Cromwell’s Blessing. Peter Ransley

      She said – ferocious again – she couldn’t bear to lose it. Not now. It would be like showing a child a magnificent meal, then snatching it from her. ‘And you need it. To be an MP. Change the world.’ If that was half-mocking, half-serious, her next words were in earnest. ‘And you need Lord Stonehouse.’

      ‘No. I won’t crawl to him. Particularly after what he did to you.’

      She clenched her fists in frustration. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have told you all this!’

      I unpeeled her fingers and smoothed them between my hands. ‘Better we do things our own way.’ I remembered Nehemiah’s words. ‘Be beholden to no one.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘Cromwell will help me.’

      ‘Are you sure?’

      ‘Sure?’ I laughed. ‘He’s the most powerful man in Britain.’

      I told her I must go to the House and see him, and got my papers together. Still she lingered, staring at Richard’s letter. ‘You know why he’s written to you, don’t you?’

      I smiled at her expression of absolute certainty. Sometimes she had the air of an astrologer predicting the future. ‘No. Do you?’

      ‘Because he knows about your quarrel with Lord Stonehouse.’

      Since the Royalists were based in Paris, where Queen Henrietta held court, letters were censored and delayed, if they arrived at all. ‘Unlikely. That was over a fortnight ago. The news would hardly have reached him in Paris.’

      ‘It would reach him here.’

      I laughed. ‘He’d never come here! It’s too dangerous.’ Unlike many Royalists, Richard had never surrendered. He was close to Queen Henrietta, a Catholic, and Cromwell had intercepted papers that proved his involvement in the present Irish rebellion. ‘If he was caught here, he’d be in the Tower. Not even Lord Stonehouse could save him.’

      The French envoy’s address had suggested Paris. But there were no French markings. It was not dated or sealed. The only mark was a posthorn, such as might have been used in any London alehouse. ‘It’s a coincidence. The letter and the quarrel.’

      ‘Do you think so?’

      ‘No.’

      I shivered suddenly, violently. The thick, smeared scrawl, with the savage sword-like crossing of every ‘t’, brought memories flooding back of when he had hired people to kill me, when I used to check every alehouse before I entered, jump at every sound in the street. I crumpled it up.

      ‘I’ll burn it,’ I said.

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘Take it to Cromwell.’

       7

      You could hear the noise in Whitehall, sense the tension in the shops and stalls of Westminster Hall. Cromwell was back. There were rumours that he and the Presbyterian leader, Denzil Holles, had come to blows. That the army was in revolt.

      A coin to the Sergeant got me into the lobby. I waited for an opportunity to see Cromwell, my father’s letter burning a hole in my pocket. The debate grew in intensity. I could hear Cromwell’s voice, rising over shouts of derision. There is no more thrilling place than the House when you are part of it, and no worse, confusing place when you are out of it. I was even jealous of the printers’ runners. Reporting was forbidden and they smuggled out speeches, as I did years before.

      When the debate was adjourned I saw one runner, illegal copy stuffed in his britches, wriggling his way through a crowd of arguing MPs. He was as snot-nosed and eel-slippery as I used to be, but a coin from my pocket stopped him. I deciphered the scrivener’s scrawl. The debate was about the army petition I had seen in Nehemiah’s room, for pay and indemnities. ‘H,’ I read. That must be Holles. I could not believe what he was quoted as saying: ‘The soldiers who have signed this petition are enemies of the state …’

      Enemies of the state? The army that won the war? And was simply asking for its pay?

      There was a shout. The boy snatched the papers and ran.

      ‘Seize him.’

      The MP who gave chase was young and would have the legs on the boy. I felt responsible for having stopping him. And I was a runner at heart. It was instinctive. I stuck out my foot. The MP went flying, arms flailing. I just managed to catch him to break the worst of his fall and help him up.

      ‘I’m terribly sorry.’

      He glared at me angrily, but my suit, if old, was of the finest silk, and I spoke with such concern, in my best Stonehouse, that he stopped short of accusing me. Someone else drew him away, telling him they had a motion to draw up. I recognised the sharp, vinegary tones immediately. I had tripped up Denzil Holles’s bag carrier.

      It was stupid, but I could not resist it. I was longing for action, and if I could not debate Holles in the House, this was second best.

      I bowed. ‘Lord Holles.’

      He spoke through me, to the bag carrier. ‘Stonehouse. Comes from the same filth as that pamphleteer.’

      I bowed again. ‘The same filth, my lord, who won the war, and whom you are calling enemies of the state.’

      He whirled round. He was about fifty, and had eyes as sharp and vinegary as his voice. ‘Are you one of the men behind this wretched petition?’

      I was about to answer when a hand clamped over my shoulder and I found myself staring into Cromwell’s eyes. He always seemed to look not at you, but into your very soul with his piercing eyes, somewhere between grey and green. His face was almost the colour of his buff uniform: he had not bothered to change before coming into the House. A wart above his left eyebrow quivered as he steered me away.

      ‘Don’t make it worse,’ he said. ‘We are losing the debate.’

      ‘Keep your puppies away from me, Cromwell!’ Holles shouted.

      Cromwell did not respond, going towards the corridor that led to his office with another MP, Ireton. Mortified, I plunged after him, asking to see him, bumping into various people as I tried to catch his attention. Either Cromwell did not hear me, or he chose not to.

      ‘Make an appointment,’ Ireton said curtly.

      I hated Ireton at that moment. In fact I hated Ireton at any moment. I hated him because he was thirty-six against my twenty-two, because with his sunken, hollow eyes he was broodingly serious and never laughed, because he was cold and rational where I was impulsive and, most of all, because he was Cromwell’s son-in-law and always at his elbow.

      I stood dejected, watching them walk away. Then Cromwell turned and beckoned. If you had ridden with Cromwell in close combat you were one of his soldiers. Whatever your rank he knew your name. Whatever your weaknesses, if you struggled to overcome them he would stand by you. He never bragged, putting his victories down to God’s grace. When he talked to a regiment every single soldier felt he was talking to him. However tired he was, and I could see how drained he was after his illness, he had time, however little, for one of his soldiers. I shot over the lobby as if I was still a runner, then managed to control myself.

      ‘You’ll have to wait.’ Ireton scowled. ‘In there.’

      I walked where he had pointed, into an anteroom so stuffed with drafts of speeches and yellowing parliamentary papers the door would not close properly. I sat squashed between a pile of ordinances and some old papers about the draining of the East Anglian fens, while Cromwell had meeting after meeting.

      Boots clattered, voices droned. Cromwell was making arrangements to ride to Essex next day to hear the soldiers’ demands. In that stuffy, cramped space I nodded off. It was Ireton’s words that woke me with a start.