Antony sat at the table, hands flat on its surface, gazing sightlessly at the wood between his fingers. The house was quiet. His sons and daughter had been sent to live with a cousin of Kate’s in Norfolk—a man of neutrality so inoffensive that he had managed to preserve himself relatively unscathed through a conflict that had brought not only all of England, but Scotland and Ireland, too, into battle. Antony’s manservant, inspired by sectarian zeal, had joined Fairfax’s New Model Army, fighting for Parliament against the King, and had not come back. The cook, finding herself with much less work to do, drank—but at least she was quiet about it.
He heard a door open, footsteps on the stairs. A light step, and so Antony did not bestir himself. Soon enough Kate came into the room, and stopped when she saw him.
She finished unwinding the scarf that had protected her against the chilly air, and laid it at the other end of the table. “Coal is dear,” she said, “but not so bad as it has been. We shall have more tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Antony said, rising to take his wife’s hands. She had suffered more than he through the bitter winters of the war, when the King or the Scots controlled Newcastle and little coal came to London. That had been the other reason for sending the children away: the cousin had wood and turf to burn for warming his house.
She gripped his fingers, chin sunk down; then made an unreadable noise and turned away. “What is it?” he asked, baffled by her sudden aversion.
Kate pulled off the modest linen cap that covered her hair and twisted it before facing him, as abruptly as she had fled. “Do you think I don’t see the inkstains on your fingers? Do you think I don’t know what they mean?”
Antony stared at his hands. He had not given it much thought. His attention was elsewhere—a thousand other elsewheres. More than he could handle.
“Tell me,” she said bitterly, “do you work with Lilburne? Or someone else? What ideas do you put about, that are so subversive they must be printed in secret? Do not tell me those are from a quill; I know those marks from these.”
Her tirade left him speechless. Could she honestly believe he sided with Lilburne’s outrageous Levellers, those men who wished England to be ruled by the common mob? Lilburne spoke honestly about the corruption of Parliament, its leaders gone mad with their newfound power, but Antony’s agreement with the man ended there.
Except that was not Kate’s point. If she objected to the ideas he championed, she would argue them with him. This was something else.
She objected to secrets.
“Not Lilburne,” he admitted quietly, lowering his hands. “But yes—there is a printing press.”
Kate’s jaw tensed before she replied. “And what is it you deem so important, that you would risk being dragged to the Tower, or pilloried in the street?”
Antony sighed and went back to his chair. After a stiff hesitation, she joined him. “What else have you known me to promote? Moderation, and the hope of peace. Revelations of what goes on inside the House of Commons, what the Army plans, that their leaders would prefer the people not to know.”
The words came easily, hiding a world of confusion beneath. Moderation, yes—but how? There were not two sides, and a clear course between them; the world had come to such a disordered pass that he could see no sure path back to sanity, let alone herd anyone else down it.
His wife absorbed this quietly. She had not forgiven him; he had just openly admitted to endangering himself and his family, in these most dangerous times. But the initial flare of her anger had settled back to a smoldering heat. “When they published those incomplete reports from General Cromwell,” she said. “Was it your doing, that the full texts also came out?”
“One. The other was a mistake—sincere or contrived—on the part of the Lords.”
Kate still had her cap in her fists; she smoothed out the creases and laid it on the table. “Antony… they know you for what you are. Do you think you have fooled them, by cutting your hair like a Roundhead?” He put one hand self-consciously to his barely covered collar. “How many members of the Commons have been driven out for opposing them? If they do not learn of this secret press of yours, they will hound you into the Tower for your politics, and the one makes it more likely that they will discover the other.”
She did not—need not—know how close he had already come. The fae were cautious of their aid these days; London was plagued with men convinced they could enact the godly Reformation they had come so near, and missed, in the days of old Elizabeth. It made an uncomfortable world for those who lived below. But they had stepped in when he had need of them, to keep him free of the Tower.
“Antony,” Kate said, her voice barely more than a whisper, “will you not consider leaving?”
He flinched. That pleading note…she was no coward, his Kate. But she saw little profit to remaining in the City, and much danger. Nor was she wrong.
But Lune asked him to stay.
Openly, he had little use in the Commons. If he spoke his mind, he would be out before he could finish. But he watched, and reported, and worked covertly to tip the balance when he could. Even now, commissioners sat in the King’s prison on the Isle of Wight, struggling to achieve a treaty that might yet restore England to some semblance of ordinary life.
He reached out and took Kate’s hands again, resting them atop the linen cap. “I cannot back away,” he said. “The Army has too many supporters in Parliament for anyone’s peace of mind. We are a hair’s-breadth from it declaring itself the master of England, and the rule of law giving way to the rule of the sword.”
“Have we not been there six years?” she said, bitter once more.
“Not so badly as we might be. There are some yet in the Commons who fear the Army’s leaders, and want to see our old ways restored, with the King on his throne instead of in prison. But the hotter minded among them would cast aside all the structures and precepts by which God meant men to be governed, and leave us at the mercy of a Parliament with no foundation but what armed might makes.”
They walked that edge already, starting with Pym’s old nonsensical arguments: that the King’s authority was separate from the person of the King, and that such authority rested with Parliament so long as Charles did not do as he should—in other words, as Parliament wished. Yet for all he despised such sophistry, such justifications for these wars against the Crown, Antony wished Pym were still alive. The man had at least been a politician, not a bloody-minded revolutionary. The men who had succeeded him were worse.
His wife took a deep breath and stood, towering over him in his seat. “Antony,” she said, “I will not let you destroy this family.”
His heart stuttered. “Kate—”
“They know how you speak; they know how you write. If not that, then someone will see you going to this press of yours.” She straightened her skirts, unnecessarily. “Henceforth I shall handle these pamphlets of yours.”
Now he was on his feet, with no recollection of having moved. “Kate—”
“Do you think me any happier with this world than you?” she demanded, blazing up. “Scottish forces brought onto English soil to fight the King of them both, then selling that King to his enemies—this ‘New Model Army’ of Parliament’s holding the country to ransom—all the bonds of courtesy and respect that once held us together broken, perhaps beyond repair—” She cut herself off, breathing heavily. Mastering her rage with an effort, Kate said in a low growl, “I can write as well as you. I do not know what to put in them, but you can tell me that.”