London - Edward Rutherfurd [393]
Sometimes he had even tried to pretend to himself that he did not know, that he had not seen them kissing when they thought themselves alone, or seen Dogget disappear into her house. As far as he could tell, few others realized. To his children, Jane was Aunt Jane. And when a neighbour had once innocently remarked – “Dogget and Mrs Wheeler are cousins, aren’t they?” – he had just smiled and nodded. God forgive him for the lie. When it was he, Gideon Carpenter, who was supposed to be setting the moral example in the parish of St Lawrence Silversleeves.
For that was his role now. Ever since they had kicked out Sir Julius Ducket and his friends. Three times now, the whole congregation had elected him as one of the vestrymen. And their own moral standards, he was glad to say, were commendably high. More than half the men wore Puritan jerkins and hats; their women wore long dresses of grey or brown, with bonnets modestly tied under their chins.
So why had he allowed this sinful betrayal of the pious woman he revered to continue? Partly, he admitted, it was the fear of a family row and of a possible scandal. But even more importantly, to keep Dogget happy. Without the older man working in the business he would not have felt free – and this was something that Martha, surely, would understand – to serve the still greater cause, whose work would be completed this very next morning. The work of Cromwell and his saints.
Oliver Cromwell had won the Civil War. After those first inconclusive years, it was the vigorous East Anglian member of Parliament who had gone off, raised his own properly trained troop of horse, the Ironsides, and demanded of Parliament: “Now let me reorganize the whole army.”
What thrilling times those had been. Leaving Dogget and his family in London, Gideon had gone eagerly to join Cromwell’s force. The New Model Army, it was called. This full-time, trained and disciplined army, its core already battle-hardened, and commanded by Cromwell and his colleague General Fairfax, turned the course of the war. Within a year it had inflicted a crushing defeat on Charles and Rupert at Naseby, and taken one royal stronghold after another. Oxford fell. Charles surrendered to the Scots. The Scots sold him to the English, who kept him under house arrest.
But what mattered to Gideon was that these New Model Roundheads were not just soldiers. They were saints.
For “Saints” was what they called themselves. Some, of course, were only mercenaries; but most were men like himself – men who sought justice, soldiers for Christ, men who were fighting so that now at last, even in England, they might build that shining city on a hill. God was with them, they were sure. Hadn’t He given them victory? This knowledge gave them authority; and authority was needed. For if not themselves, who could they trust?
Certainly not the Parliament. Half the time the army had not been paid. The “Saints” knew very well that most of the parliament men just wanted to strike a deal with the king on the minimum possible terms. Certainly not the Londoners. “London,” Gideon would sadly admit, “is so big it is a hydra-headed monster.” Most of the population supported the Roundhead cause, but you never knew how many secret Royalists there