Philippa Gregory: Virgin Earth

“Then you’re as wise as I.”

John pulled Caesar from the shafts of the cart, borrowed a saddle from Lambert’s groom and waited beside the company of Lambert’s horse for the few moments until the general came out of the house.

“What’s going on?” John asked one of the troopers.

“They’ve called out the other regiments against us,” the man said shortly. “It’s between our major general and the Members of Parliament. They’ve reneged on every promise they’ve ever given us, and when we protest they call it treason. Now they’ve gone to ground in the Houses of Parliament with two regiments thrown around it and the Parliamentary Horse Guards leading the defense and saying that we must disband. Telling us to throw down our arms as traitors. Us who beat the king for them, then beat the Scots for them, and then beat Charles Stuart for them, and only last month beat George Booth for them. Us, disband! And hand over the general too! So they can throw him into the Tower beside Booth who fought against us!”

“ And left the battlefield in a petticoat,” someone added to a rumble of laughter.

“And what can you do?” John asked. “They’re the Parliament, and if they’ve got the Horse Guards out…”

“It’s what he can do,” the trooper replied, nodding toward Lambert, who swung into the saddle and trotted down the road at the head of his troop.

“What can he do?” John asked.

The trooper grinned. “Anything he likes, is my guess.”

The troop fell in behind the general, bits jingling, hooves clattering on the dry road, and John, with a delicious sense that he should not be tagging on as a spectator, followed behind with Caesar pulling at the reins, his neck arched and tail held high at the prospect of action.

When they reached Scotland Yard at the side of the Palace of Whitehall he saw that the trooper was right, and his sense that he would have been safer to go straight home was right too. It was going to be an ugly scene, a pitched battle between the Parliamentary Horse Guards and Lambert’s regiments at the very gateway to the Houses of Parliament. John reined back Caesar, who pulled against the bit as if he too knew that fighting was likely and was ready for the charge.

“Halt!” commanded Lambert and his personal standard dipped to show the signal. The troop of horse halted with a clatter of hooves on the cobbles.

The regiment before the Houses of Parliament tightened their grip on their pikes, blew on the fuses of their muskets and waited for the order to fire. A horse in Lambert’s regiment moved restlessly against a too-tight rein, and the chink of the bit was very loud in the silence. There was a long pause as one English regiment eyed another and waited for the command to attack.

John could hear his breathing light and rapid as he sat in the saddle. Any moment he thought he would see the muskets lifted and hear the dreadful crack of their firing. There were probably cannons nearby too, and the Parliamentary Horse Guards had the advantage of being in defense, and near to the stout walls of Whitehall, while Lambert’s men were drawn up in the road.

There was a long, long pause as the two troops faced each other, then John Lambert slid from his saddle and dropped to the ground, his spurs ringing as they tapped the cobblestones. He tossed his bridle to his standard bearer and walked forward as if he were strolling in his orange garden. He left the sheltering ranks of his men, and out across the cobbled gulf which separated the two regiments, as if the men on the other side were not poised to take aim, as if they were not waiting for the order to shoot him down. He smiled at them as if they were his own regiment, his own trusted men. He smiled at them easily and pleasantly, as if he were glad to see them, as if he were greeting them as old friends.

“My God, what is he going to do?” John whispered to himself.

Lambert halted immediately before their commander and looked up at the officer high above him on the big horse, his hand ready-tightened on his sword ready to draw and sweep down in the killing blow. It was a big horse. The man was sixteen hands above Lambert, the general had to look upward, his eyes screwed up against the evening sunlight.

“Dismount!” Lambert said easily, almost conversationally. There was a moment’s pause. Soldiers in both troops held their breath to see what the outcome would be. The officer looked down at the unarmed man before him, Lambert smiled up at him. Then the officer dropped his reins and jumped down from the saddle.

At once there was a roar of approval from Lambert’s men and the Parliament guards broke ranks and trotted toward Lambert’s regiment to be greeted with smiles and handshakes and laughter. Lambert shook hands with the officer, exchanged a few brief words and then strolled back to his horse, swung into the saddle and then turned to face the men.

“Fall in,” he said pleasantly as if for a routine parade. He nodded to his standard bearer. “Take my compliments to the Members of the House of Commons and advise them that I have the keys to the House and they must leave. They are no longer welcome. The country will be ruled by a Committee of Safety. We are going to have justice and freedom in this country. And it starts now.”

Lambert had not allowed for General George Monck, out of touch in Scotland, and jealous as a sick dog of his charismatic rival. As soon as he heard of the triumph at Whitehall he sent word to London that as commander of the Parliamentary army in Scotland he did not accept the Committee of Safety and that he was declaring war, and marching south to restore the banned MPs.

“War?” Hester demanded. “But why?”

“He says he’s going to restore Parliament,” John said, reading the latest news-sheet.

“Then why did he not do it before?” Hester asked. “Why did he not declare war on Cromwell?”

“Because this is a man who thinks he can be Cromwell,” John said astutely. “He thinks he can put himself at the head of the army and in a little while command Parliament as well.”

“Shall we box up the rarities?” Hester asked John wearily.

John thought for a moment. “Not yet,” he said. “But we may have to. General Monck’s troops learned their discipline burning out royalists in Scotland.”

“He’s for Parliament. He fought against Charles Stuart,” she said. “Why can he not allow Lambert and the Committee of Safety to bring in their reforms? Why cannot people in this country be given a chance to have the government and the justice they deserve?”

“He believes in nothing, he’s a professional soldier,” John said bitterly. “He fought for King Charles before he saw that Cromwell would win and so changed sides. Then he saw what Cromwell did. He saw one man come to power, nearly to kingship at the head of the army. He won’t trust John Lambert not to do the same. And he’ll be thinking there’s a chance for him.”

“John Lambert is the only man you could trust with that power,” Hester said. “He’s never broken his word, not once, not in all these difficult times.”

“And he paid us for the daffodils that I took to him that day,” John said. “I hope to God he is able to plant them.”

Lambert never did plant the daffodils that John brought him. In planting time in November, he obeyed his orders from the Committee of Safety to protect England against General Monck and marched north to meet him at the head of eight thousand men.

He would not attack at once. General Monck had been a comrade in arms, and they were both parliamentarians. Lambert believed, trustingly enough, that it must be a misunderstanding. He wrote to Monck to try to explain, to try to convince him of the plans of the Committee of Safety, to persuade him that at last England had a chance to make a free and just society.