. Then she turned, her eyes closed for a moment, and they opened again and she breathed out a sigh that seemed to have been held for a year. He moved closer, and stood over her.

She raised one hand, and pressed the palm against his old leathery chest, fingers splayed as if to measure or draw something out.

Then with both hands she held the sides of his chest, gripped the arms, the shoulders, the wrists. She reached up, and cupped her palms under his scaly jaw.

Shay stood placid throughout. Now he bent to her, and placed a kiss on her lips.

‘Hallo Margaret,’ he said. She nodded slightly, and took in another breath, feeling it fill every corner of her. Rightness. She put her hand in his great paw, and led him into the house.