She reached out and, placing her palm upon my breastplate, said, “Is not my Father the same as yours?”
The weight of a guard’s armor is over forty pounds. It can shield the flesh from jab of pike or disgorged ball from musket fire. Heavy mace and war hammer can break the bones beneath the metal, but it takes a timely, well-aimed thrust between the plates to pierce a man’s vital innards. A pain began to sear my chest, as though burned with Greek fire, and for a time, I know not how long, I counted the gray-green channels in her eyes. There was no artifice about her, only her steady gaze which spoke to me like cannon shot that everything I had done, every journey, every effort, every path I had taken until that moment, was worthless.
A guard called out, laughing, “Watch yourself, Thomas. The girl’s a witch.”
I pulled her hand from my chest and told her roughly to go away or I would chain her and carry her to Newgate. She left that day but she was back again the next. And came every day after, preaching, not to my men, but solely to me.
It soured every pleasure. Alehouses, gaming dens, baiting pits, they were all the same. And truth be told, it had all come to smell of rot. A whore though she washes herself in scented water still stinks of her daily trade. My eyes were now open to good men put in chains, tortured, and hanged. Men who desired only a chance to die in bed and not in a war in some foreign place. Men who wanted to pray without the shadow of bishops peering over them, coming between their souls and God. Men who asked the Court to give them better rights than the dogs that were fed at the king’s table. Nights I dreamt of the baited bear and the hounds, and though I kept my eyes from her, I came by measure to listen to the girl with the gray-green eyes.
The winds filled with ice, and though we had a coal barrel at the sentry, she would not share our warmth and chose instead to shiver alone inside her thin woolen cloak. Her words passed through blue, quivering lips, but the weaker her body, the stronger her voice. Odds were laid for when she would fall off and die of the frost, but the men did not impede her and took to calling her Lady Dampen. Her eyes followed my coming and going until I felt them like chainmail around my neck. But her voice was a kind of harp that vibrated in time to my blood. I had seen the faces of dying men in prisons and streets, and in the face of my brother, Richard. And for every one of them, brave, mad, or bad, a corner of fear lived in every eye. But in her eyes there was none; only a certainty of which she spoke.
Once she fainted and I carried her to cover, wrapping her in my cloak. I asked for her name, which she gave in sounds like waves over sand: Palestine. She clasped my hand to her face and said, “This world will soon be swept away.”
On a January morn, the king rode to the House of Commons to demand the surrender of five Parliament men who had given him quarrel. His birds had flown, though, and empty-handed he returned to Whitehall Palace, pursued by mobs of screeching women and men, threatening to pull him from his coach. He sent out his royal guards with lance and flintlock to compose the people, but we were pelted with rocks and chairs. Barricades were built and chains pulled across streets and byways to hinder our progress. We were a few hundred against six thousand Londoners made drunk upon the newly born idea that a country can rule itself without the shadow of a crown, and on that day the word “liberty” was on every tongue. The king soon left London, the queen making haste for Holland.
I was ordered to march with the king north to Cambridge. Along the way we passed bands of men lining the roads, calling out to us, “Brothers, come join us! Leave the tyrant behind and become a new citizen.” And for the first time, for many of the soldiers in the ranks, it mattered not that we were Welsh, or Irish, or Cornish; it mattered only that we were men who could make our own destinies without the consent of a king. Until that time, a man’s only country was that expanse of wilderness large enough to encompass his own clan, his own family profit. But there, on those dirt pathways, just as Palestine had prophesied, were the makers of a unified homeland, a whole England.
The king traveled to the port of Hull, where the gates of the city were locked against us. The royal troops then packed up and went to York, where we encamped until the spring. We were then closer to the borders of Scotland than to London, and with every mile, with every rough conscription, dragging a son or husband from his home or thieving food from poor yeomen, I became more and more resolved to leave the king’s ranks. I could not eat or sleep or take a step without the best part of myself rebelling against the base acts of a titled few.
A few good lords, attending the king at York, begged him to come to terms with Parliament. It was there I first saw Lord Fairfax, officer of the field and greatly admired by all the men for his strength and wit in a fight. He addressed the king directly, saying that if he did not work with Commons, a bloody civil war would surely follow. The king gave him his back, and Fairfax, a fiery man for all his good honor, addressed the royal troops, calling them to serve in glory the people of England. And so I, being sixteen and of age to serve in Parliament’s army, laid down my pike of ash with all its brightly colored, foolish ribbons and made my way back to London. My friend, the tall Cornishman who had stood next to me at the banqueting hall, stayed with the king, and when next I saw him, it was across a field of battle. He would die at the siege of Basing House, a cannonball his final pillow.
I married Palestine Ross in the last days of June and together we made ready for war. We set up in small rooms off Fetter Lane, close to the chapel where her father preached and where I went to be baptized into faith. The gathering storm was there in that temple and in chapels all through London. The pulpit words were little fires that scorched the hearts of all who listened. And like upright brands, with our heads aflame, we carried the light to anyone who would listen. Those who did not, we put aside in Newgate Prison. At night before sleep, my wife sang psalms and encircled me with gentle arms.
I worked for months in a carpenter’s pit, planing timber for Parliament’s navy until my arms outgrew my coat. In late summer I took leave of my wife. Giving her what coins I had, I left with Parliament’s troops under the command of Lords Fairfield and Essex. Their orders from Commons: to rescue the king from himself.
We were a ragged, out-of-step band of thousands, ’prentices, tradesmen, and untested soldiers. But in two months’ time we were drilled and marched and preached into good order. A new pike was given to me, and I learned the facings, doublings, and wheelings of field battle, all the while chanting, “How great be my God.”
I fought first at Edgehill at October’s end and killed my first Welshman, who, knowing me for a countryman, died cursing me to Hell. His words, spoken in Welsh, worked like acid until I imagined I wore his curses like pagan markings on my naked skin. Then came the killing of Cornishmen, Lancashiremen, Cheshiremen, and again more Welshmen, in countless, endless numbers, and I learned the torment of being known as a traitor to my own country. In overwhelming numbers the Welsh fought for the king, for the royal house of Tudor first took root in the harsh and spirited soil of Wales, and its men would not be severed from their pride except through the biting edge of a sword.
Battles were won and lost and won again. Men less base than I died drowning in their blood while merciless plunderers lived and gained in fortune. For every man that joined the fight, three would creep away under cover of night to far-flung counties. Soldiers gambled on the sly and kept time with the baggage whores that posed as washerwomen. Order slipped from the ranks like water down a chain.
In May of sixteen and forty-three we joined with a cavalry troop at Winceby and broke the Royalists’ ranks, taking eight hundred of the king’s men. Chief among our cavalry leaders was a tall, wiry man who charged his group of horsemen as though it were one body. His clothes, ill-fitting and coarse, hid limbs of hammered iron. So tight was his discipline that his men were taxed twelve pence for swearing and put in stocks for drinking. And for raping a woman, though she be the Whore of Babylon, hanging with a short rope. His voice, sharp and piercing, carried a mile or more across the battlefield, and it became the tuning gauge to all our rallying cries. His name was Oliver Cromwell.
One black evening, on a night with no moon, I huddled under my cloak as I ate my supper of bread and meat, both gone green with age. A man came out of the darkness and asked if he could share my fire. I knew his voice at once to be Cromwell’s and I gladly made room for him next to the warmth of the flames. I had heard his voice earlier as he went from soldier to soldier, stoking courage, giving solace, offering prayer. He was one of the few officers to ever do so and was greatly loved for it. We spoke of humble things: our homes, our wives, the pleasures of a man’s work far from the battlefield.
