Iain Pears - An Instance of the Fingerpost

“Oh,” he said quietly. “Yes. Of course I remember him. But I thought you must have meant someone else—I never harmed your father. I tried to at one stage, of course; he was one of the handful of the king’s servants who was not a fool.”

“That was why you destroyed him. You couldn’t catch him, or do battle with him, so you poisoned men’s minds against him with lies and clawed him down that way.”

“You hold me responsible?”

“You were.”

“Very well, then. If you say so,” he said calmly, and lapsed into silence.

Again he had wrong-footed me. I don’t know what I expected—either a vehement denial or an outrageous justification of his deeds. I certainly did not anticipate him not seeming to care one way or the other.

“Defend yourself,” I said hotly.

“With what? I do not have your knife or your strength, so if you want to kill me, you will not find it a difficult task.”

“I mean defend what you did.”

“Why? You have already decided that I am guilty, so I fear that my feeble replies will not sway you.”

“That’s not fair,” I cried, realizing as I spoke that this was the sort of childish remark a man like my father would never have made.

“Few things are,” he said.

“My father was no traitor,” I said.

“That may be the case.”

“Are you saying you didn’t destroy him? You expect me to believe that?”

“I haven’t said anything. But since you ask, no. I did not. Of course, I have little influence over whether you believe me.”

Later in life—too late to be of use to me then—I understood how John Thurloe had risen to such an eminence that he was the one person in the land who dared contradict Cromwell. You punched, Thurloe rose up again, sweetly reasonable and soft-voiced. You kept on punching, he kept on getting up, always gentle and never losing his temper, until you felt ashamed of yourself and listened to him instead. Then, when you were off balance, he simply persuaded you around to his point of view. He never thrust himself forward, never forced his opinions on you but, sooner or later, the anger and opposition exhausted themselves by dashing against his persistence.

“You did it to others, and you expect me to believe that you didn’t to my father?”

“Which others?”

“You didn’t say he was innocent. You had the chance.”

“It was not my job to ensure that my enemies were strong and unified. Besides, who would have believed me? Do you think a certificate of honesty from me would have cleared his reputation? If the king’s party wished to tear into themselves and chase ghosts, what was that to me? The weaker they were, the better.”

“So weak that the king is on his throne and you are here in obscurity,” I sneered, conscious not only that his arguments were good, but also that I had never even considered them before, so clear and obvious had his guilt appeared to me.

“Only because the Protector died, and he thought…Well, no matter,” he said softly. “There was a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum. Charles didn’t win his throne back; he was sucked back by forces far greater than he could have mustered on his own. And it remains to be seen whether he is strong enough to keep his seat.”

“You must have been delighted,” I said with heavy sarcasm.

“Delighted?” he repeated thoughtfully. “No; of course not. I had worked for ten years to make England stable and free from tyranny and it was no pleasure to see that blown away on the winds. But I was not as upset as you might imagine. The armies were on the march, and the factions only Cromwell could have controlled were forming again. It was the king or war. I did not oppose Charles. And I could have done so, you know. Had I so wished, Charles would have been in his grave for years by now.”

He said it in such a calm and matter-of-fact way that for a moment I didn’t grasp the full horror of what he was saying. Then I gasped. This little man had gravely decided, as a matter of policy, whether his rightful monarch, anointed by God, would live or die. Charles, by grace of Thurloe, King of England. And I knew that he was saying nothing more than the truth—I was sure that he and the Protector had considered such a course. If they had rejected it, it was not because they recoiled from such a crime—they had committed so many already—but because it was not to their convenience.

“But you didn’t.”

“No. The Commonwealth acted within the law; and suffered gravely as a result. How much easier it would have been if the elder Charles had succumbed to a mysterious illness and died, with our hands clean in public, however shamefully we had behaved in secret. But we tried him, and executed him…”

“Murdered him, you mean.”

“…and executed him in full public view, never once seeking to hide what we were doing. The same goes with the other traitors—loyal patriots, I suppose they now are—who were caught. Name me one who was murdered in secret, without being publicly tried.”

Everyone knew there had been thousands; but as they had been done away with secretly, naturally I did not know their names, and I told him so.

“I see. So I killed countless people, but you cannot name a single one. Are you intended for the law, Mr. Prestcott?”

I said that, due to the family misfortunes, I was indeed.

“I wondered. I was a lawyer myself, you know, before I took to public service. I very much hope your family fortunes mend, as I do not think you will be a great adornment to the profession. You do not present a very good case.”

“We are not in a court of law here.”

“No,” he agreed. “You are in my parlor. But if you wish, you may turn it into a courtroom, and you may make your first speech. I will answer, and you can then make up your mind. Come now; it is a handsome offer. You get to be prosecution, judge, jury and (if you win your case) executioner. Such an opportunity comes very infrequently to a man of your age.”

For some reason, I didn’t even question him anymore. It was too late now for the bold action I had originally intended. I now wanted him to acknowledge I was right, and hear him admit that he deserved my punishment. That was why I fell in with him—and why I still think that he was wrong. I would have made a good lawyer, even though I am profoundly grateful I was not reduced to such a state.

“Well,” I began, “the thing is…”

“No, no, no,” he interrupted me gently. “We are in a court, sir. Your presentation is a disgrace. Never begin a speech with, ‘Well, the thing is…’ Do they not teach rhetoric in the university anymore? Now, begin properly, always making sure you address the judge respectfully—even when he’s an old fool—and the jury as though you are sure they are a benchful of Solomons, even if you’ve spent the morning bribing them. Start again. And don’t be shy; you can’t be shy if you want to win.”

“My lord, members of the jury,” I began. Even after all these years, I am still amazed by the way I meekly did as instructed.

“Much better,” he said. “Go on. But try to pitch your voice a little more effectively.”

“My lord, members of the jury,” I said heavily and with some irony, for I did not wish it thought that I gave way to this play-acting without some resentment. “You sit here to judge one of the most evil crimes in the history of mankind; for the defendant before you is charged not with simple theft or the murder of a man committed in hot blood, but with the cold and calculating destruction of a gentleman, too good and too honorable to be harmed in any other way.

“This gentleman, Sir James Prestcott, cannot speak to tell you of the injuries done to him. His family must do that for him in the traditional manner, so that his cries for justice from beyond the grave can be assuaged, and his soul can sleep in peace.”