Peter Ransley - The King’s List

A hollow knocking came from the cell next door, and one of Luke’s fellow prisoners joined in. His voice was much more feeble but its import just as determined as they chanted that when they sang about the glories of the King, ‘the winds that curl the Floodes know no such liberty’.

I signalled to the gaoler. Far from stopping them, the sound of the key redoubled their defiant chanting of the final line. There was so little light from the barred window, I could see only a shape sprawled on a stone bench. As the gaoler opened the door further, the candles in a corridor sconce lit up his face. Few would have thought us father and son without the hook of the Stonehouse nose. There the resemblance ended. At seventeen, the fresh, tight curves of his good cheek held the lofty arrogance that only a privileged upbringing on an estate like Highpoint gives a man. The raw, rippled skin of his burned cheek, which at first had made him a withdrawn child, now only emphasised that absolute assurance, as he realised people often took it as a badge of the war he had never fought in.

Most people saw the same assurance in my face, but it was skin deep. Once I had believed in the republic as Luke believed in the King. I still did, but not with the enthusiasm of the child of the streets I had once been. Years of working with Cromwell, of looking for a form of government that would work without falling back on the army, had convinced me that power came first. If I looked in the mirror, which I seldom cared to, I saw a man who looked older than his thirty-five years, whose cheeks were rather too pink from sweet sack, and whose once fiery red hair was a dull copper streaked with grey.

The rush of relief when I saw that Luke was not only well, but apparently in rude health, was followed by anger both at his foolhardiness and my weakness in not leaving him to take his punishment. At first, with the gaoler blocking his view of me and Scogman, he did not see us.

Luke gave the gaoler a long, languid look and raised a declamatory hand. ‘When I think of my sweet King … a gaoler with his keys knows no such liberty!’

‘Well said, Luke!’ called the prisoner next door.

My anger was redoubled when the gaoler touched his forehead to Luke. ‘Beg your pardon, sir –’

I pushed him to one side. Luke stared at me as if I was an apparition, before turning the good side of his face away. It was a habit of his when he was with me. The muscles were more rigid on his scarred side and made his expression difficult to read.

‘Get up.’

Slowly he uncurled his legs and rose. He was an inch or two taller than me. I flung a nosegay at him. He caught it, then let it fall amongst the straw littering the floor.

‘Did you have anything with you when you were taken?’

When he did not answer, the gaoler said, ‘Packed and ready, sir. To be signed for. Thank you, sir!’

This when I tossed him a Cromwell, a half crown which he caught with the dexterity of a swift catching a fly, moving to bite it before his finger ran suspiciously over the edge to check its validity. It was the first coin to be milled at the edge against forgeries. It frustrated me beyond measure that from small innovations like this to large ones like the world’s first professional army, Cromwell had transformed the country in a way that the gentlemanly but hopeless and untrustworthy King Charles had never done, yet my son and his friends called Cromwell a devil and Charles a saint.

The light caught Cromwell’s head on the coin. Luke stared at it and found his voice. ‘Where are you taking me? The Tower?’

I only just stopped myself from smiling. One moment Luke frustrated me, the next he touched my heart. He lived in a world of fancy. I was about to tell him we were going home but Scogman got in first.

‘The axe is being sharpened at this very moment, Mr Luke.’

There was no love lost between them. Luke complained that Scogman was not a proper steward, for he could not write or add up, except in ways that suited him. In other words he was a thief. Not having served in the army, Luke did not realise that there were normal accounts and army accounts. I knew perfectly well what Scogman was doing. He did it out of habit, for the thrill of it, mostly for someone else, usually a woman he fancied. It was small stuff. At the same time he was ferociously loyal to me.

‘I want the same treatment as everyone else,’ Luke said.

‘This is not a game!’ I said. ‘Come.’

He knew that tone, that manner. Automatically, he began to follow me, stumbling against the piss-bucket. He almost immediately righted himself, but Scogman made a move to grab him and save him. Luke must have misinterpreted that as an attempt to frogmarch him out of the cell. He lashed out at Scogman, winding him. The bucket went over, spilling its contents over Scogman’s boots. No one was more conscious of his status than Luke. Now, in a blind rage that a servant he despised would dare to lay a hand on him, he aimed another blow. Scogman caught Luke’s flailing fist and twisted his arm behind his back.

‘Easy, Mr Luke, sir, easy,’ Scogman said.

This mixture of control and deference inflamed Luke even further. The more he struggled to get away, the more pain he inflicted on himself, but he would not give up.

‘Enough!’ I said. ‘Release him.’

Scogman did so. Luke staggered into the gaoler before sprawling against the wall, rubbing his arm, tears of humiliation pricking his eyes. I was tempted to leave him there and be done with it, but Anne would never forgive me. My wife found an excuse for his every fault.

‘Luke. Your mother is not well.’ I hated saying it but it was the easiest option and it was partly true. Anne was sick with worry about him. There was no one he cared about more than his mother. I was convinced that was the problem. She alone had brought him up, eschewing nurses when he was a baby. Even after the war they lived in the country, which they loved, while my work with Cromwell kept me in town.

Luke’s reaction was immediate. He forgot his humiliation in his concern for her, asking what was wrong. I would not answer, angry at both myself for my deception and at him that concern for his mother meant far more than any respect for me. But there was no more resistance, physical at least.

‘God bless the King in heaven!’ he shouted as we walked down the corridor.

‘And the King across the water!’ answered the man in the next cell.

Their cries were picked up by other prisoners. The shouts and the drumming on the cell doors could still be heard as our coach went off into the night.

The Perfect Marriage

Autumn 1659

The rebellion was soon put down. I brought Luke and Anne to London on the pretext that they would be safer with the guards I had there, but they saw it for what it was: a form of house arrest for Luke. I tried to make him see that there was no chance of the King returning. He could see what little support he had from the abject failure of the uprising. The army generals who were in control would eventually stop arguing and a new leader to replace Cromwell would be found. Then it would be business as usual.

He stood on the worn patch of the carpet in my study, where I had once stood as a rebellious bastard before Lord Stonehouse, and said nothing.

I tried reason. It was not his beliefs, I said. He was as entitled to them as I was to mine. If more people wanted a monarchy, it would return. But too many people had gained too much land during Cromwell’s reign to want the King back. That was why all the Oxfordshire gentry who had made promises before the rebellion had not lifted a finger to help him and his friends when they were in prison.

He stood fidgeting in his bucket boots and floppy linen, staring straight in front of him, rigid in silence.