The Wolves of Andover

PREFACE

London, England, April 1649

THE WOMAN WORKED her way out of the crowd, grabbing Cromwell by the cloak, and pulled at it until he turned to face her. She was small with plain wheat-colored hair, but the blush in her cheeks was high, as with a fever, and her voice was surprisingly deep.

She said to him, “Sir, will you stay and speak with us?”

He had a mind to pull his cloak roughly from her grasp and move away into the darkened safety of the House of Commons, but he looked over the shifting, enclosing mass of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, who had come to petition him to release the imprisoned leaders of the Leveller movement and he tempered his voice to a fatherly tone. “It is not for women to petition, missus. You should be home at your plates and bowls.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “we scarce have any dishes left to tend, and those we have we are not sure to keep.”

The minister of Parliament who had been close at Cromwell’s heels, and who was eager to pass into the Great Hall, said with little patience, “I find it strange that women are now petitioning.”

The woman cut her eyes to the man and said immodestly, “That which is strange is not of necessity unlawful.” When the minister brushed past her, she turned back to Cromwell and said bitterly, “It was strange that you cut off the king’s head, yet I suppose you will justify it.”

He stopped and this time he did pull his cloak roughly out of her hands. The supreme impudence of this little mouse, he thought, and turned the full import of his gaze on her. It was a gaze that had faced down generals in the field, brought court councilmen to anguished tears, and, some said, had looked without remorse or pity into the sightless eyes of the king as he lay in his lead-lined casket. There had been a time when he would have listened to the harpings of local women such as this, and their workaday husbands, when they still had the means to pay for armaments and food and fill the ranks with fighting bodies. But the Great War was over and he was nearly done with rubbing against the masses and would soon leave such rustic negotiations to the county councilmen.

He motioned impatiently for her to move away but she planted her foot in front of him and called out hoarsely, “If you take away the lives of our leaders, or the lives of any contrary to law, nothing shall satisfy us but the lives of them that do it.”

To his dismay he could feel the crowd pushing against them towards the open entranceway of the House. At first he had seen only women in the surrounding faces, but he realized they were solely at the fore, being shored up from behind by common men as well as rebellious soldiers, some of whom had raised their cocked pistols into the air. He watched as twenty or so men rushed into the House, shouting, “Free them, free them, free them…”

Now half the day would be spent clearing the hallways of quarrelsome, menacing dissenters, his suit to raise the urgent funds needed to invade Ireland delayed for Christ knew how long.

The woman’s sea green ribbon had slipped from her narrow chest, sliding down her arm, coming to rest like a wilted laurel around her waist. Two more women, likewise wearing the banner of the Leveller cause, emerged from the pack and entwined their arms with hers, forming a living chain to bar his movement forward. He had seen the same expressions on the faces of women fanatics of every degenerate caste and error-filled belief. Catholics, Anabaptists, Quakers, Diggers, Fifth Monarchists—they all carried the same look of unreasoning, unbending fervor. When he was a child he had seen a witch burn, and she had held that same unyielding, outraged mask until the flesh curled away from her skull like an Easter candle.

He took two steps towards the little mouse and, bringing his face close to hers, said firmly, “Will you to home, woman.”

“This is England, sir. It is my home,” she answered. Her eyes fluttered fearfully, but she tightened her grip on each flanking woman as though steeling for a blow, and pressed her lips together into a thin, implacable line.

And in that moment he recognized her. He had seen her many times from a distance: a screeching prophetess, standing on her box above the overanxious crowds, offering promises of impossible equalities. As though titled men of property would simply, upon hearing her words, yield up their ancient, hard-won inheritances to landless yeomen or their widows. He began to push his way around the women, using his staff to breach their clasped hands, demanding roughly, “What is your name?… By God, I’ll have it, and you shall know the reasons why.”

“Morgan, sir. My name is Mrs. Morgan.” The fall of his staff had caught her sharply across the wrist and she pulled her stricken hand up to her breast, but she did not retreat from his path. She had spoken the word “Mor-gan” in two distinct parts, as someone in mourning would have said “death-knell” or “grave-stone” or even “mur-der,” and for an instant he lost his footing. He turned his head to follow the tunings of his ears, and when he again met her eyes, he knew he had got it right. The image of fresh-laid straw fouled with the blood and brain matter of a headless corpse slid into his mind, like mercury poured into one ear.

“Jesu, woman, get you home…” He rushed past her into the darkened caverns of the House bristling with roaming bands of soldiers, clerks, councilmen, goodwives, and even a few doxies off the streets. Somewhere within the Speaker’s chambers, there were shouts and a clash of arms, and bits of shredded parchment swirled around his head as though the very weather had begun dissent, bringing snow in April. He slipped into a privy, blindly closing the weighted door. He went hard to his knees and heard his thick cloak catch and tear on a nail. Two men scuffling, perhaps a guardsman and a dissenter, fell heavily against the door and then moved away down the hall, swearing and making oaths against each other.

Every undoing makes a sound, he thought, and these are the sounds of the unraveling of kingships and alliances and nations. For the hundredth, for the thousandth, time that day he prayed for guidance but felt his spirit blunted against the building noise and chaos outside. He heard his name being called from somewhere inside the chamber, faintly but desperately, sounding like a drowning man calling out for a line of hemp.

He stood and placed his hand against the door, dignifying his presence, setting his face to iron, and when he finally exited the privy into the tide of men-at-arms, he braced himself by saying, “Mrs. Morgan, Mrs. Morgan, if you can bear to carry that name, I can bear to remember it…”