Philippa Gregory - Virgin Earth

“And what would you do?” John asked, secretly rather impressed by his daughter’s political acumen.

“I don’t have to choose,” she said smugly with a sly little sideways smile. “That’s why I married Alexander.”

“And which side does he serve?”

She laughed outright. “He serves the master who pays the bills,” she said. “As do most people. You know that.”

The High Court was sitting in the Painted Chamber in the Palace of Westminster. John knew the room from his days in royal service and guided Alexander through the maze of lobbies and waiting rooms and retiring rooms until they could slip in by a side door. The day was given over to reading out the signed depositions of witnesses who had spoken before the commissioners the previous day. There was little of interest – the halting accounts of the king on horseback riding through the wounded without caring for their condition. Accusations that royalist officers had permitted the looting of dead men’s weapons, and rifling the pockets of wounded men.

“That’s very bad,” Alexander said softly to John. “That’s one thing Cromwell’s very strict on. He won’t have looting. That’ll count against the king.”

“Hardly matters,” John said dourly. “Not when you think that he’s accused of tyranny and treason.”

One witness, Henry Gooch, gave evidence to show that the king was trying to raise a foreign army to invade England even while he was negotiating with Parliament for an agreed return to the throne.

“Could be a lie,” John said.

Alexander shrugged. “We know he was raising an army in Ireland and begging the Scots to invade. We know that the queen was trying to move a French army to turn out for him before the people of Paris rose up against their own king and drove him out of the city. This is just evidence on top of evidence.”

“What happens next?” John asked one of the soldiers of the guard as the clerk went on reading the evidence.

“They have to find guilt and pronounce sentence,” the man said solemnly.

“But he hasn’t pleaded!” John exclaimed.

The man looked away. “If he chooses not to plead then it counts as guilty,” he said. “There’ll be nothing for you to see or hear until they are ready to pass sentence.”

“Does he know this?” John asked Alexander. “D’you think he knows that if he goes on and on refusing to plead they’ll just execute him anyway? As if he had admitted his guilt?”

“It’s his law,” Alexander replied impatiently. “Men have been executed under his name. He must know what he is doing.”

John felt himself shiver like a man with cold water down his spine.

“I’ll wait,” he said to Alexander. “May I stay with you a few days longer?”

John and Frances walked together down to the Tower and then along the path beside the river.

“I might go and stay with Mother for a few days,” she said, looking out over the bright water.

“Why?” asked John. “Am I crowding you out?”

“I don’t want to be here when they do it,” she said.

For a moment he did not understand her. “Do what?”

“Behead him. They’ll do it here, won’t they? In the Tower? And put his head on Tower Bridge? I don’t want to see it. I know he’s been in the wrong, but I remember the day he came to the Ark and he was so handsome, and she was so pretty and dressed so richly. I don’t want to hear the drums roll and then stop for him.”

“I have to,” John said. “I feel I have to see the end of this.”

Frances nodded. “I think I’ll go and stay with Mother for a while when they start to build the scaffold.”

Westminster Hall was more crowded than ever, John and Alexander were pressed against the railings and continually pushed against the broad back of a sentinel soldier. A little after midday the commissioners came into the hall; sixty-eight of them were present, Cromwell among them. When John Bradshaw came in wearing his hat John saw that he was robed in red, red as a cardinal, red as blood.

There was complete silence when King Charles came in, dressed in his rich black. He walked with purpose, and his face was bright. He no longer looked like an exhausted man pushed to his limit, he looked determined and filled with confidence. John, reading his master’s stance and face, whispered to Alexander: “He has a plan or something. He’s found a way out.”

Charles did not drop nonchalantly into his chair as he had done before. He seated himself and leaned forward earnestly and spoke at once, before Bradshaw could begin. “I shall desire a word to be heard a little,” he started.

Bradshaw at once refused. The proceedings were fixed, the king could not simply speak as he wished. Instead Bradshaw himself started to repeat the charge when there was a stir from the galleries where two masked women were sitting.

“Oliver Cromwell is a traitor!” one of the women shouted clearly.

“Take aim!” shouted the commander of the guard and at once the soldiers in the courtroom turned their muskets on the gallery. There was a scream and a rush away from the armed men, Alexander stumbled and grabbed at the railing. The women were hustled away and the guards went back to their positions. Alexander straightened his coat and brushed down his breeches. “This is unbearable,” he said to John. “I thought we were going to die in a riot.”

John nodded. “Look at Cromwell,” he said.

Cromwell was on his feet, his eyes raking the crowd, taking in the leaded windows through which an attack on the courtroom might be led. There was nothing. It had been nothing more than one woman crying out for her king.

Slowly, Cromwell resumed his seat, he glanced over to the king. Charles raised his eyebrows, slightly smiled. Cromwell’s face was grim.

Bradshaw, struggling to regain the attention of the court, ruled that the king’s refusal to speak was considered to be a confession of guilt, it would count as a guilty plea. But since the charge was so serious they would hear him speak in his defense as long as he did not challenge the authority of the court.

“They’re bending over backward to give him a fair chance,” Alexander whispered to John. “There’s no precedent for letting him speak in his defense when he won’t say whether or not he is guilty.”

The king leaned forward in his chair, his confidence increasing all the time. “For the peace of the kingdom and for the freedom of the people I shall say nothing about the jurisdiction of the court,” he said clearly. Again, there was no trace of his stammer. “If I cared more for my life than for the peace of the kingdom and the liberty of the subjects I should have made a particular debate and I might have delayed an ugly sentence. I have something to say which I desire may be heard before sentence is given. I desire to be heard in the Painted Chamber before the Lords and the Commons before any sentence is passed.”

“What?” John demanded.

“What can he be thinking of?” Alexander whispered. “A proposal of peace at last? Some kind of treaty?”

John nodded, his eyes on the king. “Look at him, he thinks he has the answer.”

Bradshaw was refusing, insisting on the court’s determination not to be delayed again when one commissioner – John Downes – started up. “Have we hearts of stone? Are we men?” he demanded.

Two judges either side of him tried to pull him down. “If I die for it I must speak against this!” he shouted.

Cromwell, seated before him, turned, his face black with fury. “Are you mad? Can you not sit still?”

“Sir, no! I cannot be quiet!” He raised his voice to reach everyone in the hall. “I am not satisfied!”

John Bradshaw surveyed the sixty-eight commissioners, saw half a dozen irresolute faces, a dozen men wishing they were elsewhere, a score of men who would have to be persuaded all over again, and announced that the court would withdraw to consider.

The king went out first, his step light, his head high, a slight triumphant smile on his face. The commissioners filed out after him, muttering to each other, clearly thrown off their course by this late offer. A draft of clean, cold air swept into the courtroom as the double doors were thrown open at the back and some of the crowd left.

John and Alexander kept their places. “I’m not leaving,” John said. “I swear he will escape the hangman. They’ll return with an agreement. He’s done it again.”

“I wouldn’t take a bet against it,” Alexander said. “He could easily do it. The commissioners are all of them uncertain, Cromwell looking ready to murder. The king has them on the run.”

“What d’you think they are doing now?” John asked.

“Cromwell wouldn’t purge them, would he?” Alexander speculated. “Rid himself of Downes and any that agree with him? He’s done it with Parliament, why not with the court?”

John was about to reply when the doors at the back of the hall were slammed shut, the usual signal that the court was about to reconvene, and then the king reentered, smiling slightly, like a man who is playing a role which is too absurdly easy for him to take seriously, and seated himself in his red armchair. Then the commissioners came in again. Downes was not with them.

“He’s not there,” Alexander said quickly. “That’s bad.”

John Bradshaw’s face was as grim as Cromwell’s. He announced that the court would not accept any more delays. There would be no calling of the Commons and the Lords. The court would proceed to sentence.

“But a little delay of a day or two further may bring peace to the kingdom,” Charles interrupted.

“No,” Bradshaw said. “We will not delay.”

“If you will hear me,” the king said sweetly. “I shall give some satisfaction to you all here, and to my people after that.”