In sixteen forty-nine, in the biting winter of January, scaffolding began to rise before the banqueting hall like the shell of a great beast. A master builder had been paid two shillings a day to build the stage from which the king’s head would fall. Ropes had been hammered into the planks to tie him down should he resist. The high executioner swore he would never ply his trade on a neck that had carried a crown, and the crowds became sullen waiting for Commons to begin killing the Stuarts.
In the blue dawn of January 26th, I was called by Cromwell to Westminster Palace. I was led through a dark warren of rooms and found the general alone on his knees, praying. Seeing me, he rose and gestured for me to come nearer. There was only one candle in the chamber, but I could see the breath curl from his lips like gray mist from a northern sea. The man had been at prayer, yet there was no aspect of Godly play about his face, merely the steady glint of eyes that had long gazed upon a lock and had only just discovered the key.
He studied me from the shadows before saying, “Thomas, I can see you’ve greatly changed from the boy who shared his campfire with me. You have the look about you now of a resolute man.”
I nodded to him that this was so.
“And your wife?” he asked. “She fares well?”
“Aye,” I answered, remembering that Cromwell’s own beloved wife had been gravely ill for a time.
“It is said,” he began but paused, as though considering something of gravity. “It has been brought to me that she speaks openly of her doubts that Charles Stuart should be put to death.” His eyes were downcast, his words carefully chosen, but I had no doubt of his fearsome attention in waiting for my answer. For the first time in the years of serving him during the war, through all the battles won and lost, through all the trials and intrigues that placed him as the man destined to rule the new England, I felt the prickling of dread, not for myself, but for Palestine.
I said, “My wife, as ever, keeps with our cause. She is free to reveal her mind, I believe, as we now have no fear of tyrants. Is that not so?”
He stepped nearer so I could see the measure of his gaze boring into me. He asked, “Do you upon your life love your country?”
I answered him that I did.
He moved closer still and asked, “Do you have love for me as well?” Again I answered him, yes.
There was a rustling sound as he gathered his cloak tighter about his shoulders. The room became an empty cave for the beat of twenty and then he asked sharply, “What is it in the field of battle that is both threat and remedy?”
“A man’s sword,” I answered.
“Yes, a man’s sword. Men are like swords, Thomas. We are all instruments of God. Remember you, before the battle at Naseby, I spoke that God will love him best that takes the hardest path?”
A shallow morning light had slipped into the room and with it a kind of creeping disquiet, draping over my head like a cowl. I remembered well what he had told me before the battle. He had said God would call those he loved most to do that which is most hard. Cromwell, who had beaten a royal army through the iron of his will, leading mountains of men to their oblivion, had chosen the hardest path. But he had come to believe that God would love him all the more for it and follow after him, like Cromwell’s own legions of troops, spreading glory to the earthly victories along the way.
His face, now lit from the strengthening sun, was quiet, but in his eyes was a question of faith, like the gaze of Abraham upon his son as he wielded the knife over the burning altar, ever willing to make fragrant sacrifices to the Lord. He dismissed me from his presence and I thought then that he had only wanted from me a renewed pledge of loyalty.
In the winter of ’forty-nine, the great hall of Westminster was the place of judgment for Charles Stuart. A man like any other, he walked before his judges wearing no crown and carrying only a silver-headed cane. Fifty judges found him guilty of setting his countrymen to bloody civil war. He was proclaimed a tyrant and sentenced to death.
The king’s prison was St. James Palace, where I had been sent as guard with others loyal to Cromwell. Smaller than Whitehall and close to the hall of judgment, it could be better armed with fewer men; and better spied-upon, for the king had once before been spirited away by Royalists, and he never gave up hope for ransom or escape. It was the weakness of the man that he could not see that his great adversary was not of the Royalist cloth: Cromwell could not be bribed or bullied.
I had been placed on the outer parapets as sentry. But on a cold and windy day I was placed directly outside the Stuart’s chamber. I stood guard with a man I did not know but who had proven himself at the battle at Naseby. His name was Robert Russell.
We followed our prisoner at every waking hour: at his prayers, at his rounds through the gardens, at his meals, where we stood hard by and counted every knife afterwards. It was at my dawn council with Cromwell that I was told I would accompany the Stuart king on his final walk to Whitehall.
The few days before he was to die, Charles Stuart accepted his fate and kissed his children good-bye. Once, rising from his prayer altar, he stumbled, and I caught his arm. He thanked me and, straightening his vest, said, “I have known you before, Corporal.” He looked me up and down and, gesturing to my sleeve, said, “You were my royal bodyguard once. The coat you wear is the same crimson as before, and yet it comes to me that the lining has changed.” He raised one eyebrow, his lips curling. “Yes, yes, the lining is quite changed.”
At midnight before the morning of the execution, I was awakened from my sleep by a colonel of the guard and brought, with Robert Russell, to an outer courtyard. There waiting were three other men, soldiers of Cromwell’s New Model Army. We drew our cloaks against the blistering cold and followed without a torch to a far door, bolted from the inside. Upon a knock it was opened, and we were led down into the bottommost part of the castle. We gathered in a vaulted room where tapers had been lit, and the colonel left us to stand awhile. Soon two men, cloaked and hooded, came into the chamber and I could see in an instant that the taller man was Cromwell. The smaller man was his son-in-law and fellow soldier, Henry Ireton.
Cromwell swept off his hood, saying, “Every man among you has been tested and found steadfast: in zeal, in loyalty, in courage and godliness. But there is not one man here that does not have blood on his hands. Not even myself. We have fought together, friends, and God has found us worthy. There is but a single obstacle to a final victory, and that is the death of one man.” He paused, holding up a finger. “One man who at his death on the morrow will give us the liberty we seek.”
The finger, held upright, wavered and in turn pointed to each of us. “But who will be the liberator? Who will be the one who frees us from the tyrant? By God, I would do it myself but for the people saying it would be to crown myself king.”
Motioning to Ireton, Cromwell took from his son-in-law a set of small wooden stakes. “Let God decide, then. We will choose in lots as the Testament prophets did. The first to draw the short lot will be headsman.”
There was a heavy silence in the room as each man waited to take his turn. Each one of us had in recent days been counseled alone by Cromwell, asked by him if we loved God and England. We had only to look in Cromwell’s eyes in the torchlight of that chamber to know that to be loved by him in return was to be forfeit to his cause. The first man reached out with shaking hands to take up a stake, and came up long. And so did the next man, and the next. It was down to Robert and myself, and when Robert reached for the two remaining pieces, he came up short. His face knotted, first in surprise and then in terror. He had killed his share of common Englishmen in battle, but to kill an anointed king was to pull the sun down from the sky, leaving a void for anarchy, bloodshed, and damnation to fill.