Tidelands

“They beheaded him. Quickly and well, on a cold morning. He stepped out of a window of glass so tall and so wide that it was like a door to his palace of Whitehall. So he was never in a cell, though they found him guilty. He was never chained, though they named him a criminal. He spoke for a little while, but nobody could hear him—there were thousands of us there, crowded in the street—and then he laid himself down and the executioner took his head off. One blow. It was well done. He did not give the executioner pardon, which was sour. He said he was a ‘martyr to the people.’ I heard that much: the idiot.” Ned coughed and spat into the fire. “He died with a lie in his mouth, as was fitting. It was us who were a martyr to him. He lied to the very end.”

“God forgive him,” Alinor whispered.

“I never will,” Ned said staunchly. “And neither will any man who ever fought against him, over and over, still fighting after he had declared peace and admitted he was beat. Over and over. Never forget it.”

“God forgive him,” Alinor repeated.

“So what happens now, Uncle?” Rob asked. “Will everything change for us all?”

“That’s the question,” Ned said. “Everything has changed, everything must change. But will it? And how?”

LONDON, FEBRUARY 1649

James waited a day and a night in case there were instructions for him, but when he heard nothing from either Paris or The Hague, from his spymaster, his professor, or his father, he concluded that his work was done and there was nothing more for him to do. Sourly, he thought that there had never been anything for him to do, except to bury the king and there were others to do that. Bitterly, he thought that someone might have told him at least that they had received the letters and that they were grateful for his service; but then he remembered his mother telling him that the king was a fool and the prince a rogue and royal service was a thankless task—but one that could not be avoided.

He walked through the silent city, which was like a town in mourning, like a family in shock. He took a ferry to the south side of the river, hired a horse in Lambeth, and headed down the long road to Chichester, and to Sealsea Island.

The horse was old and weary of the road, and James was happy to go at a shambling walk. He was glad to take time away from the terror of these unpredictable days, when words would not save the king, and words could not be spoken, and think in silence what his future might be, what his life might be in this new world into which all Englishmen had stumbled. He would be a man of words no more. He knew that everything had changed for him. Everything had changed from that day at Newport, when the king had refused to come away though there was a boat waiting for him and his son’s fleet at sea.

James pulled himself back from the daydream of a victory, a comforting reverie in days of defeat. He feared that dreaming would keep the royalists trapped in exile, forever hoping for better times, forever hashing over old mistakes. Instead, he tried to think what this new England might mean for him, for his parents, and for Alinor. He doubted that his parents would stay at the court of the queen now that she would never receive a message from her triumphant husband, now that she would never return home in victory. He doubted that they would transfer their loyalty to Prince Charles, who might call himself Charles II—though it was hard to see how he would ever be crowned in Westminster Abbey, so near to Westminster Hall where his father had been sentenced to death. Surely, England must be without a king forever. Would James’s parents know they were defeated? Would they come home instead of dreaming and hoping? James thought that they would. People who had sworn loyalty and risked their lives and fortunes for the king would not necessarily transfer their faith to his son, especially a man with nothing but the fading charm of a prince in exile, surrounded by favorites, corrupt advisors, and reckless women, scattering empty promises that he was certain never to repay. Now that he was king in waiting, his court would become even more desperate, even more fatalistic. Only those with hopes of nothing better would support him. Only the homeless would be fellow travelers.

There was little chance, James thought, that his mother, Lady Avery, would join such a court, to serve an uncrowned king. His father would never compete for office or duties with corrupt adventurers, and if they were not appointed by the king in exile, why would they stay in exile? They would come home, James thought. They must come home to Northallerton in Yorkshire and James would be able to return with them to his own fields, to his childhood home, and feel the cold winds blow off the moors again, and hear the cry of the peewit as it tumbled, spade-winged, in the clear sky.