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  “Hold a little,” the king said, raising his voice to Cook’s back.

  Determinedly deaf to the greatest man in the world, Cook carried on reading the charges, a little breathless as if he were anxious to get through them all. James found he was gritting his teeth as the prosecutor steadfastly ignored his king, continuing to list that the king had traitorously and maliciously . . .

  “Hold a little,” the king interrupted again, and then shockingly, leaned forwards, lifted his black ebony cane, and poked the prosecutor, hard, in the back.

  “God, no,” James said to himself.

  Cook caught his breath but continued with accusations, the king poked at him again, and again, then, like the slow unfolding of a nightmare, the silver tip at the end of the cane fell to the floor with a heavy thud and rolled loudly to a standstill. Cook paid no attention to the stick against his shoulder, nor to the king’s interruption, but as the silver ring rolled to a standstill he froze, as still as the ferrule, as if he were afraid to look round to see what the king would do next. He took a breath as if to continue with the prosecution case. But he did not speak.

  Nobody moved. James realized he was gripping his wooden seat, stopping himself getting up and picking up the silver ferrule for the king. Half the audience were holding themselves rigid so that they did not betray themselves by getting to their feet to serve the man who had never had to do anything for himself. Nobody was attending to the prosecutor anymore. Everyone was looking from the shining tip of the cane on the floor, to the king, who had never in his life picked up anything.

  The silver ring lay on the floor beside the prosecutor’s polished shoes, the prosecutor standing like a statue beside it. The bench of judges was still, the Lord President frozen. Nobody knew what to do, and everyone felt it was strangely important.

  Slowly, in the long silence, Charles himself rose from his chair, opened the little door to his enclosure, came out, bent down, and picked up the heavy cane tip, twisting it back into place on the handsome stick. He looked from the Lord President to the prosecutor as if he could not understand that they had not stopped everything to serve him. All his life someone had bent and fetched and carried for him, but here, with more than a thousand subjects in the room, nobody had moved. He smiled slightly, inclining his head a little, as if he had learned something important and disagreeable, and then he went back to his chair in a silence so profound that James thought they could have been passing a sentence of death.

  James left the hall at the end of the day’s hearing, sick to his belly from lack of food and at what he had heard and seen. He went back to his safe house and, with his head thumping, wrote his report, translated it into the code that they had agreed, and took the letter down to Queenhithe. The master of a ship was waiting for him.

  “We sail with the tide,” he warned.

  “Go now,” James said. “This is all I have to send. Someone will be waiting for you when you dock. They’ll ask for the paperwork from Monsieur St. Jean.”

  “I’m guessing it’s not good news,” the captain said, looking at James’s darkened face.

  “Just give him the letter,” James said wearily, and turned away from the river and the bobbing ships and his own longing to go with them.

  Alinor’s brother, Ned, was among the crowd that pushed their way into the Westminster Hall on the first day of the trial, but he did not see James. Nor did James, who kept his head down and his hat pulled low over his face, notice the ferryman. The two men, without knowing it, shared a vigil, each of them incredulous that the trial was going ahead, both of them doubtful that there could be a guilty verdict. The roundhead veteran doubted that the judges would hold their nerve for long enough to find their king guilty of treason. And even if they did, Ned was certain they would have no appetite for a death sentence. How could subjects pass a death sentence on their king? All the courts in the land were by royal appointment, bound to keep the king’s laws. Who had the power to judge the lawgiver? For the first time in his life, that cold day in January, Ned saw his king in the semidivine flesh, seated on his velvet cushion, with his tall hat like a crown on his head, and thought, confusingly, that a man so arrogant as to bring himself before a court by his refusal to speak to his fellow men, or to keep his word when it was given, deserved that they should act against him. But at the same time, he could not stop himself thinking that a man so long-fingered, so beautifully dressed, with such mournful beauty, must be, as he claimed: half god, and entirely above justice.

  Saturday— It is unlikely that an attempt to rescue him by force could succeed. He is brought by river to a private house before entering Westminster and intensely guarded. I think his only chance of freedom is on the insistence of the princes of Europe, especially if they threaten war on this half-hearted half-attending parliament. Many MPs have been excluded from parliament, less than half the summoned judges are attending, the people are not calling for the king to be sentenced. The decision of the court is by no means certain, the king is refusing to answer to it, and claims that it has no authority. I believe it could be adjourned without a verdict if the king’s fellow-monarchs and kinsmen demand it. If the trial continues there is a real danger of a verdict of “guilty,” and tho’ a verdict is not a sentence, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales would be well advised to demand an assurance that they will not go from verdict to a sentence of exile or imprisonment.

  They will call witnesses to give evidence of His Majesty breaking peace treaties, dishonoring his parole, denying his word, and lying to the parliament; and this can only cause more bad feeling. The mood of the hall is growing darker. The king has been fatally ill-advised to say nothing. Since he makes no explanation nor defense, it appears as if he has no defense. Worse, he looks as if he is relishing the accusations. But it does not stop them. We have only one advantage right now: that they have adjourned till Monday. There is time for you to make demands and stop this trial.

  James sent his coded letter of advice into the darkness, into the hands of a ship’s captain crossing the stormy seas of the Channel in winter. He had no reply, but he expected none. There was no reason that the lords in exile should reassure him that they were taking steps to save the king. On Sunday, he attended the church for the empty service of protestant communion, and prayed fervently in his own room. He went down three times to Queenhithe in case a ship had come in with a letter for him. Not even his father had written.

  On Monday he wrote again to his masters at The Hague that the court had met, and still the king would not answer to them.

  Tomorrow they will meet without the presence of His Majesty to hear witnesses. It is essential that someone contradicts their testimony. Can one of you lords or gentlemen attend to cross-question the witnesses? If they say that the king is a liar it does not matter that the court is unconstitutional—it is something that should never be said. If we do not challenge this, we are teaching the people of England that they can say anything.

  As the days went on, and James sent daily reports and received no reply, not even acknowledgment, he felt more and more that he, like the king, had been forgotten, and that he and the king would go on forever in this strange life in which every word uttered was of life or death importance, every word was on oath, and yet the boredom and banality of day after day in the Painted Chamber at Westminster, as the witnesses listed one dishonorable folly after another, was as painful as a man sucking on a decaying tooth.

  Ned, listening as hard as he could, pushed into a corner at the very back of the room, found it incomprehensible that the judges could find the courage to sit in judgment on their king, but not to force him to answer. He feared, as the bitterly cold January drew to an end, that the king would escape all justice by the simple technique of denying that anyone had the right to judge him. He denied their right to speak of him, he denied their right to listen, he denied their right to be.

  “It’s as if none of us is here,” he complained to his landlady in the cramped little inn that even
ing. “It’s as if none of it ever happened at all. He’s not even listening to the evidence against him. He’s not even attending now. They’ve let him off his own trial. He’s—well, I don’t know what he’s doing. Playing golf at St. James’s?”

  “We’re nothing to the likes of them,” she said.

  “I’m not nothing,” Ned said doubtfully. “On my ferry, on the mire. I’m not nothing there.”

  On the evening of Saturday, January 27, James wrote his last letter in code and sent it to the unnamed man who had asked him to report, but not told him what he should do in the case of a disaster. Now the disaster had come and James wrote slowly, feeling that the time for urgency was past, and either they had an escape which they had not troubled to explain to him, or they had heard his warnings and done nothing. Either way his purgatory of misery had been completely wasted.

  I regret to report that they have found him guilty and, with the verdict, they passed sentence of death. They recorded that they judged him tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of the nation, to be put to death by the severing of his head from his body.

  If you have influence for mercy or pardon or a plan for escape it should be deployed now. They have not set a date for execution, but he is to see his children, Princess Elizabeth and her little brother Prince Henry, on Monday. His execution must follow unless you have prevented it.

  James paused, wanting to believe that his part in this had been so unimportant, that all along a conspirator with a great name, or a man with a great fortune, or the French ambassador or the Prince of Wales himself had been meeting with the judges, or with Oliver Cromwell, and an arrangement had been made for the king’s safety. Perhaps even now a secret door in Whitehall Palace was being opened to the stairs down to the river and a ship was raising her sails and taking him away.

  I truly believe that they intend to execute him within days. Of course, I beg that you save him and prevent this terrible martyrdom. Send me orders as to what I can do. Tell me at least that you have received this?

  TIDELANDS, FEBRUARY 1649

  The iron bar clanged loudly on the horseshoe and Alys rose up from the breakfast table, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and went to the door. The cold wintry air swirled in as she banged the door behind her. “Lord, is that you, Uncle Ned?” Alinor heard her call. “I thought you’d never come home!”

  Alinor threw open the front door to look out, shading her eyes against the bright wintry sun that burned low, just rising over the harbor. Against the white brightness she could only see the outline of a man, pack on his back, hat on his head, soldier’s boots, but she recognized her brother as he stepped down into the ferry, kissed his niece, and let her haul him over, solemnly paying her his fee.

  “You’re welcome to your home, Brother,” Alinor said as Ned stepped ashore. She moved into the warm hug of his cape. He smelled of London, of strange stables, of damp beds, of beer rather than ale, fires of charcoal, not wood. “You’ve been gone so long. We’ve had no news. What happened? Did they finish the trial? We only heard that it had begun.”

  “Aye, they did,” he replied, sitting down on his stool and pulling off his boots.

  “Never!” Alys exclaimed. “I swore they would not dare.”

  “They dared do more than that,” Ned said wonderingly. “All the way home, I’ve been puzzling about it. But they did more than charge him with betrayal, they accused him of treason, with a death sentence. And it’s done. He’s dead and we are a kingdom without a king.”

  Alinor gasped and put her hand to the base of her throat and felt her pulse thud. “Really? Truly? He’s dead? The king is dead?”

  “Yes. You’re like everyone else that I’ve told, all the way down the London road. Everyone acts like it was a shock, but he was on trial before a court, in full sight of the people, and he had it coming since Nottingham. Why should anyone be surprised that time ran out for him?”

  “Because he’s the king,” Alinor said simply.

  “But not above the law, as it turns out, as he thought.”

  “How did they do it?” Alys asked curiously.

  Alinor went to the foot of the staircase and shouted for Rob to wake and come down, for his uncle was home, poured her brother a cup of ale and sat beside him. She could hardly bear to listen, knowing what this would mean for James. But she had to know: a kingdom without a king was a puzzle that the people of England would have to solve. And how would a people as diverse as the minister, or Mrs. Wheatley, or the Chichester apothecary agree as to how they should be governed? Or would it all be decided by the likes of Sir William and nothing really changed at all?

  “They did it lawfully,” Ned answered his niece. “In a court of law, though he denied it to the last.”

  “I mean the execution? We knew that he was on trial. But nobody thought he would be executed. We had sight of a news-sheet after the first day, and then nothing.”

  He sighed. “I was glad to see it done, and it had to be done, and it was just that it was done. But, Lord knows, it’s always pitiful to see a man die.”

  Rob, tying the laces on his breeches, came downstairs, shook hands with his uncle, and sat at the table to listen.

  “Where’s Red?” Ned suddenly asked, looking under the table, sensing an absence where his dog should be.

  Alinor put her hand on his. “I’m sorry, Ned,” she said. “He died. He was in no pain. He was just very tired one morning, and by evening, he was asleep.”

  He shook his head a little. “Ah,” he said. “My dog.”

  They were silent for a moment, and Alinor cut Ned a slice from the breakfast loaf and put it on a wooden platter before him.

  “What about the king?” Rob prompted.

  “They beheaded him?” Alys pressed.

  “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.