Cromwell's Cat Read online

  TOMKINS

  “So any diversion is welcome, and I must say I’ve enjoyed this little one, Kingy – and, as you may not be with us much longer, here’s another. Back at Putney he spoke of ‘not being glued to forms of government. They were but dross and dung in comparison of Christ’. You probably missed that, Maj, as you were otherwise engaged – but they heard it, didn’t you” I’ll take that as a yes. “Any idea where he might have got that? Well, earlier that year he and I we had a falling out and he said he’d had enough, he’d get a dog. And I said, ‘Good, go ahead, see if I care. You’ll find no meeting of minds there, just devoted servant and ‘Where’s my dinner?’ Fat lot of good that’ll do you. Dogs are dung, I said, in comparison of cats.’ Thought no more about it until out it pops at Putney – suitably adapted. See – he can’t deny it. Can you, Crumb? Well, can you?”

  CRUMB

  “I don’t deny I said it. How could I, they all heard me? But I’d no idea where it came from. It needed saying and I said it, heat of the moment”

  TOMKINS

  “Keep your hair on, no need to get aerated. I’m just pointing out that behind every great man there’s a great cat. But, as he’s coming over all huffy, I think that puts paid to the diversion. So, Maj – back to the trial. You were saying ‘… an imaginary necessity and the greatest cozenage that man can put upon the providence of God and so on…’ An imaginary necessity, Crumb? I don’t think so…”

  CRUMB

  “Far from it: a manifest necessity, that you, your majesty, put us upon. Would you had not, but we are where we are and must live with it”

  TOMKINS

  “Well, Maj, some of us must.”

  CRUMB

  “Tomkins!”

  KING

  “The cat says right. You are met here not to try me – let us not beat about the bush – this ‘court’ could not try anyone. You are here to condemn. That is what you are about, is it not? Speak truth now. I know I have not long to live and there’s none else can hear us…”

  TOMKINS

  “Go for it, Kingy. That’s cat talk! Well, Crumb, tell him. Oh, sorry Maj, I interrupted”

  KING

  “…’Necessity’, you say ‘knows no law’ but here we have a mock court set up by a part parliament pretending to a legal procedure but where we both know the result before we start. Look at Tomkins smirking – even he knows the result”

  TOMKINS

  “’Snot a smirk, but go on.”

  KING

  “So, General Cromwell, why the pretence?”

  CRUMB

  “Because the army wants blood and the parliament wants due process – and we can’t have both.”

  KING

  “So…?”

  TOMKINS

  “They deliver the first and play-act the second.”

  CRUMB

  “The best we can do in the situation in which we find ourselves.”

  KING

  “But I insist, why the pretence: the judge, the prosecution, the commissioners, the whole unprecedented palaver, when the result – we all agree – is a forgone conclusion?”

  CRUMB

  “Because it must not be done in a hole and corner. The parliament wants a show and… we are to give it them. Then, the show being over, they mean to get on with their business”

  KING

  “And the nation, you think, will let them?”

  CRUMB

  “I think the nation will stand aghast …and do nothing.”

  KING

  “And why in your dream? Why not in Westminster Hall in real life, with spectators thronging the galleries, the body of the court filled with halberdiers and Justice Bradshaw* trying – and failing – to defend the indefensible?”

  KAREN

  “That’s what I want to know.”

  TOMKINS

  “Who said that? Oh it’s you, Karen. I never thought you’d be here – in Crumb’s dream? You must have made an impression”

  KAREN

  “No, I’m not in his dream – and I don’t want to be…”

  READERS3

  “None of us do… None of us…this is no good for our A levels…We want facts: what happened plus a bit of why – none of this namby-pamby ‘How I felt about it’ & ‘What I really wanted…’ None of that”

  KAREN

  “And unless you get back to the real world pretty quickly, I’ll stop reading and ask for my money back!”

  READERS

  “Hear, hear.”

  TOMKINS

  “There, Crumb, that’s you put in your place…Alright, alright, Karen – and the rest of you – I’ll fill in the details, I promise, just as soon as I can find the right time to get out of Crumb’s dream – and your interruption may have helped there – not at all what he would have expected. So Crumb, why are we in your dream rather than in Westminster Hall in reality with the king playing to the gallery and Justice Bradshaw making the worst of a bad job?”

  CRUMB

  “Because here I can answer back. Here I don’t have to sit dumb while you, your majesty, attack the court and make your case for posterity. If you say the court is without precedent, I reply ‘So is the situation – a king on trial for making war upon his people’. If you claim to stand for the liberty of the people of England, for their freedom from arbitrary encroachments and to be sure of their lives and anything they call their own; I can answer: tell that to those who died fighting for their liberty, defending themselves and their freedoms in two civil wars against you and the foreign armies and powers you invited into England to destroy them. Tell that to them.”

  TOMKINS

  “That’s telling him, Crumb. Nail in the royal coffin there. Oh, sorry, Maj, slip of the tongue”

  KING

  “You’re forgiven, Tomkins. After all it’s not your dream so how can I hold you responsible?”

  TOMKINS

  “Thanks, Maj4. Hadn’t thought of it like that. Crumb, mind my language!”

  MAJ

  “Quite so. And, General Cromwell, as you say – only in your dream can you debate the issue with me. Because in real life your pretended court must follow legal procedure. And… if I refuse to plead, as I do, you have no choice but to presume me guilty and proceed to sentence and execution without making one tittle of a case against me. Wouldn’t the people love that? Wouldn’t the world love it – and generations to come? Or perhaps you might proceed to the ‘peine forte et dure’. Have you thought of that? That’s another choice you have: press me to death by piling stones on my body until I end it one way or other –either by entering a plea or dying – that’s another option. Not, I think , quite the ‘show’ your parliament was looking for. Yes, I can see why you might prefer your dream… But if I might offer a word of advice?”

  CRUMB
<
br />   “In my dream, of course.”

  MAJ

  “Next time – go for a court-martial. Quicker, more certain and everyone knows it’s the army running the show, so why pretend?”

  TOMKINS

  “Just what I told him, your royalness.”

  CRUMB

  “I hope there won’t be a next time.”

  MAJ

  “And no more forcing frightened commissioners to sign the sentence. That must have been a nightmare for you. Terrified little toads. I feared, when it came to standing to attest the sentence, I might have to offer one or two my cane to keep them upright”

  CRUMB

  “Now that would have been worth seeing, your Majesty. That might have stiffened their resolve – almost be worth waking up for. They knew what was looked for. We made no secret of it. But seeing the army as the new power in the land…”

  MAJ

  “A bastard power.”

  CRUMB

  “You may say that, I’ll settle for new – and necessary (for the moment). They, the members, like adventurers and opportunists the world over, they saw the way the world was going and scrambled to get on board. So eager for their ill-gotten gains, they never stopped to think it might also involve signing the sentence, which they then wanted to weasel out of. Well, not on my watch.”

  MAJ

  “I’m glad to hear, General Cromwell, that there is still honour among assassins.”

  CRUMB

  “The Lord’s chosen instruments.”

  MAJ

  “A very poor choice, if you ask me.”

  CRUMB

  “But with a job to do. It’s easy to object to the glorious actings of God if we look too much upon instruments”

  TOMKINS

  “There you are, Maj – what did I tell you?”

  MAJ

  “You think my death a ‘glorious acting of God’?”

  CRUMB

  “His providence brought us here and His purpose – His glorious purpose, who can doubt it – is to make England anew. Your majesty sadly stands in the way and must be removed. Would it were not so, but…”

  MAJ

  “So, if I had a proposition, which I do, which might offer us all a way out of our predicament, that might also be His will, might it not – if you could persuade others to accept it?”

  CRUMB

  “If…”

  MAJ

  “Then I propose that the proceedings of this court be suspended for a short time so that the Lords and Commons can be summoned to meet me in the Painted Chamber”

  CRUMB

  “To what end?”

  MAJ

  “That I may put myself out of the picture, as the court here intends but in a way that will be less bloody and, I hope, have fewer unfortunate consequences: I will step aside, making way for my son Charles to become king. That way, abdicating of my own fairly-free will, no blame shall attach to this court, parliament, army – anyone”

  CRUMB

  “There would have been a time for that, your majesty, but now? Not even in my dream”

  MAJ

  “May I know why?”

  CRUMB

  “Firstly, because Prince Charles on the throne and this army disbanded, I would not give much for the chances of those who brought you to this. Besides the Lords and Commons you speak of , where are they? The Lords notable mainly by their absence – and the Commons, such as they are – a pitiful remnant, the good kept out, most bad remaining – they want only a quick end to the business – and the quickest end, now at hand, is to proceed to sentence, as I believe Bradshaw will do any moment. Mention it to him by all means but don’t expect him to listen…and don’t get your hopes up.”

  TOMKINS

  “And that, I think, is where we can slip out of the dream and back to the real world. You too, Maj, if you’d like – you’ll never have a better time to make your case for posterity. What do you say?”

  MAJ

  “Of course I’d like that – speaking straight to future generations, I’d die for that…erm…I mean I will die, I know, we’ve already established that…”

  TOMKINS

  “But you’d like your point of view to make it into exam papers?”

  MAJ

  “Exactly so.”

  TOMKINS

  “So, you lot, do you want Kingy here with me in the real world giving you his take on the trial?”

  READERS

  “Yes, yes, yes.”

  TOMKINS

  “Not much doubt there. Come on then, Maj…real world here we come…three, two, one – go!…”

  **********

  TOMKINS

  “…There. That wasn’t too painful, was it?”

  MAJ

  “Surprisingly, no.”

  TOMKINS

  “Maybe you should have tried it before, might have saved a lot of trouble. I do it all the time – all cats do: dream/reality/dream/reality – as we’re never sure which we’re in we don’t bother too much about changing it. Could be a tip there.” – So, here we are: real-time Westminster Hall – cleared of the law-courts for the occasion and turned into the ‘High Court of Justice’

  MAJ

  “High Court of Treason.”

  TOMKINS

  “As you say, but – as we just saw in Crumb’s alternative reality – a treason that was going to happen.” And this is how it looked: the commissioners sitting at the south end under the great window, Bradshaw in their midst and you Maj facing them. Spectators massed in the body of the hall & in galleries specially erected for the occasion along the sides. Everyone wanted to be there: the hottest ticket in town.

  ALAN

  “Like a pop concert?”

  TOMKINS

  Whatever that may be, Alan. Like the biggest event you can think of – the biggest story of the year, of 50 years – the biggest since the gunpowder treason, which it much resembled but with the difference that then people only heard about it afterwards. This time they were there to see – and how! The Stuart dynasty, which began with a botched Catholic attempt to kill the king in the parliament, was about to end with a better-managed, better-planned, altogether bigger…

  RHODRI

  “Not better planned. General Cromwell just said it wasn’t planned.”

  TOMKINS

  You’re right, Rodders. You’re right – not planned but erm… ‘better backed’ – does that cover it? – a better backed attempt to do the same by the parliament itself – what was left of it! Some story – the end of the world as we know it. Of course everyone wante
d to be there and paid top whack to make sure they were. Crumb was convinced some of the soldiers on the doors made more money then than the rest of their lives besides. He disapproved but had other things to think about. So, that’s what it looked like

  RHODRI

  “And how did it go?”