Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck Read online

  ‘Leave me,’ she said in a low voice. The turnkey said nothing but raised an eyebrow. She shook her head. ‘I shall be safe enough,’ she added sharply.

  The man shrugged again, as if absolving himself from whatever befell the silly wench, then shuffled out. As she turned back to the immobile figure at the narrow casement, the young woman heard the key engage the several tumblers in the lock.

  ‘Have you brought my shirts?’ The man’s tone was peremptory, rude even, but his voice had a soft burr which, despite herself, she thought attractive. He was, she knew, a Devon man, for he had told her so upon a previous visit when he had appeared less offensive. She was disappointed by his present mood of indifference and found herself unexpectedly stung by it.

  ‘I have,’ she said, then adding with a calculated insolence of her own ‘…sir.’

  ‘Please do not call me that,’ he said sharply, turning round and confronting her. ‘The truth is, I am unable to pay you for your service, mistress, and that grieves me, for you deserve payment.’

  She frowned. ‘Not pay me?’ She frowned fiercely and shook her head. ‘Why so?’

  ‘I am out of funds…’

  ‘And I then am out of luck.’

  ‘You are quick with your tongue.’

  ‘I have need to be…’

  ‘What are you called?’ He said, interrupting brusquely. ‘Did I hear that they call you Nan?’ he asked, but did not await a reply, blundering on. ‘I do not like Nan, but if you mend my shirts and I owe you money I stand in your debt and must needs call you something … something respectful.’

  The sudden mellowing surprised her. The man’s tone was still abrupt, but it was no longer unkind and his face bore the hint of a wistful sadness.

  ‘If thou wish it, sir,’ she said, strangely mollified, ‘please call me Anne.’

  ‘Anne,’ he said contemplatively, turning the name over and repeating it. ‘Anne … very well, it is a pleasing name, far better than Nan.’

  Looking at her properly now, he smiled and his full, heavy-featured face lit up, for it was not only his mouth that smiled, but his blue eyes – and she, in her turn, liked that too. It brought a sense of warmth to her; she had not known such warmth before and, despite the man’s formidable appearance, she found that it too pleased her.

  ‘What,’ she pleaded, ‘shall I call you if not sir? Shall I call you Colonel?’

  ‘Colonel?’ He barked a short, self-deprecating laugh. ‘No, no, I think not. Not when I stand in debt to you and lie in this place.’ He gestured about him at the stone walls and the small, iron-barred window. ‘Please call me George as that is the name by which I was baptised … but Anne, Anne, you should not be worrying what you call me when I allow you to darn my worn shirts and then have not the means to give you recompense.’ There was a kindness in his address now, and she sensed a hint of genuine shame in his predicament.

  ‘You will pay me when you can … George.’ This last tentative, almost shy.

  ‘That is better. Come, sit, if you have a moment to please me further. Have you such a moment, Anne?’

  ‘I have, sir.’

  ‘George,’ he corrected.

  ‘George,’ she said, colouring and sitting on the rickety chair. She looked down at the adjacent table. It was covered with sheets of paper upon which, it seemed to her, were line upon line of script, his script. A quill and inkwell lay to hand.

  ‘That is how I spend my days,’ he explained, watching her intently, ‘writing.’ She remained silent, unsure of what to say, for it seemed a very personal revelation. The act of writing on such a scale as this emphasised the gulf between them. She could both read and write, but never much more than a letter and certainly nothing so obviously prolix. She thought he seemed to sense this, seemed not to expect a response, for he again turned his head and stared out of the window. But then he continued speaking, his tone lower, almost confidential: ‘Raleigh wrote when he was here, in The Tower … before King James took his head off for his failure.’

  The young woman was not certain who this Raleigh was. Though she had heard the name before, she could not place its significance, let alone the extent of the poor man’s failure.

  He turned from the window. ‘I knew him, you know, when I was a boy. Met him at Sir Lewis Stukeley’s … but that is of no interest to you.’

  ‘Is he the man who brought tobacco back from the Virginia colony?’ she said, suddenly recollecting what she had heard and eager to show interest in this strange man’s past life.

  ‘Yes, the same,’ he said, smiling at her again. She was pleased at her contribution to the conversation, pleased that she had not been entirely covered in ignorance. ‘And, as a boy, I played with Tom Rolfe …’ She shook her head, shrugging. He chuckled. ‘No, you would not know, but he was the son of that celebrated Indian Princess, Pocahontas. Have you heard of her, Anne?’

  She shook her head again and hung it in shame. ‘No, sir,’ she said miserably. He stepped towards her and, a finger under her chin, he lifted her head. No-one would ever call her pretty, still less beautiful, but he was attracted by her evenly featured, honest and open face which, though it bore the marks of a visitation of the smallpox, had done so lightly. ‘’Tis no matter,’ he said with a wide smile. ‘Truth to tell,’ he said, his voice low, reflective and almost intimate, ‘I am ignorant too, my education having been cut short by my wilful outrage … so that I was sent away to Cadiz …’ His voice faded, he moved away from the young woman and turned again to the window where, for a moment or two, he seemed lost again in his own memories.

  She felt confused, unsure whether to be counted ignorant by one who professed the same want of learning – which she did not for a moment believe – or flattered that this important man had reduced his own condition to her own. She held her peace until, after a few moments of abstraction, he spoke again.

  ‘I was born in a house which looked down upon a river, Anne, but not such a crowded ditch as this River of Thames with its fogs and its stinks, but a glorious river that wound itself through wooded hills that were choked with as much game as it was with trout. It marked my father’s demesne of Potheridge.’ He paused as she hung on his every word.

  ‘Please go on,’ she urged him, her voice low.

  ‘My father’s family had been lords of the manor since the days of Henry III … seventeen generations father to son and yet …’ he sighed, turned back into the room, his left elbow on the window sill and his right hand indicating the papers on the plain table, ‘… and yet I want the words to do justice to my project which I see you survey with oh-so critical an eye.’

  She almost jumped. ‘Oh, no, sir, I was not looking! God bless you sir, no!’

  He was laughing at her. ‘’Tis all right, Anne, you may read as much as you like … You can read, can you?’ he stopped abruptly, then went on. ‘I am so sorry; forgive me, I am no gallant as you see, it never occurred to me … can you read?’

  She was bright red now, her cheeks scarlet with embarrassment. ‘A little, sir,’ she whispered. This was not how she was accustomed to behave normally. She was cross with herself, aware that he was playing games with her and yet oddly pleased that he was doing so.

  ‘George,’ he reminded her. He suddenly crossed the room, sorted the sheets and then drew one out of the loose pile. ‘Here, this seems better written than most. Tell me what you can make of it.’

  ‘’Tis getting dark, sir.’

  ‘George. Try, just to please me, though my hand is a scrawl to be sure.’

  She took the sheet screwed up her face and her lips began to move.

  ‘Please,’ he murmured, encouraging her.

  ‘The … c-a-u-s-e-s …’

  ‘Causes …’

  ‘The causes of all wars may be r-e-d-u-c-e-d … reduced …’

  ‘Good, go on.’

  ‘May be reduced,’ she went on with growing confidence, ‘to six heads; ambition, avarice, religion, r-e-v-enge, p-r-o … providence and defence.’<
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  ‘Please d’you go on. Wait, let me strike a light …’

  While he struck flint and steel to light a rush-and-tallow dip she rehearsed the next paragraph so that, by the time the flame threw an intimate glow over the paper-strewn table, she had it to her tongue.

  ‘Pray go on.’

  ‘War, the profession of a soldier,’ she read obediently, ‘is that of all others, which as it confereth most honour upon a man who therein acquitteth himself well, so it draweth the greatest infamy upon him who demeaneth himself ill. For one fault committed can never be repaired, and one causeth the loss of that reputation, which had been thirty years acquiring …’

  ‘Should I, do you think,’ he interrupted, ‘have written of that single fault that one fault only causeth the loss of reputation, or does it make sense as it is?’

  ‘It makes sense to me …’

  ‘Good. You read that uncommonly well, Anne. And for a moment I thought you unable. You must please forgive me.’

  ‘There is nothing to forgive.’ She could not say how flattered she was that he had asked her opinion, whether he meant it or no.

  ‘There is your lack of payment to forgive, Anne, though I promise to pay you as soon as I am in funds. I have written to my elder brother to send me something …’ He stopped and she saw that it was his turn to be embarrassed.

  ‘Please,’ she said, suddenly softening towards this man who, whatever he had done, deserved her pity for being mewed up in this gloomy place, ‘there is no need …’

  ‘Ah! There is every need.’ He cast about him, his voice conveying a hint of despair.

  ‘Have you …?’ she began but broke off. He recovered himself and looked at her as she sat, her pleasant features soft-lit by the dip, one hand upon the sheet from which she had read as her eyes seemed to rove over his words a second time. He divined her query.

  ‘Have I committed that single fault and thereby lost my reputation; is that what you are thinking?’

  She looked up sharply. ‘How did you guess?’

  He ignored her surprise. ‘’Tis a moot question, Anne, though I can assure you that I have not yet thrown my good name away.’

  ‘Not yet?’ she said, her expression quizzical.

  ‘You have quick wits, Anne. No, not yet; though that is what they want me to do, the men in black, to turn my coat and fight against those with whom I lately served and counted my brothers-in-arms.’

  ‘I know nothing about these affairs, but in the present troubles you surely would not be the first.’ She spoke firmly, confidently, possessed of good sense and opinion, he noted. That was something to set against her lack of beauty, though he warmed to her pleasant-enough features.

  ‘Do you know of men who fought for the King and then for the Parliament?’ There was an unpleasant edge suddenly come into his voice.

  ‘I have heard it said …’ She faltered; she was ignorant of politics. Despite the vociferations of many puritan women, such affairs were men’s business and none of hers.

  ‘Have you been sent to persuade me, Anne?’ he asked, suddenly accusatory, his voice stern. She looked up into his blue eyes and saw in them something terrifying, something hard, like steel, yet cold too, like ice. She shrank back, wondering how she had, no more than a few minutes previously, thought them enchanting. He, perceiving the unintended effect he had had upon her, apologised yet again. ‘I did not mean to startle you, but this world is full of tricksters. I would be less than honest if I did not say that I should not much like to discover you were sent to persuade me on the behalf of others.’

  ‘I would never do anything like that, sir. Never.’

  He softened and put out his hand to touch her bare arm. ‘No, I am assured of that now.’ He smiled again. ‘But I have failed to pay you, and that is reprehensible.’ He paused, switching his train of thought. ‘Of course,’ he said sitting down on the bed so that they conversed more like equals, ‘should you yourself marshal an argument that convinced me of the fitness of my accepting a command from the Parliament, then perhaps I might regard it with more charity.’

  ‘That would not be my place, sir.’

  ‘George.’ He paused, then asked, ‘But how should it not be your place in these days, for now the lowly are raised up and women shout as loud as men?’

  ‘I am not raised up … George … I darn the shirts of those sent here, and they are like you, all gentlemen.’ She hesitated and then added, ‘There is a bishop here, and another soldier like you.’

  ‘The bishop is Wren, is he not? The late Laudian Bishop of Ely, eh?’ She nodded. ‘And the soldier is Warren like as not?

  She shrugged and he brightened, asking, ‘But suppose Anne that you were me, what then would you do? Tell me, for I am otherwise perplexed as I cannot spend the rest of my life here unless the gentlemen in black are minded to send me to meet my maker sooner than he himself intends.’

  ‘You mean God?’

  ‘Quite so. So tell me, what would you do?’

  ‘The Parliament is powerful …’

  ‘Yes; perhaps too powerful … perhaps over-weeningly so and is asking to be cut down.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  He smiled. ‘No, why should you? It is of no matter. Tell me, do you speak with all the prisoners at such length?’

  ‘Good Lord, no, sir!’ she exclaimed with a hint of outrage, drawing back in her chair so that its legs squeaked on the flagstones.

  ‘No?’ he mocked her with a wide smile so that she relaxed. ‘I am teasing you. And I would have you call me a friend … your friend George, if you please.’

  This reminder of his situation, recalled her own. She recoiled, surprised at where this conversation had led her. ‘I cannot do that … George … Damn me,’ she snapped suddenly, ‘nor should I call you George!’ She jumped to her feet.

  ‘Why ever not?’ He looked up at her, astonished at her abrupt change of attitude.

  ‘Why sir,’ she said, retreating precipitately towards the door, ‘I cannot be your friend and still take money for darning your shirts and I cannot call you George because I am a married woman! That is why not and ’tis reason enough!’

  She turned, hammered on the door and while she awaited release she lifted his neatly pressed and folded linen from her basket and laid it on the straw seat of the chair. A moment later the lock gave way and the turnkey stood in the doorway.

  ‘Anne!’ the prisoner commanded. She stopped on the threshold and turned. ‘Come again,’ he said, smiling, ‘I shall expect you as I should further value your opinion on my book.’ He made her a half-bow though she made no curtsey in reply. Then she was gone and the turnkey leaned into the chamber and cast a look about him, staring at the clean shirt as if to see a file poking from its folds.

  ‘Get out!’ the prisoner snarled.

  The turnkey pulled a face before retreating hurriedly. The door clanged shut, the key turned again in the lock and this time, it being close to curfew, the bolts were shot home.

  Colonel George Monck expelled his breath and, alone with his thoughts, faced the long hours of the night.

  *

  He was at the window before dawn, staring down from his prison-chamber in St Thomas’s tower, noting the tide at the flood – the half-flood he guessed – from his elevated position. The tower in which he had been mewed-up, charged with high treason, formed part of Traitor’s Gate and from it he watched the shipping in the River of Thames, wishing he was a lad again, looking across the Torridge where it doubled itself like a silver serpent in its meander, and flowed towards its estuary, confluent with the Taw. Had his boyhood been happy? If it had possessed those ancient connections which he had mentioned in passing to Anne, it had not been untroubled. What did it signify if he could trace his lineage through his paternal great-grandmother, Francis Plantagenet, the daughter and co-heiress of Arthur Plantagenet, Lord Lisle, and a bastard of Edward IV? And, moreover, what of a second, more tenuous and tedious blood-line, traceable to that infamous monarc
h King John?

  What did any of that nonsense matter when his poor father, Sir Thomas Monck, was so beset by debt that he was confined upon his own land, encumbered, a prisoner by numerous writs? It was of no earthly account, for Sir Thomas must need send his son George to plead with an under-sheriff that his father might leave his estate in order to pay homage to the King when Charles I made his way through Devon to join ship at Plymouth. The uncomfortable thought stirred Monck from his place at the window. He was chilled and contemplated returning to bed until he realised that his shuddering was as much due to the power of memory as to the miserable, damp and chilly quarters within which he was confined.

  He remembered his father’s humiliation after he, George, had secured – by means of a little money laid out from Sir Thomas’s poor stock – a surety by the word of the under-sheriff Nicholas Battyn, that to honour the King’s Majesty Sir Thomas Monck might go unmolested by the law. Alas, his father’s debtors had paid the damned attorney more, and the infamous Battyn, having taken Monck’s money along with that of his father’s enemies, had arrested and imprisoned old Sir Thomas.

  In the event, the King by-passed Exeter where the plague then raged, and pressed on for Plymouth, but the sixteen year-old George Monck, disregarding the great power of the sheriff’s officers, furious at the deception of Battyn and angry that his father had been betrayed, fleeced, humiliated and confined, armed himself with a sword. Without a word to anyone, he had again made his way into the plague-infested city and gone directly to Battyn’s residence. Dragging the under-sheriff into the street, Monck beat him savagely – and carelessly – with the flat of his sword, bending its blade before the wretched Battyn was rescued, cut and bleeding, from the hands of the furiously impetuous youth. Monck was not merely restrained, he was thrown into the city’s gaol.