Doctor Who_ The Roundheads - Mark Gatiss [32]
Ben smiled. ‘Oh, well. Maybe it’s just tulips.’
‘Please do not say it again, Father,’ pleaded the young man. ‘I do not think I could stand it.’
Oliver Cromwell pinched the bridge of his bulbous nose and sighed. A very bad, thudding headache was lurking in the back of his brain. ‘Say what again, Richard?’
The boy was in his twenties, long-haired and rather thin with a pale, waxy complexion. He looked appealingly at his father. ‘That I... I disappoint you.’
Cromwell looked around him at the spacious, panelled apartment in which he did most of his business. It was a pleasant room, with high windows and a floor tiled in black and white geometric shapes. There was a heavy old globe in the corner, surrounded by books, ledgers, and the masses of papers with which the general had to deal on a daily basis.
Sighing, Cromwell wished that his son were not there to bother him, that he could have a moment of simple, unqualified peace. Normally, the room would be crowded with men. Advisers would be advising, soldiers would be scheming, and John Thurloe, his most trusted aide, would be doing his best to keep the general from drowning under a tide of bureaucratic waffle.
For once, though, the room was empty. Empty save for the thin boy who was proving, as he said, such a dissappointment to his father.
Cromwell sank back into his chair and cleared his throat, looking away evasively.
‘It is not that, Son,’ he said patiently. ‘Only that I fear for your future. Look at these.’ He rapped the papers strewn over his knee. ‘Debts and debts on top of them! How I raised such a profligate spender is quite beyond me.’
He closed his eyes and scratched the bristles on his inexpertly shaved chin. ‘What do you do all day, Richard?’
‘Well –’ the boy began.
Cromwell held up his hand. ‘Nay, spare me. I do not wish to know the details of your shopping.’
He opened his blue eyes and glared at Richard. ‘But do it less!’ he thundered.
Richard dabbed his mouth with a lace handkerchief and nodded quickly, ‘Yes, Father. May I –’
‘Yes’ drawled Cromwell wearily. ‘Please go.’
Richard bowed and shambled out of the room, his sword, which seemed to hang too low on his belt, scraping over the tiles.
Cromwell sighed and closed his eyes again. What had he done to deserve such a poltroon as an heir. Had his beloved Oliver not died...
But there was no sense in raking all that up again.
He sank back, grateful for the cushions that nursed the painful boil on his buttock.
For a long moment, he saw nothing but darkness beneath his closed eyelids but, gradually, faint images, like translucences in a church window, began to swim into his mind. He was a boy again. A boy, playing in the broad, flat fields of his father’s estate in Cambridgeshire. The day was warm and fine, just as the summers of one’s childhood always were. He saw again the heat haze sparkling over the crops, the old weather vane creaking, turning stiffly in the breeze. And the young lad with the huge spaniel eyes who had come to visit.
Cromwell had been too young to appreciate the importance of this particular visit and this particular, small, grave-looking boy. To him, he was just another playmate, an eight-year-old come to clash wooden swords with him, or play tag out among the swaying wheat.
There had been whispering in the house for weeks, he recalled, but not a word was spoken to him or his sisters. Not until the day of the visit, and then – oh! – a ceremony of such pomp, young Cromwell thought that Christmas had come early.
The two young boys had sat together by a pond, idly dropping stones into its depths and listening to the lovely, satisfying gloop they made as they entered the water.
Cromwell had smiled at the boy but the newcomer did not smile back. He seemed preoccupied and tense, almost old beyond his years. Trying again, Cromwell opened his coat and produced the puppy which had been a present from his dear mother only weeks before. Surely this would cheer the boy up?
But the boy turned his sad eyes away from Cromwell and looked back