Antony knew better, but he also knew better than to broach the subject of politics with his son. And Kate and Lady Dysart helped, diverting the dinner conversation to less dangerous topics, so that for a little while they could pretend it was nothing more than a meal in convivial company. Despite her precarious position, the lady maintained a good home, and good food with it.
When they were finished, however, Kate lured Henry downstairs on a pretext, and Elizabeth guided Antony through the long gallery to the library, a cramped room that already held an occupant. John Ellin rose as they entered and greeted him with all the honesty Henry had eschewed. “You look like hell.”
Gripping the young man’s hand, Antony said, “No doubt I do. And no doubt you will prescribe a course of bleeding or some such, to improve my health.”
“Bleeding? Not a chance. An excess of the sanguine humor is hardly your problem.” Ellin’s long, wry face turned thoughtful. “Black bile, I imagine. In which case—”
“In which case, Mr. Ellin, you shall do nothing.” Kate entered the library and closed the door behind her. The space was cramped with four in it, but at least they were private. “You have not finished your training as a physician or a surgeon.”
He acknowledged her point with a bow. “A shortcoming I strive to mend as soon as possible.”
It would not take him long; though four years younger than Henry, Ellin was already well advanced in his study of both the intellectual and practical aspects of medicine. Antony suspected his involvement in the Royalist cause was of a piece with that training: John Ellin saw the body politic as grievously diseased, weakened by the upheavals it had wrought upon itself from the civil war onwards.
Another such upheaval faced them now, but it might offer the chance for healing. “Cromwell is dead,” Lady Dysart told Ellin, who merely nodded. The man’s health had been bad for months, so it came as no surprise. Though there was a good deal of irony, it being the anniversary of his great victories at Dunbar and Worcester. “Sir Antony—what word of his successor?”
In reply, Antony drew a crumpled letter from inside his doublet. “It would have been Fleetwood,” he said. “But this was the only proof of it, and on his deathbed Cromwell named his son Richard.”
Kate took it from his fingers, with a look that said she was carefully not asking him how he got it. Ellin grimaced and said, “We might have done better with Fleetwood. He’s a milksop.”
“And let the Army’s council of officers consolidate its hold over England?” Antony said sharply. “I will lie dead in a gutter before I let that happen.”
“But Richard is the Protector’s son. Their loyalty to Oliver—”
“Is not an inheritance to be passed on in a will,” Elizabeth said. Ellin fell silent, conceding her greater knowledge of the family. “Oliver was an inspiring man, passionate in his convictions, with the capacity to carry others into his visions, and moreover he was a hero to the soldiery. Richard is all but a stranger to them.”
Antony nodded and took the chair next to Ellin, hoping no one guessed that the weakness of his knees betrayed him into it. “At best he will have six of the Council of State on his side, perhaps seven—and very little of the Army. What’s more, it won’t be long before he has to call a Parliament.”
Startled, Kate said, “Why?”
“Why does any ruler call a Parliament?” Ellin asked ironically. “Because he needs money.”
Lady Dysart claimed the remaining chair; Kate moved to settle on a cushion, but Ellin rose and convinced her through an argument of gestures to have his seat. The young man leaned against the desk instead, slouching his length so as not to loom over them. By the time this dance was done, Antony had his strength back, and asked their hostess, “What do you think will be the reaction abroad?”
He did not have to specify what he meant, and in fact rarely did; even here, in this safe house, they spoke obliquely when they could. The responses from the European states would matter, but what she had knowledge of was a much smaller group: the Sealed Knot, the alliance of exiled English noblemen who worked to restore Charles Stuart, second of that name, to his throne.
Elizabeth’s mouth quirked. “When they hear? The same as it is now, but stronger. Mordaunt will want a rising, and Hyde will argue against.”
“Hyde is right,” Antony said. “The worst thing we could do right now is give the Army something to fight. The people are tired of military control, taxation to support a standing force, and soldiers at free quarter. The longer we go without a war, the more disaffected they will become.” He heard in his own words an echo of the debate over Nicneven, and tried not to shiver. I must live as if I might not drop dead at any moment.
Ellin raised one expressive eyebrow. “But Charles will not claim his throne by neglect alone. He needs soldiers to control London and other key points—which means he needs a port to land them in, and someone must acquire that for him. Not to mention ships to get the forces across.”
The ships would have to come from France or Spain, but Antony agreed with Hyde that for the King to be restored by an outside power would poison opinion against him. Which was a philosophical concern backed by a practical one: until Europe stopped fighting itself, from Portugal to Sweden and everywhere in between, no one would spare any time for a King who only ever reigned in exile.
“No rising has succeeded yet,” Kate said. “And before you tell me, Mr. Ellin, that only the last one ever succeeds—yes, your thoughts are that transparent—let me remind you that they have been miserable failures, every one. Even when Scotland gave young Charles its support, he ended up hiding from soldiers in a Staffordshire oak tree. I doubt he is in any hurry to try again.”
Ellin spread his hands in florid submission. “Then what do we propose to do?”
“Wait,” Antony said.
“I had hoped for rather more than that.”
“Wait for Parliament,” Antony clarified. “I do not know everyone who will be elected to it, but I expect Hesilrige, Vane, and others from my own days there. I have ways of setting them at each other’s throats, and Parliament against the Army.”
Ellin frowned. “To what end? Other than pure chaos, which I’m sure you will achieve magnificently.”
“Chaos is what we need, at least for a time. The Protectorate is not popular, and will be less so without Oliver Cromwell to hold it together. The Army is despised. The Commonwealthsmen are passionate, but they’ve lost the people; men are tired of godly reformers prying into every corner of their lives and outlawing their pleasures. And they cannot present a united front, because they do not agree half so much as they think they do, and scarce one in a hundred can see past the glowing radiance of their proposed community of saints to the practical considerations of how to govern a country. What we cannot let happen is the officers of the Army claiming the little power that yet remains out of their hands, and turning all of England into their servants. To that end, I will sow what chaos I must, so that when they reach their hands forth they find nothing in their grasp but smoke.”
Where the vitality for that impassioned speech came from, he didn’t know; it surprised even him. Judging by the expressions that faced him, he was not the only one. Once he had recovered his jaw, Ellin began to clap quietly.