“I’ll get some hot ale,” Hester said. “Come to the kitchen with me, I must have the news.”

John followed his wife, Johnnie dogging his footsteps.

“How did he look?” Johnnie asked quietly, as John sat himself on the bench before the scrubbed table and Hester produced mulled ale and hot soup, and a trencher of bread and cheese.

“He looked well,” John said consideringly. “He had dressed for the part. He was in black but the George was ablaze on his shoulder. He carried his cane – and he tapped at the prosecutor with it-”

“He struck him?” Hester asked.

“Not a hard blow; but it was an awkward moment,” John confessed.

Johnnie’s eyes were huge in his pale face. “Did no one shout for him?”

“A woman cried from the gallery, and there were a few that shouted ‘God save the king,’ but the soldiers drowned them out with shouting for justice,” John said.

“I wish I could go,” Johnnie said fervently. “I would shout for him.”

“That’s why you won’t go,” John said firmly. “And I keep my head down and my thoughts to myself. They were seeking witnesses to the raising of the royal standard.”

“Did anyone recognize you?” Hester demanded.

John shook his head. “I am as quiet as a well-fed mouse,” he said. “I have no wish to be summoned as a witness to either cause. I have no wish but to see the end of this.”

“He’s the king!” Johnnie burst out passionately.

“Aye,” John replied. “And if he would consent to be a little less then he still might get clear of this. He could withdraw and offer them his son in his place. Or he could offer to rule by their assent, not his own. But he will be the king. He would rather be a dead king than a live sensible man.”

“Who were the commissioners?” Hester asked. “Anyone we know?”

“A few familiar faces,” John said. “But only half of them named and called have had the courage to sit in judgment on their king. There are a lot of men with pressing business elsewhere.”

“John Lambert?” she asked, deliberately casual.

“With the army in the north,” he replied. “But his name is down as a commissioner. Why d’you ask?”

“I should hate to think him in it,” she said.

“He wouldn’t do it,” Johnnie asserted. “He’d know that it is wrong.”

John shook his head. “It’s the only way for everyone now,” he said. “King and commoners. He’s left us no way out at all.”

Monday, 22 January 1649

On Monday John and Alexander met on the steps of Westminster Hall and went in with the surging crowd as the doors were opened. The press of men and women swept John to the far side of the hall where he could see the king’s profile against the red velvet chair. Charles looked drawn and tired, he was finding it hard to sleep while constantly watched, and he knew now that the chances of a miraculous escape were every day diminishing.

The Lord President Bradshaw nodded to the prosecutor John Cook to begin but he had turned away, talking to one of the lawyers. The king, with all his old imperiousness, poked Cook sharply in the back with his cane, and the man spun around in shock, his hand going instinctively to where his sword would be. A gasp went round the courtroom.

“Why does he do it?” Alexander demanded.

John shook his head. “I doubt any man has ever turned his back to him before,” he said quietly. “He cannot learn to be treated as a mere mortal. He was brought up as the son of God’s anointed. He just can’t understand the depth of his fall.”

John Cook ostentatiously pulled his jacket into shape, and completely ignored the blow. He approached the judges’ table, and asked them to agree that if the king would not plead then his silence would be taken as a confession of guilt.

The king replied. John noticed that in this crisis of his life he had lost his stammer. His diffidence in speaking directly to people had gone at last. He was clear and powerful as he told the court, in a voice raised loud enough to ensure that he could be heard in the courtroom and by the men scribbling down every word, that he was defending his own rights, but also the rights of the people of England. “If a power without law can make laws, then who can be sure of his life or anything that he calls his own?”

There was a soft mutter from the courtroom, and a few heads nodded in the galleries where the men of property were especially sensitive to the threat that a parliament free of king and tradition might make laws that did not suit the men of land and fortune. There were Levelers enough to frighten the men of property back onto the side of monarchy. Those who called for the king’s execution today might call for park walls to be pulled down tomorrow, for a law which treated commoners and peers equally, and for a parliament which represented the workingman.

The Lord President Bradshaw, his metaled hat still clamped on his head, ordered the king to be silent, but Charles argued with him. Bradshaw ordered the clerk to call the prisoner to answer the charge but the king would not be silent.

“Remove the prisoner!” Bradshaw shouted.

“I do require-”

“It is not for prisoners to require-”

“Sir. I am not an ordinary prisoner.”

The guards surrounded him. “God no!” muttered John. “Don’t let them jostle him.”

For a moment he was back in the Whitehall palace courtyard with the king in the coach and the queen with her box of jewels. He had thought then that if one hand had touched the coach the whole mystery of majesty would be destroyed. He thought now that if one soldier took the butt end of his pike and irritably thumped Charles Stuart, then the king would go down, and all his principles fall with him.

“Sir,” the king raised his voice, “I never took arms against the people, but for the laws-”

“Justice!” the soldiers shouted. Charles rose from his chair, looked as if he wanted to say more.

“Just go,” John pleaded, his hands clapped over his mouth to prevent the words from being heard. “Go before some fool loses patience. Or before Cook pokes you back.”

The king turned and left the hall. Alexander looked at John.

“A muddled business,” he said.

“A miserable one,” John replied.

Tuesday, 23 January 1649

The hall doors did not open until midday. John and Alexander were chilled and bored by the time they pushed their way in. At once John’s eyes were taken by a great shield, white with the red cross of St. George, hung above the commissioners’ table, which was draped in a richly colored Turkey rug.

“What does it mean?” he asked Alexander. “Will they sentence him without another word?”

“If they decide that his silence means guilt then he cannot speak,” Alexander said. “Once sentence is pronounced he’ll just be taken out. That’s how all the courts work. There’s nothing more to say.”

John nodded in silence, his face dark.

There was a sympathetic murmur as the guards brought the king into court. John could see traces of strain in his face, especially around his dark, solemn eyes. But he looked at the commissioners as if he despised them and he dropped into his chair as if it were his convenience to be seated before them.

John Bradshaw, the man with the hardest task in England, pulled the brim of his hat down to his eyebrows and looked at the king as if he were not far off begging him to see reason. He spoke quietly, reminding the king that the court was asking him, once more, to answer the charges.

The king looked up from turning a ring on his finger. “When I was here yesterday I was interrupted,” he said sulkily.

“You can make the best defense you can,” Bradshaw promised him. “But only after you have given a positive answer to the charges.”

It was opening a door for the king; at once he soared into grandeur. “For the charges I care not a rush…” he started.