Peter Ransley - Cromwell’s Blessing

Cromwell lived in the same lane and I screwed up my courage to go and see him, but was told he was ill, with an abscess in the head which would not clear. The news made me even more disconsolate.

‘You are not yourself, sir,’ said Jane, the housekeeper.

I tried to laugh it off. ‘Exactly, Jane! I am not myself. I must find myself! Where am I?’

Was I with the sullen resentful men, or was I, could I ever be, with people like Challoner?

‘Where am I?’ I said to my son Luke, who, when I had arrived, had stared in wonder at this strange man tumbling from a horse into his mother’s arms. ‘Am I under the chair, Luke? No! The table?’

Luke ran to Jane, covering his face in her skirts. ‘Come, sir!’ she laughed. ‘Tom is your father!’

‘Fath-er?’

It grieved me that I had spent half my life finding out who my father was, and now Luke did not know his. He had dark curls, in which I fancied there was a trace of red, and the Stonehouse nose; what in my plebeian days I called hooked, but Lord Stonehouse called aquiline. Although Luke’s grandfather doted on him, he treated the boy very sternly. Perhaps because of that, Luke often ran to him, as he did to the ostler, Adams, who would level a bitten fingernail at him and order him to keep clear of his horses, or he would not answer for the consequences. Luke would run away yelling, then creep quietly back for another levelled nail before at last Adams would snatch him up screaming and plonk him in the saddle. I felt a stab of petty resentment he would not play these games with me, and went upstairs to the nursery to find my daughter Elizabeth.

She was a few months old. Anne had been bitterly disappointed she was not a boy. It was a rare week which did not see at least one child buried in our old church of St Mark’s and Anne wanted as many male heirs as possible to reinforce Lord Stonehouse’s promise I should inherit.

Lord Stonehouse’s first son, Richard, had gone over to the Royalists, and when Lord Stonehouse had declared I would inherit I had fondly imagined it was because of my own merit. In part, perhaps it was. But it was also because he had been discovered helping Richard escape to France. Declaring me as his heir not only saved Lord Stonehouse’s skin. It enabled him to back both horses: whoever ruled, it was the estate that mattered, keeping and expanding the magnificent seat at Highpoint and preserving the Stonehouse name at the centre of power.

Elizabeth, little Liz, did not look a Stonehouse. In my present, rebellious mood, she was my secret companion. Or was it weapon?

‘Liz Neave,’ I whispered to her, giving her the name I had grown up with when I was a bastard in Poplar, and knew nothing of the Stonehouses. She had scraps of hair, still black, but I fancied I could see a reddish tinge. Her nose was not aquiline, or hooked, but a delicious little snub. Anne called her fractious, but her crying reminded me of my own wildness.

When I held out my finger she stopped crying, gripping it with her hand so tightly, I could not stop laughing. Her lips, blowing little bubbles of spit, formed their first laugh. I swept her up, and hugged her and kissed her. Fractious? She was not fractious! I rocked her in my arms until she fell asleep.

I went to our old church, St Mark’s, to see the minister, Mr Tooley, about Liz’s baptism. Anne wanted it done in the old way, with water from the font in which she had been baptised, and godparents. Mr Tooley still did it, although the Presbyterians, who were tightening their grip on the Church, frowned on both.

The church was empty, apart from an old man in a front pew, his clasped hands trembling in some private grief. The familiar pew drew out of me my first prayer for a long time. I feared Scogman was dead. I prayed for forgiveness for my evil temper. For Scogman’s soul. He was a thief, but he stole for others, as much, if not more than for himself. There was much good in him, he was kind and cheered others – by the time I had finished he was near sainthood and I was the devil incarnate. One thing came to me. I determined to find Scogman’s wife and children and do what I could for them. I swore I would never again let my black temper gain control of me.

The man rose at the same time as I did. It was my old master, Mr Black, Anne’s father. I had never before seen tears on his face. He drew his sleeve over his face when he saw me.

‘Tom … my lord …’

I wore a black velvet cloak edged with silver. My short sword had a silver pommel and my favourite plumed hat was set at a rakish angle.

‘No, no, master … not lord yet … and always Tom to thee.’

I embraced him and asked him what was the matter. He told me he might be suspended from the Lord’s Table.

‘Thrown out of the Church? Why?’

He told me the Presbyterians were setting up a council of lay elders. The most virulent of the elders, who morosely policed moral discipline in the parish, was none other than Mr Black’s previous journeyman printer, my old enemy Gloomy George.

I could not believe it. We had fought a long, bloody war for freedom and tolerance, and what we had at the end of it was Gloomy George. I began to laugh at the absurdity of it, but stopped when I saw what distress Mr Black was in. The Mr Black I knew would have laughed too, but this one trembled in bewilderment so much that I sat him down.

I could see how the church had changed. Mr Tooley had allowed a few images, like a picture of the Trinity, because they comforted older members of the congregation. Now it was stripped so bare and stark even the light seemed afraid to enter. Mr Black said that when Mr Tooley used to preach, stern as he was, you left counting your blessings. Now, with the Presbyterians breathing down his neck, his sermons left you counting your sins.

‘But what sin could he possibly find in you?’ I cried.

‘Nehemiah.’

‘Your apprentice? He is as devout as you are.’

‘More so. But he has become a Baptist, and refuses to come here.’

‘If he refuses you, he has broken his bond. You could dismiss him.’

Mr Black’s watery eyes flashed with some of his old fire. ‘He is a good apprentice. And he is devout. I will not dismiss a man for his beliefs.’

We sat in silence for a while. He stared at the blank wall where the Trinity had been. All his life he had been a staunch member of the congregation and the community. He was as responsible for Nehemiah as a father for his children. But the Presbyterians condemned all sects like Baptists as heresies and unless Mr Black brought Nehemiah back into the fold, he would be refused the sacraments. Friends and business would melt away. Even threatened with hell, he stuck stubbornly to his old beliefs in loyalty and duty.

‘How long has Nehemiah’s indenture to run?’

‘Nine months.’

I pretended to calculate, then frowned. ‘You are surely mistaken, master. It ends next week.’ I stared at him, keeping my face straight. ‘Once he’s indentured he can leave. Get another job.’

He returned my stare with interest. He needed no abacus or record where figures were concerned. ‘I don’t know what you’re suggesting,’ he snapped, ‘but I know when he’s indentured. To the day.’ He picked up his stick and I flinched, an apprentice again, fearing a beating. He limped out of the church and stood among the gravestones as if he was gazing into the pit.

‘The Stationery Office has his full record,’ he said.

‘Records can be lost. Once he has completed his apprenticeship he is not your responsibility. Is he good enough to be indentured?’

‘Better than most journeymen.’

‘Well then. When he is indentured I can help him get work elsewhere and you can take on another apprentice.’

‘It is most irregular,’ he muttered.