Philippa Gregory - Virgin Earth

The king lifted his cane and tapped John Cook on his arm.

John, hidden in the crowd, said softly: “Oh no.”

Cook ignored the king completely and continued to read the charge, raising his voice as if to overcome the distraction of the tapping cane and his own sense of bewilderment that an accused man should behave in such a way.

The king reached forward and struck the wing of Cook’s gown a vigorous thwack with his cane. There was a gasp from the crowd. Cook abruptly stopped reading. The silver head of the cane fell off and noisily rolled along the uncarpeted boards before coming to rest a few feet from the king’s chair. Charles looked around for a servant to pick it up for him. Not a man moved. It took him a long moment to realize that no one was going to do it; then he shrugged, as if he was indifferent to the slight, and bent and picked it up himself.

John felt his shoulders hunching as if he were ashamed.

Bradshaw, the president of the court, took command of the situation. “Sir, the court commands the charge be read; if you have anything to say afterward you may be heard.”

John knew that the king would take any restriction on his speech as an insult. Once, it would have been treason. Surprisingly, the king was silent and Cook started to read the charges from the roll.

After all the rumors and accusations it was odd to hear the charges put so simply. John found he was straining to listen to every word, one hand over his eyes, trying to concentrate. The king was accused of trying to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people by making himself a tyrant. They accused him of making war against his own people and listed the battles where he had been personally in command. Then they accused him of plotting against the kingdom with foreign powers. There was nothing of interest, it was all a matter of fact. The king had undoubtedly done all these things.

The king turned in his chair, as if the long reading of his crimes was not of much interest to him, and looked up at the galleries at the many faces he knew, and out at the body of the court. John raised his head; the king’s gaze flicked over him with its usual indifference. John had to fight a desire to call out – and knew also that he had no words to call out.

Cook’s accusation went on to what seemed, to most, the worst crime of all – the renewing of the war after the king’s defeat. There was a soft groan at that point, many men and women had thought the battles were finished and a peace in the making last year. None of them would forgive Charles for his final throw of the dice that had cost so many more lives and had taught the fighting men a new savagery.

“My God,” whispered Alexander. “They want to kill him. They are impeaching him for treason.”

John nodded. As soon as he had seen the king dressed as a martyr in black with that dazzling burst of diamonds on his shoulder he had known that this was the greatest masque Charles had ever played. This was no lighthearted interlude, it was full tragedy, and both the king and the court would play it to the full.

“For these reasons,” Cook concluded, “on behalf of the people of England, I impeach the said Charles Stuart as a tyrant, traitor and murderer, and a public and implacable enemy to the Commonwealth of England.”

There was a dead silence in the court as the people absorbed the accusation and understood that Cromwell and his court were demanding the ultimate punishment: the beheading of the king. The silence was broken by a peal of completely convincing laughter. The king was shaking in his chair, laughing as if at some delightful, ridiculous jest. He threw back his head and shook his curls. The laughter went on, horribly on, prolonged beyond any real amusement, the hard noise of a man defying his own fear.

“Sir,” Bradshaw said steadily. “You have now heard your charge and the court expects your answer.”

The whole body of people in the court leaned forward. The fans of ladies in the galleries were frozen still. Everyone listened to hear what the king would say.

“I would know by what power I am called hither?” he asked. “I would know by what authority – I mean lawful?”

The rest of his answer was drowned by an upsurge of voices. “He’s going to challenge them every step of the way,” Alexander shouted over the noise to John.

“God no! If he would just agree, if he would just ask for mercy…”

The king was still speaking but he could not be heard above the shouting.

Bradshaw hammered for order and replied to the king. John saw the king shake his head and speak again.

Bradshaw made a gesture: the king should be taken from the court. As he rose to leave the soldiers in the court suddenly shouted “Justice! Justice!” and John saw the king start back for a moment, and knew that he feared a brawl and death in a struggle more than anything else.

“He wants the scaffold,” John said, suddenly seeing it all. “So that he can hand the crown entire to Prince Charles. So he can die as a man who was martyred for his beliefs. He’s not staking for his own life now, but the condition of kingship itself.”

Charles paused before the table of judges. “You have shown no lawful authority to satisfy any reasonable man,” he said sternly to Bradshaw.

“We are satisfied.”

“I don’t fear that,” the king said derisively.

He turned and gave a little half smile to the people in the courtroom, as a player will do when he has had the best of a scene.

“God save the king!” someone shouted, and then others took it up: “God save the king!”

The king smiled as he heard the shout and went quietly with his armed escort through the door to the warren of corridors of Westminster. The crowd started to file out into the cold January day. John and Alexander paused outside, a few flakes of snow drifted from the roofs and from the gray sky.

“I’ll go home,” John decided. “There will be nothing until Monday now.”

“I shall come again on Monday,” Alexander agreed. “If I had not seen it I wouldn’t have believed it.”

John shook his head. “I still don’t,” he said.

Hester and Johnnie fell on John the moment he was through the front door. “What’s the news?”

“Nothing yet,” he said. “They opened the hearing but the king will not recognize the court and they did nothing more than read the charge to him.”

“Will not recognize the court?” Hester asked. “What can he be hoping to do?”

John tossed his cloak onto the chest at the foot of the stairs. “God knows. I am frozen through, this is bitter weather to be doing such bitter business.”

“I’ll get some hot ale,” Hester said. “Come to the kitchen with me, I must have the news.”

John followed his wife, Johnnie dogging his footsteps.

“How did he look?” Johnnie asked quietly, as John sat himself on the bench before the scrubbed table and Hester produced mulled ale and hot soup, and a trencher of bread and cheese.

“He looked well,” John said consideringly. “He had dressed for the part. He was in black but the George was ablaze on his shoulder. He carried his cane – and he tapped at the prosecutor with it-”

“He struck him?” Hester asked.

“Not a hard blow; but it was an awkward moment,” John confessed.

Johnnie’s eyes were huge in his pale face. “Did no one shout for him?”

“A woman cried from the gallery, and there were a few that shouted ‘God save the king,’ but the soldiers drowned them out with shouting for justice,” John said.

“I wish I could go,” Johnnie said fervently. “I would shout for him.”

“That’s why you won’t go,” John said firmly. “And I keep my head down and my thoughts to myself. They were seeking witnesses to the raising of the royal standard.”

“Did anyone recognize you?” Hester demanded.

John shook his head. “I am as quiet as a well-fed mouse,” he said. “I have no wish to be summoned as a witness to either cause. I have no wish but to see the end of this.”

“He’s the king!” Johnnie burst out passionately.

“Aye,” John replied. “And if he would consent to be a little less then he still might get clear of this. He could withdraw and offer them his son in his place. Or he could offer to rule by their assent, not his own. But he will be the king. He would rather be a dead king than a live sensible man.”

“Who were the commissioners?” Hester asked. “Anyone we know?”

“A few familiar faces,” John said. “But only half of them named and called have had the courage to sit in judgment on their king. There are a lot of men with pressing business elsewhere.”

“John Lambert?” she asked, deliberately casual.

“With the army in the north,” he replied. “But his name is down as a commissioner. Why d’you ask?”

“I should hate to think him in it,” she said.

“He wouldn’t do it,” Johnnie asserted. “He’d know that it is wrong.”

John shook his head. “It’s the only way for everyone now,” he said. “King and commoners. He’s left us no way out at all.”

On Monday John and Alexander met on the steps of Westminster Hall and went in with the surging crowd as the doors were opened. The press of men and women swept John to the far side of the hall where he could see the king’s profile against the red velvet chair. Charles looked drawn and tired, he was finding it hard to sleep while constantly watched, and he knew now that the chances of a miraculous escape were every day diminishing.

The Lord President Bradshaw nodded to the prosecutor John Cook to begin but he had turned away, talking to one of the lawyers. The king, with all his old imperiousness, poked Cook sharply in the back with his cane, and the man spun around in shock, his hand going instinctively to where his sword would be. A gasp went round the courtroom.