A Corruptible Crown Page 2

  Jamie wiped his face again.

  ‘I thought you should hear this from kin,’ said Robert, ‘and not months hence from a stranger.’

  ‘Best if I never heard at all,’ Jamie croaked, ‘but – thank you, Rob.’

  Robert’s shoulders slumped, and he sighed deeply. ‘There is much we need to speak of, Jamie, but I’m hungry and weary to the bone. Barker rode hard. Have you lodgings?’

  Jamie had a place in a nearby farmhouse. He led Robert there, agreed with the farmwife for some food for his brother, then went back to the camp to fetch Robert’s horse. It seemed that Robert had arranged for it to be stabled along with that of his travelling companion Barker, but Jamie had no confidence that the Army would respect the property of a civilian visitor. Horses were always in short supply, and Robert’s mare was a fine beast. The salvage teams were straggling back to camp now that the tide was coming in: he wanted to get the mare out of the Army picket line before anyone took a fancy to her.

  He was leading the mare back through the camp when the captain spotted him. ‘Ah, Cyclops!’ he shouted.

  Jamie stopped. The nickname ‘Cyclops’ hadn’t been the captain’s invention, but a witticism of the Commissary-General’s staff, passed on down the line, like Jamie himself. Jamie didn’t know Latin, but he’d gathered that one of the pagan gods had had a smithy manned by one-eyed monsters. He hated the nickname, but answered to it.

  The captain came over. He was a short, round-faced man a little younger than Jamie, energetic and competent. ‘I hear you’ve suffered a loss,’ he said, peering up at him doubtfully.

  Barker must have told him. Jamie glanced around for the lieutenant, but didn’t see him. ‘Aye,’ he agreed heavily. ‘My brother Nicholas is dead.’

  ‘Fighting for the malignants!’ the captain said wonderingly. ‘Strange, that.’

  ‘Not so strange,’ Jamie said wearily. ‘Sir. There must be a score of others even in this camp with one kinsman or other who sided with the King.’

  The captain shrugged: yes, but they weren’t Levellers. The gulf between King and Parliament might be deep, but that between the King and The Agreement of the People had become unbridgeable. ‘I’d give you space to mourn,’ he said, ‘only we’re pressed for time. This messenger, Lieutenant Barker – he tells me he means to go on to Pembroke and be back within the week. He says that when he returns to General Ireton, he wants to report that the great guns have been salvaged and are on their way. You truly grieve for this malignant brother?’ he added in surprise.

  ‘Aye,’ Jamie said shortly.

  The captain grimaced. ‘Well. Blood binds, I suppose, even where spirit sunders. Grieving or not, Mr Hudson, you must back to work. What are you doing with that horse?’

  Jamie patted the mare’s sweaty neck. ‘Stabling her. She’s my brother’s.’

  ‘And you’ve inherited her? She’s a fine animal!’

  Jamie shook his head. ‘My other brother. Who came to me with the news. He’s weary from the journey, so I said I would see her stabled.’

  ‘Ah.’ The captain appraised him a moment, then decided not to make an issue of it. He, too, patted the mare, then ran an appreciative hand down her foreleg. ‘A fine horse!’ He looked up, frowning a little: it was a better horse than he’d expect of a blacksmith’s brother. Jamie understood his surprise, but didn’t explain. If his fellows in the camp knew that he was a gentleman’s son they’d expect him to be generous with money – and he didn’t have any.

  ‘Well, see to her, and then go to your work!’ ordered the captain. ‘Barker also said that when he goes back to the Commissary-General, he means to take you with him. He says by the time he returns from Pembroke we’ll have no more need of your services. I hope he may be right!’

  That was unexpected. The image of his beautiful young wife smiled up into his mind’s eye, and suddenly his heart was racing. ‘Will he go through London?’ he asked eagerly.

  The captain shrugged. ‘He said that he left General Ireton in Canterbury – the rebels there have surrendered to him, God be praised! But where Ireton will be when you reach him, who knows? This new war blows about like sparks in the wind. Who knows where it will flare up next?’

  He left the mare at the farmhouse, promising the farmwife that Robert would pay for her fodder, then went back to the smithy. Without the need to concentrate on the hot iron, he would have had to contemplate the horror of Nick’s death – that, and struggle to damp down the hope of seeing his wife soon. If he could tell her about Nick, the horror would be bearable – but he doubted very much that General Ireton would be in London.

  He drew a glowing brace out of the fire and began to punch another hole in it. The sooner he and the Army did their work, the sooner this bloody, unnatural war would be over – and the sooner Jamie Hudson could go home to his wife.

  ‘Your hosts tell me that you are the best of a bad lot,’ Robert told Jamie.

  It was dusk – a slow June twilight – and they were sitting in the farmyard after supper. The two other soldiers billeted at the house were playing nine-men’s morris with stones on a board scratched into the mud the other side of the yard. Jamie glanced to see whether they’d overheard, but neither of them looked up.

  ‘It’s the free quarter,’ he replied softly. ‘The fellows here are good enough men – better than many – but our hosts aren’t rich. Three extra mouths to feed are a burden. They feel we ought to be working for our keep. They object to me least, because I mend tools for them.’

  Robert grunted. The Army’s use of ‘free quarter’ – billeting men in civilian households without payment – was a source of ill feeling in most parts of England, but not of immediate interest. His attention was caught more by his brother’s mending of tools. ‘I was surprised when I heard you were a blacksmith again,’ he said. ‘Your friend that writ us said you’d lost your trade together with your fingers. He begged us to send money.’

  Robert’s voice was flat. The family had sent money – that now-stopped allowance – and now he was wondering if they’d been tricked. Jamie looked down at his hands – the good left and the half-iron right. Then he undid the catch on the iron brace and slipped the half-hand out. He showed his brother the mutilated thumb and two missing fingers. Robert’s nose wrinkled in revulsion, and Jamie dropped the hand in his lap again. ‘I thought I had lost my trade,’ he said quietly. ‘I lived on your money for more than a year. But last winter Lucy pointed out I still had the better part of the hand.’ He moved the stump of his thumb back and forth. ‘She told me I could make myself some device to supply my lack, if I would but give over wallowing in brandy and self-pity.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘What could I do after that but try again?’

  Robert frowned. ‘Lucy,’ he repeated, with distaste. ‘The woman you married.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And the wench is with child?’

  Jamie sat up straight. ‘What? When did you hear that? I’ve heard nothing of it! Did you visit her in London?’

  Robert made an impatient gesture. ‘Why should you have made such haste to marry the slut, if you hadn’t got her with child? Our sisters have all been weeping to think what sort of creature they must call “sister”.’

  Jamie stared, then said with quiet ferocity, ‘My wife is no slut! She is a brave honest woman, daughter of a freehold farmer from Leicestershire and niece of a London mercer! I was in haste to marry her because I feared that some other might seize on her if I did not.’

  Robert gave a ‘Huh!’ of surprise. After a moment, he added, ‘But your letter said nothing of a dowry!’

  Jamie grimaced. ‘Her family suffered great losses in the war. Most of her dowry was spent to mend them.’

  Robert frowned in puzzlement. ‘She’s an heiress, then?’

  ‘Nay!’ Jamie exclaimed, impatiently now. ‘Even if you have no use for beauty or wits, Rob, you must be aware that others do! Mistress Wentnor had already refused one proposal of marriage, and that from a man with property, t
wo good hands and a handsome face. I have no doubt there would have been more, for she’s a bright light men love to look upon. Her father chanced to be in London when I was released and he was willing to give his consent, so I seized my opportunity. I was afraid that if I let it slip, she’d change her mind. I’m no great catch, Rob, with this face and hand and not money enough to buy a ring for her finger at the wedding.’

  He remembered his wife on their wedding day. It had been a dark day early in January, with no flowers to be had, and the church had been a Puritan one her family favoured, bare and austere. Her ordinary russet gown had been tricked out with a few snippets of pink silk, and her dark hair crowned only with a chaplet of rosemary. She had shone, he thought, like the sun in winter, more dazzling in the world’s bleakness.

  ‘She could have done much better,’ he said, with a pang of shame. ‘I could not, though I wed the richest maid in England.’

  ‘And she’s not with child?’ asked Robert in confusion.

  Jamie reviewed the conversation in his mind, and reluctantly gave up the idea that Robert had any information at all about Lucy. He told himself he was relieved – what would his wife do, on her own in London with a new baby? – and pushed aside the way his heart had stuttered at the prospect of a child smiling up at him from his wife’s arms.

  ‘She would certainly have writ to tell me if she was,’ he told Robert coldly.

  ‘She can write?’ Robert asked in surprise.

  ‘Rob,’ Jamie said in exasperation, ‘I met her working on a printing press! Her father’s a yeoman with forty acres freehold. He’s a godly man: of course he had his daughter taught to read her Bible!’

  This, he could see, impressed Robert. A yeoman wasn’t a gentleman – of course not! – but freehold property was the next best thing, and forty acres was a big freeholding. ‘Well,’ said Robert, after a reflective pause. ‘This is better than we feared!’

  Jamie gave him a look of dislike. ‘What, you thought I’d pledged myself to some slut I met while drunk in the London gutter?’

  Robert didn’t reply, which meant yes. ‘You should not have married without Father’s blessing, but it’s better than we feared,’ he said instead. He studied Jamie thoughtfully. ‘I gathered from the Commissary-General’s staff that the Army thinks highly of your skill, too.’

  Jamie wished the Army thought less of his skill: he could have hoped then for release.

  ‘That’s to your credit,’ Robert decided. ‘Though blacksmithing’s no trade for a gentleman.’

  ‘Good enough for a gentleman’s third son,’ Jamie replied sourly. ‘Or so everyone said at the time.’ His father had been unwilling to spend what was needed to get him into a more gentlemanly profession. Robert had been to Cambridge, and Nick had been apprenticed to a merchant, but a smithy had been reckoned good enough for George Hudson’s rebellious third son. That still rankled – even though Jamie liked his trade.

  ‘You’re a gentleman’s second son now,’ Robert said quietly. ‘And likely heir to the estate.’

  Shocked, Jamie inspected his brother’s face. ‘You’re the heir, Rob, and you’ve a fine son of your own!’

  ‘Georgie died two years ago,’ Robert said flatly.

  Jamie gulped. Georgie had been a noisy five-year-old when he saw him last; he’d assumed the boy was now ten or eleven and at school. ‘God have mercy!’ he said. ‘Rob, I’m sorry; I didn’t know.’

  ‘He was fishing at Carr Dyke,’ Robert said slowly, ‘and his line caught on a snag. He waded out to free it and cut his foot on something in the water. He came home limping but happy enough – proud of his catch, in fact; we all ate fish for supper. The cut, though, the cut on his foot – it went bad. It swelled, and he took a fever from it. By the time we called the surgeon it was too late: the infection had gone up his leg to his groin. He died in his mother’s arms. She shut up the nursery after.’

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Jamie said again helplessly. ‘I didn’t know!’

  ‘Aye, for you’ve had naught to do with us for three years, Jamie!’ Robert said, with sudden anger. ‘Six years, I might say, since we’ve had precious little news of you ever since you joined the rebels! A most unbrotherly silence!’

  Jamie raised his hands, the good one and the bad. ‘I’m sorry, Rob! But I would have wrote more, if I’d dared! Surely you remember that Father forbade me to write to him or to enter his presence again unless it was to tell him that I’d returned to what he called my “duty”?’

  Robert glared. ‘Aye. And why shouldn’t you have yielded to him? What have you gained from your soldiering for Parliament? Scars and maiming and the need to serve or go to prison! It was a bad cause from the beginning!’

  ‘I thought the liberty of freeborn men a good cause.’

  Robert made a noise of disgust. ‘The King was high-handed, I’ll grant it! He pushed his prerogative too far. But he’d already conceded most of what Parliament wanted before the war broke out!’

  ‘He never “conceded” any power that would let Parliament hold him to his promises, though! That he refused absolutely!’

  ‘He is God’s anointed! Such rebellion cannot be justified in the eyes of Heaven! And look, your Parliament’ – Robert spat the word with disgust – ‘has become more high-handed and tyrannical than ever King Charles was!’

  ‘Hush!’ said Jamie, with another glance at his fellow-soldiers. It was growing too dark now for them to play their game, and they were getting ready to go in.

  ‘He can rail against Parliament as much as he likes!’ one of them called back cheerfully. He dusted off his knees, grinning. ‘Greedy rogues and lying knaves, all of them! God keep you!’

  He and his friend went into the farmhouse. ‘You’re in luck that he missed your praise of the King,’ Jamie said soberly. ‘He would have taken it as licence to plunder you. He’s one of those who want the King’s head.’

  The King had been Parliament’s prisoner for nearly three years now. There had at first been hopes that he would agree to one of the new constitutional settlements offered to him. Parliament still hoped for that, even though the King had raised up a second war.

  Robert peered at him through the dusk. ‘I’d heard that was a common desire, in your Army. You don’t share it?’

  Jamie sighed. ‘Rob, I am sick of war, and I don’t believe we’ll ever have peace as long as Charles wears the crown. I don’t care what becomes of the man, so long as he stops troubling England! But we won’t agree on this, we both know it. I am grieved to the heart about Nick; I am sorry for your poor little Georgie. For the love of Christ, I beg you, let’s not quarrel!’

  ‘We have all sinned,’ Robert said sadly, ‘and this war has been our punishment. If your choice turned out badly, poor Nick’s served him even worse. Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward.’

  Robert had never been given to pious sentiments in the past. He’d changed, Jamie realized; the horrors of the war had scarred even those who’d stayed at home and tried to remain neutral. ‘If I’d known how it would turn out,’ he said, suddenly able to speak unguardedly, ‘I would never have gone to war. Not just because of this,’ he waved his bad hand at his scarred face, ‘but because I was deceived. I fought for our rights and our freedoms, but those who led us only wanted to throw the King’s men out of the saddle and mount up themselves instead.’

  Robert stared at Jamie through the dusk, began to smile in surprised agreement – then frowned as he remembered. ‘And yet you’re part of this levelling faction?’

  ‘That’s why I’m a part of it!’

  ‘I’ve heard it’s a design against property,’ said Robert warily. ‘That you would do away with mine and thine, and make men have all things in common.’

  ‘It’s a lie. I’ve heard it said, as you have, but only by our enemies.’ Jamie drew a deep breath, searching for more words. They wouldn’t come. He’d often argued with his family in imagination, but even there he’d doubted his ability to convince them. Faced with his br
other’s sceptical attention he despaired.

  We have no design against property, he could say, and We want to dissolve the present corrupt Parliament and hold fresh elections for a new one. As for the church, we believe that each man should be free to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience.

  He remembered a summer before the war, when his father had joined with some other landowners in a scheme to drain a piece of fenland. The people who lived in that fen, threatened with the loss of their whole way of life, had opposed the scheme violently, threatening the Dutch engineers brought to survey the land, tearing down fences and levelling hedges. George Hudson had been furiously indignant. ‘The land is waste, a stinking bog good for naught but wildfowling! Drain it, and it will produce good wheat!’ That the fenmen would be turned out to beg, that his own family was already far richer than anyone he wanted to dispossess – that hadn’t troubled his conscience in the slightest. His business was to get as much as he could from his land; those who obstructed him were lawbreaking ruffians, and deserved to be hanged.

  Jamie had often been wildfowling on the contested fen, and hadn’t been able to shut his eyes to the fact that draining it would ruin the inhabitants. He’d tried to argue their case with his father. George Hudson had been outraged by his son’s disloyalty: he’d struck him across the face and commanded him never to speak of the matter again.

  He cleared his throat. ‘What became of Father’s drainage scheme?’

  ‘The war put a stop to it,’ replied Robert. ‘Such enterprises need peace.’ He blinked. ‘So this levelling business is the same? Justice for poor wretches?’

  ‘Rob, I wish I could make it plain to you that it would be justice, in a world where injustice and oppression cry out to Heaven for vengeance! But I’ve no skill in speaking. I have writings, though, which could supply what I lack . . .’

  ‘None of your poxy pamphlets!’ Robert suddenly reached over and clasped Jamie’s shoulder, looking him earnestly in the face. ‘Jamie, we two are now all the sons of our father’s house. This cruel unnatural war has done hurt enough. Let’s have peace between the two of us, at least!’