Virgin Earth

Thursday, 25 January 1649

The High Court was sitting in the Painted Chamber in the Palace of Westminster. John knew the room from his days in royal service and guided Alexander through the maze of lobbies and waiting rooms and retiring rooms until they could slip in by a side door. The day was given over to reading out the signed depositions of witnesses who had spoken before the commissioners the previous day. There was little of interest – the halting accounts of the king on horseback riding through the wounded without caring for their condition. Accusations that royalist officers had permitted the looting of dead men’s weapons, and rifling the pockets of wounded men.

“That’s very bad,” Alexander said softly to John. “That’s one thing Cromwell’s very strict on. He won’t have looting. That’ll count against the king.”

“Hardly matters,” John said dourly. “Not when you think that he’s accused of tyranny and treason.”

One witness, Henry Gooch, gave evidence to show that the king was trying to raise a foreign army to invade England even while he was negotiating with Parliament for an agreed return to the throne.

“Could be a lie,” John said.

Alexander shrugged. “We know he was raising an army in Ireland and begging the Scots to invade. We know that the queen was trying to move a French army to turn out for him before the people of Paris rose up against their own king and drove him out of the city. This is just evidence on top of evidence.”

“What happens next?” John asked one of the soldiers of the guard as the clerk went on reading the evidence.

“They have to find guilt and pronounce sentence,” the man said solemnly.

“But he hasn’t pleaded!” John exclaimed.

The man looked away. “If he chooses not to plead then it counts as guilty,” he said. “There’ll be nothing for you to see or hear until they are ready to pass sentence.”

“Does he know this?” John asked Alexander. “D’you think he knows that if he goes on and on refusing to plead they’ll just execute him anyway? As if he had admitted his guilt?”

“It’s his law,” Alexander replied impatiently. “Men have been executed under his name. He must know what he is doing.”

John felt himself shiver like a man with cold water down his spine.

“I’ll wait,” he said to Alexander. “May I stay with you a few days longer?”