Accepting that the maid had not left the door open as part of the conspiracy, he continued his investigation. In the hall were signs of scuffle. On the stairs lay a dropped gauntlet. New marks disfigured the wall, white gouges in the simple panelling. He found his colonel's room by deduction; its door stood open. For a few moments he was able to stand there alone, hearing the silence, yearning to communicate with the dead man who had so recently stayed here.
The bed was turned back as if a sleeper had just left. One chair was a little askew, as if someone had stood up and turned to the doorway There were few real signs of violence. A sword and sword belt, pistol and ammunition pouches were laid by on a chest of drawers, unreachable from the bed or the chair. Everything was as it ought to be: black cloak, scarlet coat, baldric and hat on door-pegs, britches folded over a chair-back, belt loosely coiled on the chair's seat, Bible at the bedside, papers on a small table with ink ready, small notebook for jottings (at Putney, Gideon remembered, the colonel had complained of a poor memory). Chests and saddlebags were neatly lined up along one wall. Everything was neat, as a sailor would have it.
A soldier entered quietly, with respect. The same maid had shown him in. 'Major Wilkes sent me, in case you need assistance.'
Gideon gave orders for securing the papers, which should be taken to the major. He explained that the room must be carefully locked up until Colonel Rainborough's property had been packed for his family. There would be no private sneakings up here to steal just a keepsake' — a handkerchief, falling bands, spectacles, prayer book — no stolen memorials appearing in seedy auctions later, with faked rusty bloodstains, 'as owned by the prominent Leveller Colonel Thomas Rainborough, and in his possession at Doncaster the same night he was treacherously slain..'
'Will they bring the corpse here?' The maid's eyes flickered to the bed. She could not help thinking of all the blood and how that blood, even congealing, would ruin good coverlets.
Gideon glanced at the soldier. 'If the body comes back to the house, let it lie on a table in some convenient room downstairs. A coffin will be ordered…' He and the soldier shared a brief silence, thinking of their great tall colonel. Rainborough would require a large coffin, specially made. Someone would have to organise that.
Tears wet the soldier's cheeks as he gazed miserably around the room. Like Gideon he was infected by melancholy as he viewed this place that Thomas Rainborough had used, in which he had spent his last moments. The doused candles in the sconces had been quenched by his fingers. The room still contained his smell and his spirit. His piss would be in the chamberpot, his clothes still carried hints of him. Those boots — which Gideon had just spotted with their crumpled boot-hose laid across their tops, ready to jump into again — would be intractably imprinted with his shape and sweat, permanently altered since they left the maker's last by the individual way he had walked and ridden.
'Never more!' uttered Gideon Jukes, despite himself. The reaction was private and unintentional. 'Farewell, Rainborough,' he added more formally, as he shepherded out his companions. They walked quietly on to the landing. Gideon himself found the key inside the chamber door, pulled it out and locked the room behind them. The housekeeper was staring up from downstairs.
After a second, Gideon unlocked the room again and reached behind the door for something which he carried downstairs on his arm. When he left the house, the body was still lying in the street, though Major Wilkes had set a guard until it could be taken up. He could hardly bear that terrible sight again, but Gideon Jukes walked steadily across to the corpse. The guards saw his intentions and allowed him through.
He knelt down on the cobbles, heedless of the wide pool of now-glutinous blood. There he gently covered Colonel Rainborough with his riding-cloak, for decency.
Chapter Fifty-One — Wapping: 14 November 1648
Gideon Jukes escorted the coffin to London.
More details of the raid had emerged. Twenty-two Royalists had ridden out from Pontefract Castle, on Friday night. 'Eluding' Sir Henry Cholmeley's troops, a feat they achieved with ease, they crept south to Doncaster. They hid up in woods. At sunrise on Sunday morning, they emerged and met a spy from the town, carrying a Bible as identification — obviously the same man who directed Gideon. He passed on to the cavaliers details of how Doncaster was guarded and gave directions where to find Rainborough.
The horsemen presented themselves at St Sepulchre's Gate, on the south side. They claimed that they had brought dispatches from Cromwell. Since they appeared to have ridden up on the London road, the single sentinel on this approach believed it all too trustingly.
The raiders split up: six to fall on the guard at St Mary's Gate north of the town, through which they would make their eventual escape; six to tackle the main guard as it patrolled the middle of the town; six to cover the streets in case the alarm was raised. Four went to Rainborough's lodging, where they gained admittance by once again spinning the yarn about dispatches and were taken upstairs by the lieutenant.
After the murder, the cavaliers rode home in daylight to Pontefract. At two o'clock in the afternoon, in full view of Cholmeley and his several hundred cavalry, who made no attempt to interfere, they trotted back into the castle. A great shout was heard from within the garrison. It was said that the castle governor then sent a letter to Sir Henry Cholmeley to say that Rainborough was lying dead on the streets of Doncaster. Cholmeley was reported to have burst out laughing, and laughed for a quarter of an hour.
In Doncaster, recriminations flew. Captain John Smith was believed to have been with a whore at the Hinde Tavern. He fled, leaving a note for Major Wilkes, in which he claimed he intended to go to Fairfax at army headquarters to protest his innocence. He never got there; his money ran out halfway. Discovered and arrested, he was taken to London with a warrant to answer to both Houses of Parliament. While he was locked up at Ludgate, someone told him he had been convicted by a council of war and would be summarily shot. According to him, when he appealed to God for advice, God advised him to escape — so he took himself to the Netherlands, where in a feeble attempt to clear his name he issued a pamphlet, full of excuses for his own conduct and accusations of cowardice and grudge-bearing against Major Wilkes.
The rest of Rainborough's officers pleaded publicly for revenge for the murder. They took this chance to deplore the political situation, saying the King had deluded them 'into the hopes of a safe peace by the expectation of an unsafe Treaty'. Then they asked why, if the country was paying taxes, those taxes could not be used to pay the army? So the miserable quest for payment of arrears continued.
Sir Henry Cholmeley's collusion was taken for granted by both Royalist and Parliamentary news-sheets. Yet he was never examined or called to account.
Oliver Cromwell was ordered to end the siege at Pontefract. Although he sent for a formidable battery of guns, it took five more months. Cromwell was also instructed to conduct an enquiry into Rainborough's murder; nothing came of that. When the castle eventually surrendered to John Lambert, in March 1649, six officers would be exempted from mercy: men who were believed to have taken part in the murder, some of whom brazenly admitted it. They were given six days to escape if they could; the governor and one other made a getaway but were recaptured and executed. William Paulden, who had led the raid, had already died during the siege. Three others were hidden in the castle walls by their colleagues and evaded capture. By then, the Leveller John Lilburne was complaining bitterly in London that William Rainborough had been given no help to find his brother's killers.