William Falkland 01 - The Royalist Read Free Page A

done. For my own part I’d weep no tears whoever the victor.
    ‘Mr Falkland . . . William. I’ll come to the point, if I may?’
    ‘I was hoping you would. I have a dinner engagement.’
    That at least raised his smile.
    ‘My name is Oliver Cromwell. Parliament has charged me with winning this conflict and that is what I intend. The King and Parliament have been at war for three years and in that time the country has been in chaos. Towns have changed hands back and forth in an ever-shifting patchwork between each side, but now we have the means to end it, to bring back peace and force the King to terms.’
    He came forward and made as if he was going to hold my hands like a girl pleading with her lover. Instead he merely inspected the manacles and chain and rolled his eyes as if unsurprised. When he saw I was wearing chains around my ankles as well, he strode past me, opened the door a crack and halloed a man standing waiting in the passage. The man scuttled in and unlocked me. I felt suddenly naked. I’d been in chains since the night they rounded us up, and without them I no longer knew what to do. I found that I wanted, needed , their chains. If I hated them for anything in that moment, I hated them for that.
    Cromwell whispered to a second man who hurried away and returned shortly carrying a plain wooden tray with slices of meat and a hunk of dry bread; then Cromwell poured us both beer. It was as sour as any I’ve tasted but I felt better all the same. The food settled less well. Moments after I took my first bite I felt my stomach in revolt. I’d eaten precious little while I was in my cell but it had been more than I was used to out on the march. Sometimes it seemed as if there was no food left in the country at all and what little there was we would rather burn than harvest.
    Cromwell watched me carefully. ‘Tell me, Falkland,’ he said, ‘what is this war about?’
    I opened my mouth to speak and then held my tongue. I realised I no longer knew and wondered if I ever had. I looked away. ‘God, I suppose,’ I muttered.
    ‘God? Presbyterians and Independents against the Catholics?’ Cromwell shook his head. ‘Catholicism has been outlawed for over a century. Our Church of England nurtures us now. It is far too late for a turning back of that hand. It is about how the people of England wish to be governed, no more and no less.’ He turned and faced me square. He had an odd look to him, I thought, a strange kind of almost-pride, the type I’d once had teaching my son to take his first steps. ‘What do you know about our New Model?’
    So that was it. ‘Your army,’ I replied. The blind man’s new club. ‘I’ve met them once or twice.’
    ‘It was New Model soldiers who shattered your company.’
    I didn’t doubt it. Once there were dozens of armies, local militias, and they were all stacked up against us. Then, as the last winter came to an end, came the New Model. From the rumours I’d heard since, all the Parliament soldiers were New Model now. They were fit and healthy and, more than anything else, they were paid . That was how Parliament made its soldiers fight. We were fighting for King and country, but King and country don’t fill your stomach at night or stitch you up when a sabre cuts you apart. Money does that. I had heard of prisoners choosing defection rather than torture or execution. I’d never asked myself what I would do if posed the same question but that, I supposed, was for the best. Perhaps I was about to find out.
    ‘I spent last winter in Oxford. After Newbury I was hurt. You might say mortally. I took musket fire to the leg and it turned gangrenous. They said I was going to die. I was at peace with that. Then I came out of it. They said it was God who spared me, to fight the good fight. But I knew different. Maggots got into the wound and ate the putrefied flesh. That’s what stopped the infections. Our God – ’I said it pointedly, for I was certain we shared the