The hides trader took his leave of me at a crossroads and, pointing the way, told me how to find my way to King’s Gate. But because I was threadbare, I was then kicked and beaten to the stables, and finally to the king’s coal pits behind the Scottish Yard. Because of my size, I was set to loading and carrying coal for the cook fires hard by the Thames. Day upon day I corded wood and off-loaded barrels for the small-beer brewery. I slept crooked in a stairwell under the bake house and fought off wharf rats as great as bull mastiffs to keep what little bread I was thrown.
The bake woman was Welsh and a sharp-tongued gossip, and though she would hardly look at me, she found my silence a midden into which she dropped never-ceasing news of the day. London had become like a body with two heads that strained and tore at itself to go separate ways. One head was the common Parliament, led by fire-filled Puritans whose lay preachers had given themselves such names as Praise-God Barebones. These Puritans knocked down gilded altars, believing they were the stuff of idolatry, and resurrected in their place rude wooden tables for the communion bread. The other head was the king with his Catholic wife and archbishop, who would have every man in England read from a common prayer book of his own devise. The bake woman would spit into the fire and say hotly, “It won’t be long now afore the king’s wife will have us bakin’ the blood of our newborns into the wafers for her mass.”
On a morning in June at low tide, the damp stones stinking of the privy pits above, I was kicked awake by a river guard and told to go to the stables to help hang a door.
It was early yet, the fog not yet risen from the Scottish Yard, but at every lodge there were ’prentices and workmen standing in their doorways, waiting for me. And at every station the masons, porters, and smiths grinned and pointed, hiding their mouths behind their fists. Even the master of the beer cellar had roused himself from his bed. The porter’s lodge at the outer wall discharged the porter’s boy and two guards at a run as they followed me across Whitehall Road, and behind them came a full measure of workmen together in a tide.
To the west of Whitehall Street lay the horse-guard yard, flanked on three sides by the stable. Standing about the yard were six or seven of the king’s mounted men in blue coats and breeches, and with them a slant-eyed fool who wore around his neck a riding halter. He was large but with a child’s soft looks. One of the horse guards, seeing the crowd, walked towards me with a bridle and bit in one hand, and in the other a short whip.
With a great laugh he said to his fellows, “I’ll raise my wager, now that I’ve seen the Welshman. Ten shillings my fool beats your fool.”
He stopped within an arm’s breadth and, holding up the bridle, said, “Come, my great dray, bend down your head and take this between your teeth. I swear to you the whip will but tickle your neck if you run apace. Win for me and I’ll give you a shilling.”
He cocked his head at me, his smile faltering when I didn’t move. “Come, come. Take this bit and then give me your hand so I may straddle your back.”
Dropping the bridle down to his waist, he gave a great sigh as though deeply burdened by my silence. He flicked the whip at my chest, bringing a welt. “Well,” he said, “this one may need gelding.” He lowered the whip to slash at my thigh and I grabbed his fingers, squeezing them until they popped. I lifted him up and hung him by his coat from a high hook on the stable wall. Two of his men, weighted down with sword and cuirass, rushed at me, and I put them to ground like stranded kettle fish.
Suddenly, a loud field-ready voice cried, “Hold, hold!” and a stout, middling man with a red-winded face strode into the yard, pulling ’prentices and guardsmen roughly about, and with a great waving of arms made the sentries raise up their pikes. The bluejay I had hung on the wall was rescued and the crowd was soon scattered to their posts.
“Now, then,” threatened the stout man, standing on my toes. “What mean you to come and beat my men? I’m Llwewelyn, captain at arms, and I will have your head on a pike before you can finish a prayer. What say you?”
At hearing his good Welsh name I handed him the letter from Corporal Jones and waited while it was read. After a few surprised words, the captain embraced me as though I were a son truly lost and only just found, and I was that day taken into the king’s guard.
I drilled with pike and musket that summer through. Fitted with gorget, breastplate, and helmet, carrying a pike twenty feet long, five feet greater than other sentries, I made a fair impression upon the citizens of Whitehall. Posted at the palace gates where the stream of traffic was greatest, I wore a coat of scarlet with boots special-made to lift my height above seven feet. Men, and not a few women, would come to King’s Gate of an evening to gawk at me.
One night I was placed with a Cornishman, himself seven feet tall, on the stairs of the banqueting hall for the king’s summer’s-end feast. There the Cornishman and I were paired at the north entrance flanking the great ladies and lords that did pass through. Soon, before us stood the king himself. A man of smallish stature, not above five and a half feet, with sad eyes and a tripping tongue, he admired and examined us with pride. His queen came behind and with her own hand tied upon our breastplates two ribbons of red and gold. Afterwards, whenever the king was to go to Whitehall, whether to banquet or bait or receive men of great importance in his privy galleries, there stood the Cornishman and I.
We sentried beneath ceilings painted of men and women naked as newborns, flanked by hangings of silvered thread and carvings of alabaster and gold. Our cuirasses and helmets were kept from blackening by the king’s own armory squires. Our matched pikes of the finest ash were tied with the ribbons of favored court women who traipsed about us like cats in a granary, winking and gesturing for our notice, vying for a glance and a promising smile.
October brought open rebellion in Catholic Ireland, where it was proclaimed that British settlers were cut down by the thousands. Londoners came to call the slaughter the Queen’s Rebellion, for it was she they blamed for encouraging popery and open revolt. There was bloody action in the streets and even into Westminster Hall from citizens who feared the king himself was secretly a Catholic, bringing the well-remembered horrors of the Inquisition back to Protestant England. The king’s guards were called out to quiet the town and bring order again.
We broke dissent in Old St. Paul’s Church, where Puritan zealots gathered to try to turn away gaudy merchants who had filled the church naves with their goods, using the very baptismal font as a money counter. We chased the riotous preachers from the cathedral into the courtyard, where booksellers sold their wares to every rogue with a coin, and took the good ministers in chains to the Tower. We routed gangs of marching outlaw ’prentices, seeking only charitable pay and a relief from endless taxes which the king’s pleasures demanded, into the stinking alleys and public houses, where they sought shelter, and into houses where trap doors and ferret closets could hide a desperate man with a dirk or striking stick.
We raided the fomenting Cradle and Coffin Inn in St. Giles off Drury Lane, bastion of dissenters who wanted no hint of popery in their places of worship. And plucked deserting soldiers, sickened from the misuse of their own, from the Red Lion Inn over Fleet Ditch, and the Blood Bowl near Water Lane, where it was said a man a day was robbed and murdered.
In every public house and shop we searched, there followed offers of money and ale to turn away and look elsewhere. Our exemplar in this regard was the king himself, for he took bribes from every country in Europe to keep his armies from joining one royal dynasty over another. The money, for pride, I would not take when many of my fellows did; but a man will take drink when he is thirsty, and comfort when a welcoming cubby is made under a woman’s skirts. It was a short step then from guard to garrison lout, and I made time in gaming, baiting, and cockfighting. There were fairs and shows in every street. Giant women and dwarfish men were paraded on Fleet Street with baboons and dancing dogs. At the Eagle and Child Inn a monstrous ox grown nineteen hands high was shown for a coin.
 
; There were ready fights to be had on any corner or crossroads, as most men were frayed with the threat of street war. A cap cocked back or a bitten thumb would bring bands of Catholics and Protestants together, knives drawn and keen for butchering. The Parliament threatened to impeach the queen for her Catholic ways. The queen in answer told the king, “Go and pull those rogues out by the ears or never more see my face.” My post was moved to Commons that winter to keep the Parliament men in mind of their king.
It was nigh on Christmas on a bright, cold day that I stood guard at Commons, nursing a head from too much drink. The evening before had been a pitiful show. An ancient bear, too old to fight, had been mauled in the Southwark baiting pits by a pack of young hounds. Blinded and matted with gore, the bear struggled to die on its hind feet but its owner gave the prod to anyone who would beat it down again so the hounds could better tear at its flesh. A terrible rumbling had taken up in my ears to watch that bear shaming every man-jack of them with his courage and his refusal to die on his back. The prod was in my hand before I had given a thought to it, and I stripped the bear baiter’s backside to mincemeat before I was held down by ten of my fellows and hastened from the ring. The roar was still in my head that morning as I gazed out of blood-hazed eyes at a young woman, standing before our sentries preaching.
She had come for weeks offering prayers for our blackened souls, and because she was small and henlike, I had given her not a thought. She was only one of many women who shouted or pleaded or spoke in strange tongues of the sinfulness of the king and his men. Newgate Prison had been flooded with these dour preaching shrills and they were of more sport to the courtiers that came to watch them rant than were the murderous scum waiting to be hanged. The guards posted with me soon made their own sport with her. Ripping the maiden’s cap from her hair, they fondled her with their hands, yet she stood upon her little stool, speaking of love and fragrant sacrifices to God. All the while she gave no heed to the men molesting her but looked above their heads to the highest rafters as if to watch a brace of nesting doves. Believing in that moment that no merciful act goes without punishment afterwards, I batted away the men and told her to go home to her husband or father.
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 s
leep, 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.