‘Is this,’ shouted Conn, above the noise, ‘is this … is this all the evidence you can bring against me? A more suspicious person than I might suggest that Sir Edward can recite this nonsense so well, because it was he that wrote it.’
‘You are an odious fellow. I lack the words to express your viperous treason.’
‘Indeed you do lack works, Sir Edward – you’ve said the same thing half a dozen times.’
Coke stared, eyes bulging with a spasm of fury.
‘You are the most hated man in Switzerland!’
‘As to that honour, Sir Edward, there isn’t a gnat’s wing between you and me.’ From one side of the court, those who knew Coke well and therefore loathed him, there was laughter.
‘If Fauconberg was a traitor,’ said Conn (although he knew he was not), ‘I knew nothing about it. I trusted him in the same way that the King and his counsellors trusted him when they, not me, appointed him as my second-in-command.’
‘You are the most vile traitor that ever lived.’
‘So you keep saying, Sir Edward, but where’s your proof? The law states there must be two witnesses to treason. You don’t even have one.’
An enormous bilious smile from Coke, that made him look like a smirking toad.
‘You have read the law, Conn Materazzi, but you don’t understand it.’
Popham cleared his throat. ‘The law you speak of that used to require two witnesses in cases of treason has been deemed to be inconvenient. On Monday another law was passed to repeal it.’
Perhaps in the thrill of answering his accusers Conn had forgotten that the verdict was always certain. If so, he now remembered. But he was rattled all the same.
‘I don’t know how you conceive the law,’ he said quietly.
‘We don’t conceive the law, Conn Materazzi,’ boasted a triumphant Coke, ‘we know the law.’
During the next two hours there was more evidence produced as assorted liars, falsifiers, inventors, actors and bullshitters were brought in to testify to the traitorous remarks before the fight and traitorous tactics during it that proved beyond question that Conn had deliberately lost the battle. ‘I never saw the like case,’ declaimed Coke, ‘and I hope I shall never see the like again.’ In the last hour they moved on to the second charge: that Conn had set fire to the bridge at Glane to preserve his own life at the cost of thousands of his men. Six witnesses were called who swore they had seen him, without his helmet, light the fire himself. The seventh witness was Thomas Cale. It had been made clear to him that the golden opinions he had won had made his evidence particularly valuable and that telling the court what he had seen of Conn’s actions during the battle, and his subsequent setting fire to the bridge over the river was essential if those who still wavered over the granting of money towards his New Model Army were to be persuaded as to the true depth of his devotion to the interests of the state.
‘Your name.’
‘Thomas Cale.’
‘Put your right hand on the Good Book and repeat after me: “I swear that what I am about to say is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”’
‘It is.’
‘You have to say it.’
‘What?’
‘You have to repeat the words.’
A pause.
‘I swear that what I am about to say is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’
‘So help me God.’
‘So help me God.’
By now he was barely audible.
Just as they had rehearsed it the day before, Coke fed Cale the questions and Cale fed back the answers as if they were a conjuror and his amazing dancing bear passing a ball to each other. The questions and answers were designed to demonstrate one thing: that, youthful as he was, Thomas Cale was an experienced soldier, utterly versed in the battle tactics of the Redeemers. He was also asked in detail to set out his heroic and skilful actions in saving the lives of fifteen hundred Swiss soldiers and their noble allies so miserably betrayed by Conn Materazzi.
‘At one point, Mr Cale, you were able to observe the battle from a tree in the nearby woods?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did this give you a complete view of the battle?’
‘I don’t know about complete – but as good as you were likely to get.’
Coke stared at Cale. This was not the straightforward line they’d agreed.
‘Why was someone of your experience not involved directly?’
‘It was prevented.’
‘By the defendant?’
‘I don’t know.’
Coke stared at him. Yet again the bear was not returning the ball as he’d been taught.
‘Is it not the case,’ said Coke, offering him an opportunity to do better, ‘that Sir Harry Beauchamp, at Conn Materazzi’s instruction, told you not to involve yourself in the battle directly, on pain of death?’
‘He told me to stay out of it or suffer the consequence – yes. But he didn’t mention anyone by name.’
‘But it was what you understood?’
This was too much, even for Popham. The forms might be bent but they could not be broken quite so grossly.
‘Sir Edward, I realize that you speak out of zeal for your duty and horror at the defendant’s crimes – but you must not lead the witness to repeat hearsay, particularly when there was none to repeat.’
That Coke lacked a neck seemed to be confirmed by his habit of turning his whole body to look at whoever spoke to him, giving him the look of a statue of hideous aspect. The observant would have noticed a small muscle twitching on his right temple. If he was a bomb, thought Hooke, watching from the back of the court, he’d be ready to explode.
‘My apologies to the court.’ He turned back to Cale, the small muscle still twitching.
‘Is it true that at the Battle of Silbury Hill you saved the life of the defendant?’
‘Yes.’
‘Clear proof, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that the witness bears him no ill will. Is that so?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Really?’
‘No.’
‘Do you,’ said Coke, the muscle now twitching on his left temple, ‘bear the defendant any ill will?’
‘No.’
‘Did you put your own life at risk when saving him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Has he ever thanked you for this most courageous act?’
‘I can’t remember, to be honest.’
‘Does this make you angry?’
‘No.’
‘Why not, Mr Cale? I think most of us would be angry at such wretched ingratitude.’
‘The ingratitude of princes is a proverb, isn’t it?’
‘I have never found princes of any kind in this country to be ungrateful, but I believe it of Conn Materazzi.’
‘Well, that was why I wasn’t angry. I didn’t expect it.’
For the first time since he’d come into court, Cale looked directly at Conn. What passed passed between them was odd stuff.
‘Would you tell us,’ said Coke, ‘what was your estimation of the conduct of the battle from your unique viewpoint?’
‘Do you mean from the tree or based on my experience?’
‘Both, Mr Cale, both.’
‘It was a good three hours into the battle, I’d say, maybe more. It looked like it could go either way.’
‘Did you see the defendant on the field?’
‘For a while. It was at a distance, though.’
‘You formed an opinion, based,’ he turned back to the jury, ‘based on your considerable experience, as to his conduct of that tragic engagement?’
There was a pause as if Cale was thinking something over.
‘Yes.’
The muscles in Coke’s forehead stopped twitching.
‘And what was that considered opinion?’
If he was going to be true to his oath, something he had no intention of doing, Cale should have said that Conn had demonstrated outstanding personal and tactical courage. He could not have done better himself – or even as well. Mind you, he might have added he would never have fought the battle in the first place. But no one wanted to hear that. The simple truth – the facts-as-they-stood kind of truth, as opposed to the whole-and-nothing-but truth – was that Conn was a dead man. Defending him because it was the honest thing to do was idle and futile.