Cromwell's Cat Read online

  CRUMB

  “As to that – I wait on the lord. And, while waiting, must get on naming the Other House so the parliament can resume its session in January.”

  MAJ

  “But, with the members formerly excluded able then to take their seats in the Commons, it could get pretty hot.”

  CRUMB

  “It could, Majesty, it could. But not all of those excluded were, like Itch-arse, unreconstructed Rumpers. Some were prevented taking their seats simply for their opposition to the army and so may welcome the new government. We shall see.”

  MAJ

  “I admire, LP, to see you so hopeful after so many setbacks.”

  CRUMB

  “In the Lord’s work, I must be hopeful. But I must also be ready to play my part, if you take my meaning, Majesty.”

  MAJ

  “Oh indeed I do. Indeed I do.”

  CRUMB

  “But now I need some quality time…”

  TOMKINS

  “Cat time?”

  CRUMB

  “Cat time, Tomkins, so we can get these names sorted.”

  TOMKINS

  “Off you go, you lot. And as you go, hang a ‘Do Not Disturb’ notice over the chapter so no-one opens it and our thoughts fly off and we have to start all over again. Bye for now. See you at the parliament in January!”

  **********

  CRUMB

  “There you are, Tomkins. I said I’d deal with it, and I have.”

  TOMKINS

  “You dissolved the parliament?”

  CRUMB

  “I did.”

  TOMKINS

  “Any particular reason, or was it just you had nothing else planned and thought ‘I know, I’ll dissolve parliament. That usually bucks me up.’ ”

  MAJ

  “Crumb, the mad axeman, strikes again!”

  TOMKINS

  “Exactly, Maj. And not a word, not a whisper. Not a moment for me to twitch a whisker, let alone say “Crumb, are you sure you really want to do that?” How do you think that makes a cat feel?”

  CRUMB

  “Sorry about that – but there was good reason.”

  TOMKINS

  “There’d need to be. How did it go: you were just tucking into your boiled egg, ordering your soldiers in line of attack, when the Lord whispered in your ear, ‘Don’t forget, Crumb, if you intend doing My work the parliament must be dissolved without delay!’ Whereupon you leap up from the table scattering your soldiers everywhere, rush out of the Cockpit, grab the nearest Hackney coach and high-tail it to Westminster, where you arrive just in time to tell them: “I do dissolve this parliament – and let God judge between you and me”. Was that how it went?”

  MAJ

  “Pretty much, Tomkins. I saw it all from up here.”

  TOMKINS

  “And was the Lord pleased with you?”

  CRUMB

  “Time will tell.”

  TOMKINS

  “Maj, any idea?”

  MAJ

  “Hard to say, Tomkins, but the absence of thunder clouds suggests He’s not wholly displeased.”

  CRUMB

  “There you are, then.”

  TOMKINS

  “Not quite, Crumb. You said there was good reason: – for dissolving parliament, that I can understand – habit of a lifetime – but so soon (after just two weeks’ sitting) so sudden and so secret? We’re all agog – am I right?…Everyone nodding…so go on. And it better be good.”

  CRUMB

  “I said to them ‘The Lord judge between you and me’ because, as I said before, in this government I believe we at last have the chance of the settlement He looks for. But the Commons, with members formerly excluded now taking their seats, showed their intent was to question the very basis of the government and to that end generated a petition in the city for presentation to themselves – an old Itch-arse trick – and circulated in the army stirring up dissent there – and at the very time your followers, Maj, as you know, were plotting another insurrection…”

  MAJ

  “I’m sorry, LP, not for me to comment.”

  CRUMB

  “Well they were – they are. I saw the design had to be nipped in the bud. And, as the nation (the Commons apart) is better disposed to the new government than anything previously on offer and, I really believe, in a new election will return a different and better-disposed House of Commons – I thought better by far that the odium of dissolving this one should fall on me – temporary and soon to be gone, remember – than on the government, which we hope will settle the nation for good and all.”

  TOMKINS

  “Sorry, Crumb, you lost me shortly after ‘The Lord judge between you and me’”

  CRUMB

  “They wanted to go backward; The Lord wants us to go forward. I dissolved them so we could”

  TOMKINS

  “‘Soon to be gone’, Crumb?”

  CRUMB

  “Sooner, I fear, than I thought at the start of this chapter. I find now that a dissolution takes a toll.”

  KAREN

  “And all that work on the ‘other house’ wasted.”

  CRUMB

  “Not wasted, Karen – hopefully just paused. We will shortly have another parliament – we have to if we are to sort the finances and pay the soldiers their arrears. And then I doubt not the other house will come into its own. But for now I must stamp out army dissent and move quickly against the royalist plotters. I’m sorry for that, majesty. Had they stayed quiet they would not have heard from me. But, with preparations far advanced and the Duke of Ormond, no less, moving freely among them in London, I have no choice but to act. A word of advice, Majesty, you might put it into their heads – and into your son Charles’s head above all – only to move when the time is right. That way they won’t get themselves killed unnecessarily and it will make life a lot better for those less hot-headed than themselves.”

  MAJ

  “And the readier therefore to accommodate themselves to your government. You see their dilemma?”

  CRUMB

  “I do, Majesty, but that is not my concern. As I have said before, settlement beckons and that requires peace at home and success abroad. I intend supplying both but my time is short and this I must keep secret from all bar Tomkins.”

  TOMKINS

  “Don’t try to get round me.”

  CRUMB

  “I mean it. You and I have business to discuss. So, Majesty, if you’d care to tune out for a while and perhaps take the opportunity to whisper in your son’s ear not to invest too much hope in th
is summer’s proposed rising. You might for example advise him that I already know the Spaniards are amassing an invasion force, which they intend transporting hither from Ostend in Dutch bottoms. But their power not being what it was in the days of the armada, whilst ours is considerably greater, he might want to reflect on that.”

  MAJ

  “Sadly, I fear there are those around him will not listen, but I’ll see what I can do. Let me know when I’m allowed back.”

  CRUMB

  “I will. And now, Tomkins… erm – has he gone?”

  TOMKINS

  “I think so…Yes…yes…the whiskers have gone dead.”

  CRUMB

  “Now this is for your ears only.”

  KAREN

  “And ours, LP. After all this is a book – if everyone stops reading you can’t do anything. Can’t even confer with Tomkins. You need your readers more than they need you.”

  CRUMB

  “I suppose I do. I hadn’t thought of it like that. Well then, what I’m about to suggest is strictly between ourselves and above all not for your teachers. They’ll have learnt and been teaching one thing – as I planned. Here, I suspect, you will hear something different but not a word. Agreed?”

  KAREN

  “Agreed.”

  CRUMB

  “Thankyou, Karen. And does that go for all of you?”

  TOMKINS

  “Think so, Crumb – all nodding – universal agreement. So, what’s the big secret?”

  CRUMB

  “My successor as Protector: I’m minded to make it my son, Richard. What do you think?”

  TOMKINS

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  CRUMB

  “No, seriously.”

  TOMKINS

  “Alright – you’re seriously out of your mind. ‘Do-nothing-Dick’?”

  CRUMB

  “Don’t call him that?”

  TOMKINS

  “Why not? It’s the name you gave him.”

  CRUMB

  “I know, but only under severe provocation and strictly between ourselves.”

  TOMKINS

  “You lot – you never heard that. Are you sure, Crumb?”

  CRUMB

  “No, but John Lambert having ruled himself out of contention, I can think of no other – and in the right circumstances Dick might just work…and stop kneading my knee. That doesn’t help”

  TOMKINS

  “It helps me – especially when I’m thinking. You’ll just have to live with it. Go on: circumstances – what circumstances?”

  CRUMB

  “Well, I will have to hand him a nation happy and at ease with itself. And over the next months I see that as being my job, concluding hopefully in a new parliament reflecting the new spirit of the nation and voting the supplies needed to bring our finances back into balance – and that before anyone, anywhere, hears a whisper of the succession. What do you say?”

  TOMKINS

  “In your bad-taste phrase, I’d say he won’t have a cat in hell’s chance. What makes you think he would?”

  CRUMB

  “Well – he’s not me…”

  TOMKINS

  “Always a good start.”

  CRUMB

  “…and he has no party in the army, which will go well with the parliament – as will the fact that the members will be delighted to find him untouched (‘uninfected’ they would say) by the army’s zeal for freedom of conscience.”

  TOMKINS

  “Not something they’ve ever loved you for, Crumb.”

  CRUMB

  “You see where I’m heading? At last they will have a Protector after their own hearts – more concerned about a publicly maintained preaching ministry and a quiet life.”

  TOMKINS

  “ ‘Do-Nothing-Dick’, the man whose time has come.”

  ALAN

  “No more ‘mad axeman’?”

  CRUMB

  “Definitely not, Alan – he’s history. The time for irruptions into the parliamentary space – not just from me but from Maj before me – is past. The nation looks for settlement, as does the Lord, and with luck Dick will provide it. Yes, Karen?”

  KAREN

  “In the Lord’s work you trust to luck?”

  TOMKINS

  “No, I trust He will accept the zeal as He did that of Phineas.”

  KAREN

  “I’m sorry, you’ve lost me there.”

  CRUMB

  “I am persuaded this settlement is the one He looks for and Dick may be best placed to provide it – so long…so long as we have solved all known problems and endeavoured to engage all interests in advance – and we must now be zealous in that.”

  KAREN

  “Meaning?”

  CRUMB

  “The royalist threat is to be countered. As I hinted to Maj, the time for them is not right. They must learn so to their cost. Their Spanish allies must conclude their forces would be better occupied elsewhere and the London merchants, on whom so much depends, must somehow be persuaded their interests are better protected by this government than any other. And then the parliament, seeing them happy – always crucial – and the nation settled at home and respected abroad, must at last vote the necessary supplies…”

  TOMKINS

  “No ‘must’ about that – this is the parliament we’re talking about.”

  CRUMB

  “But not just any parliament – a new one for a new world: ‘The Parliament shall be willing in the day of His power!’ And then: enter Lord Protector Dick. That is my meaning”

  KAREN

  “And that’s an awful lot of zeal.”

  TOMKINS

  “Especially that last bit about the parliament.”

  KAREN

  “But you have no other choice?”

  CRUMB

  “None: not in the time I have left, which I feel diminishing by the day. But I will die happy knowing I spent the last of my strength ushering in the settlement the Lord looked for – and this, I am sure, is it.”

  TOMKINS

  “Go for it, Crumb. Thumbs up all round. Go on – make them proud – and make me needless… Did you get that?”

  CRUMB

  “What?”

  TOMKINS

  “ ‘Make me needless’? The time for thinking is past, so I can knead less. Oh forget it.”

 
**********

  CRUMB