came in from Essex to Aldgate. At this hour, most roads were deserted. They saw maybe one milkmaid and a couple of men up to no good in an apple orchard; there was no one from whom to ask directions, had Fox come alone. But he was in good hands with Gideon.
As Captain Jukes found his way so confidently, Colonel Fox weighed him up. Gideon was in his once-red New Model Army coat. That meant his britches were too tight under the crotch and the usual gap was widening just above his belt, so his back was freezing. As well as his odd appearance, he was full of London swagger and with a dubious way of manoeuvring himself into positions of trust. Still, on the whole, the man from the Midlands accepted his motives were reliable. Fox would not have brought him on this delicate errand otherwise. Their association could go one of two ways during this ride — either they would take to one another fast, or a wall of dislike would rise up between them and perpetuate itself every time one of them spoke.
'I hear you were at Holmby, Captain.' Fox had made enquiries overnight. Had Okey told him? 'So — answer the question everybody wonders: did Cornet Joyce have direct orders from Oliver Cromwell?'
Gideon was terse. 'He never said.'
'You never asked?'
'None of us. Our commission was in our hearts.'
People would always be fascinated by that incident. Speculating happily, Fox filled in for himself: 'There was a meeting in a garden. At Cromwell's London house. Long June nights — minutes are not taken. No need for a secretary even to be there — so no chance of some disloyal clerk later making his reputation by spilling all… You all swore an oath of secrecy?'
'No, sir, we did not need to.' Gideon changed the subject curtly. 'So what brings you all the way from Warwickshire, Colonel Fox?'
'My garrison was closed down last May, despite my hearty resistance.' The man was disgruntled, on the verge of obsession about his lost command. He reminded Gideon of how Sir Samuel Luke, that other great passionate Parliamentary volunteer, had resented being told to resign. 'I have four thousand pounds in arrears to chase up — and I came to London for my wedding. My new wife is Lady Angelica Hasteville.' Fox sounded impressed by that himself. Gideon could not imagine how this rough-and-ready self-made soldier from the shires had encountered a lady on terms where they might ally in bed and board. Perhaps she possessed money. 'We were joined at St Bartholomew the Less in October.'
Then Colonel John Fox glanced down at his saddle pommel momentarily, as if embarrassed by his feelings. Gideon took back his scepticism. Even in the midst of war and trouble, he had glimpsed the human heart.
The dark bulk of the Tower of London suddenly lay ahead of them. With a grimace, Gideon brought them into Rosemary Lane. 'Now, sir, we must keep our wits about us.'
He heard Fox draw a sharp breath. He can have seen nothing like this in sleepy, rural Warwickshire. Gideon knew what to expect, though he never frequented such districts. This was the kind of sink, where unnumbered souls festered, that thin-faced Solicitor-General John Cook wanted to eliminate.
Rosemary Lane was a reeking little haven of abject poverty. It lay outside the city wall in the ward of Portsoken. It had sinister alleys, tiny cottages, dark taverns, and one forlorn old church. It teemed with totters and their tat, so in finer weather both sides of the muddy lane would be lined with barrows and mats, displaying for sale the meanest type of old clothes, holed shifts, crinkled left boots and chipped dishes. Suits, or half-suits, that had passed through nine generations of owner and were held together only by stiff grime and patches. Dented pots in metal so base it hurt Gideon's teeth to look upon them. Piles of crumpled linen, most of it stolen from washing lines, linen in curious shades of drab that were unknown to any fuller. Wardrobes of dead old ladies who had had no friends or family. Sheets that looked as if they had been stripped from week-old cadavers. Drowned sailors' hats.
Amidst this squalor wandered dazed-looking paupers. Drabs with diseased noses made vague offers that Fox and Gideon did not even acknowledge. The few people who were up and setting off for occupations laboured in sweatshops or as ballast-heavers and coal-haulers — bad, backbreaking, dirty work that would eventually kill them. Occasional sad men relieved themselves against a wall, looking as if they had been in the streets all night; dark humps in doorways showed where other vagrants were still sleeping — or had died of cold unnoticed. There were of course far too many taverns, of the lowest kind.
'The biggest cities have the highest dunghills!' muttered Fox.
Here, close by the Tower of London where he normally would carry out state executions, in a mean lodging among his frightened family, lurked Richard Brandon. He was a typical Rosemary Lane inhabitant, poor, feckless, aware of the need for secrecy, yet somehow reeking of unreliability. His calm acceptance of the grim trade he had inherited from his father was chilling. He relished its supposed mysteries but took the fact that he was employed to kill prisoners with a coldness and hardness that Gideon found troubling. His father, John, had once told him public hangmen were strange men. Lambert claimed to have met one, or an assistant, while drinking in a particularly frightful tavern. Gideon had never expected to encounter such a being. He decided to let Colonel Fox take the lead, but when Brandon proved unwilling to trust a Midlander, it became necessary to convince him in the language and custom of East London.
A conversation occurred. It was longer than they wanted, but short enough. They would meet their appointment. Clinging to a bag with unexplained tools of his trade, Brandon was taken to a meeting-point beside the Tower. Colonel Axtell was waiting with a cavalry escort and a spare horse.
They did not bother to root out Brandon's usual assistant, Richard Jones, a rag-and-bone man, although he lived on the same lane. Fox noticed Gideon's disappointed expression. 'I would think it neat,' Gideon murmured regretfully, 'if the King's head was severed from his body by a ragman.'
'You are a true Leveller, Captain Jukes!' Colonel John Fox laughed. It was impossible to deduce whether he was sympathetic.
In a rattle of urgent hoofbeats, the horsemen swept away from Tower Hill. Frost on the cobbles slowed them up later, but while London was still sleeping they rode through the City, past Temple Bar and St Paul's Cathedral, out through Ludgate, down the Strand to Charing Cross and into Whitehall. Everywhere was full of soldiers by the time they arrived. Shopkeepers were opening up — not all, but most. Like the puritans' Christmas, this was designated a working day, not special. Crowds were already gathering outside the Banqueting House. Heavy grey clouds lowered above them, the solemn sky of a freezing dawn in the dead of English winter.
They could hear the loudly beaten drums as Colonel Tomlinson came with the escort party at a fast walking pace across St James's Park, bringing his prisoner, the King.
Chapter Fifty-Seven — Whitehall: 30 January 1649
They went in through a back door and found the place packed. They nodded to the guards. So many soldiers were milling about, nobody paid any attention. There was no difficulty slipping through. The undercroft was seething. As usual in crowds, most noticed only their immediate neighbours. Surreptitiously, Gideon managed to locate a private room, where Fox and he stowed their charge. To keep Brandon occupied, they sent a soldier to find him breakfast. 'And some for us,' pleaded Fox, clearly not expecting it would happen.
Upon arrival, Brandon insisted he must be given a written order for today's work. It was the rule, and of course was for his protection. They had chosen him because he was professional.
Colonel Axtell bustled off to see Cromwell about it, leaving Gideon and Colonel Fox to ensure the hangman stayed put. A true printer, Gideon wondered whether the Brandon family owned a cache of tattered warrants for all the traitors and political misfits they had beheaded. Robert would have wondered whether a memoir could be made of it, but by tradition the public hangman led a life of secrecy. He was a non-person; his experiences were not for public consumption, however great the public's lust for lurid snippets from the block. Robert would claim public interest — always his excuse for printing's more soiled commerce — but Gideon remained sceptical about sensational tracts.
Colonel Hewson brought in two of his men. Gideon had seen John Hewson at the Putney Debates, where he opposed the Levellers. He also knew that in the second civil war Hewson was in Kent, where his regiment joined in the mopping-up of Dover, Sandwich, Deal and Walmer. Originally a shoemaker, he had worked his way up through the ranks until he became one of the signatories to the King's death warrant; a sermonising zealot, he called
