Tidelands

Sir William held up his glass. “His Majesty the king,” he said very quietly, and the two men put their glasses together and then drank. It struck James that the toast was as quiet and as solemn as it would be at a wake.

“Sir, I am sure that nobody knows what will happen but Cromwell. But clearly he is planning a trial and he must be hoping for a finding of guilt. Why else do it?”

“The trial will never happen,” Sir William predicted stoutly. “And I shan’t be part of it. I won’t even witness it. I’m taking Walter to Cambridge to start the Lent term. I won’t witness and I won’t judge on it. And no good man will witness and judge, so they won’t get their trial, for they won’t get their commissioners. No Englishman can try his king. You’d do better to come to Cambridge with us and teach Walter there.”

“I have to stay,” James said quietly. “His wife and her friends sent me to report.”

“You’ll have nothing to report,” Sir William assured him. “It’ll not come to that. But come to me when it’s all over. Come to the Priory before you go abroad again?”

James hesitated, thinking of his promise to his mother not to go to Alinor. “I am bound to go straight back to my seminary.”

“You can leave from the tide-mill quay,” Sir William assured him. “You can get a French-bound coaster from there, if you want to come for a visit?”

“Yes,” James said. He longed to see Alinor. “I do.”

James elbowed his way into Westminster Hall, paid a fee for a place in the stand so he could see over the heads of the halberdiers that lined a cleared square in the center of the hall. The vaulted ceiling echoed the noise as people pushed and argued and thrust themselves into the standing room. Above, in the galleries, people were taking their seats and urging each other to move up to make space on the benches. In the center of the cleared space was a great table draped in a tapestry, with a sword and a mace mounted before the Lord President of the court. Behind him were benches of judges, sixty-eight of them, gravely sitting as an extraordinary court, though more than a hundred had been called and refused to come, or had hidden themselves away. Before the Lord President, standing alone like a little island of self-importance, was a red velvet chair with a side table equipped with paper, pen, and ink, enclosed by a carved wooden partition. James could not believe that the king, who had owned all of England, would be brought into this court of his enemies, like an ordinary man. Although judges had been sworn, witnesses prepared, and the courtroom made ready, half the people had come expecting to see the trial called off.

There was a sudden increase in noise and then an awed silence spread from the judges, who turned their heads all at once, like players in a masque, and looked towards the entrance. At once, the deafening chatter in the stone hall was stilled as everyone leaned forward and craned their necks to look to the entrance door. Charles, the king, stood in the great doorway, like a dancer pausing before making a grand entrance, dressed all in black, with a collar of finest white linen trimmed with rich lace. He came in slowly, as if to make his presence felt, his hat on his head, his cane in his hand, walked towards the chair in the enclosure, and halted before it. He was waiting for someone to open the door for him; he looked around at the hall, the judges, the Lord President, the soldiers, the audience, the gallery, and the stands. There was a long awkward pause and when nobody moved to open the door for him, he swung it open for himself and sat, without invitation, on the velvet chair, as calm and relaxed as if he was in his grand banqueting suite at Whitehall. He did not remove his hat before the court. He would doff it for nobody. He kept it on, as if it were his crown.

James saw at once a difference between the man who sat so calmly before the staring judges and the man he had begged to escape from Newport. The king had aged. His thick dark hair had threads of silver, his face was rounder and weary, deeply grooved with lines. No longer was he lighthearted, like a man certain to outwit his enemies. Now he looked like a saint, priding himself on persecution. The king, who had delighted in double-dealing with his parliament, who had boasted of cheating them, had finished his careless play. Now he was relishing defeat. The comedy was over; he was anticipating a tragedy.

“God help us,” James said under his breath, recognizing the signs of a man longing for the morbid importance of martyrdom.

There was a rustle of alarm as the king suddenly got to his feet as if he would leave. James and everyone around him rose to their feet in habitual respect. James thought that if the king walked out as proudly as he had walked in, nobody would dare to stop him. The trial would be over before it had begun.