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  “Hold a little,” the king said, raising his voice to Cook’s back.

  Determinedly deaf to the greatest man in the world, Cook carried on reading the charges, a little breathless as if he were anxious to get through them all. James found he was gritting his teeth as the prosecutor steadfastly ignored his king, continuing to list that the king had traitorously and maliciously . . .

  “Hold a little,” the king interrupted again, and then shockingly, leaned forwards, lifted his black ebony cane, and poked the prosecutor, hard, in the back.

  “God, no,” James said to himself.

  Cook caught his breath but continued with accusations, the king poked at him again, and again, then, like the slow unfolding of a nightmare, the silver tip at the end of the cane fell to the floor with a heavy thud and rolled loudly to a standstill. Cook paid no attention to the stick against his shoulder, nor to the king’s interruption, but as the silver ring rolled to a standstill he froze, as still as the ferrule, as if he were afraid to look round to see what the king would do next. He took a breath as if to continue with the prosecution case. But he did not speak.

  Nobody moved. James realized he was gripping his wooden seat, stopping himself getting up and picking up the silver ferrule for the king. Half the audience were holding themselves rigid so that they did not betray themselves by getting to their feet to serve the man who had never had to do anything for himself. Nobody was attending to the prosecutor anymore. Everyone was looking from the shining tip of the cane on the floor, to the king, who had never in his life picked up anything.

  The silver ring lay on the floor beside the prosecutor’s polished shoes, the prosecutor standing like a statue beside it. The bench of judges was still, the Lord President frozen. Nobody knew what to do, and everyone felt it was strangely important.

  Slowly, in the long silence, Charles himself rose from his chair, opened the little door to his enclosure, came out, bent down, and picked up the heavy cane tip, twisting it back into place on the handsome stick. He looked from the Lord President to the prosecutor as if he could not understand that they had not stopped everything to serve him. All his life someone had bent and fetched and carried for him, but here, with more than a thousand subjects in the room, nobody had moved. He smiled slightly, inclining his head a little, as if he had learned something important and disagreeable, and then he went back to his chair in a silence so profound that James thought they could have been passing a sentence of death.

  James left the hall at the end of the day’s hearing, sick to his belly from lack of food and at what he had heard and seen. He went back to his safe house and, with his head thumping, wrote his report, translated it into the code that they had agreed, and took the letter down to Queenhithe. The master of a ship was waiting for him.

  “We sail with the tide,” he warned.

  “Go now,” James said. “This is all I have to send. Someone will be waiting for you when you dock. They’ll ask for the paperwork from Monsieur St. Jean.”

  “I’m guessing it’s not good news,” the captain said, looking at James’s darkened face.

  “Just give him the letter,” James said wearily, and turned away from the river and the bobbing ships and his own longing to go with them.

  Alinor’s brother, Ned, was among the crowd that pushed their way into the Westminster Hall on the first day of the trial, but he did not see James. Nor did James, who kept his head down and his hat pulled low over his face, notice the ferryman. The two men, without knowing it, shared a vigil, each of them incredulous that the trial was going ahead, both of them doubtful that there could be a guilty verdict. The roundhead veteran doubted that the judges would hold their nerve for long enough to find their king guilty of treason. And even if they did, Ned was certain they would have no appetite for a death sentence. How could subjects pass a death sentence on their king? All the courts in the land were by royal appointment, bound to keep the king’s laws. Who had the power to judge the lawgiver? For the first time in his life, that cold day in January, Ned saw his king in the semidivine flesh, seated on his velvet cushion, with his tall hat like a crown on his head, and thought, confusingly, that a man so arrogant as to bring himself before a court by his refusal to speak to his fellow men, or to keep his word when it was given, deserved that they should act against him. But at the same time, he could not stop himself thinking that a man so long-fingered, so beautifully dressed, with such mournful beauty, must be, as he claimed: half god, and entirely above justice.

  Saturday— It is unlikely that an attempt to rescue him by force could succeed. He is brought by river to a private house before entering Westminster and intensely guarded. I think his only chance of freedom is on the insistence of the princes of Europe, especially if they threaten war on this half-hearted half-attending parliament. Many MPs have been excluded from parliament, less than half the summoned judges are attending, the people are not calling for the king to be sentenced. The decision of the court is by no means certain, the king is refusing to answer to it, and claims that it has no authority. I believe it could be adjourned without a verdict if the king’s fellow-monarchs and kinsmen demand it. If the trial continues there is a real danger of a verdict of “guilty,” and tho’ a verdict is not a sentence, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales would be well advised to demand an assurance that they will not go from verdict to a sentence of exile or imprisonment.

  They will call witnesses to give evidence of His Majesty breaking peace treaties, dishonoring his parole, denying his word, and lying to the parliament; and this can only cause more bad feeling. The mood of the hall is growing darker. The king has been fatally ill-advised to say nothing. Since he makes no explanation nor defense, it appears as if he has no defense. Worse, he looks as if he is relishing the accusations. But it does not stop them. We have only one advantage right now: that they have adjourned till Monday. There is time for you to make demands and stop this trial.

  James sent his coded letter of advice into the darkness, into the hands of a ship’s captain crossing the stormy seas of the Channel in winter. He had no reply, but he expected none. There was no reason that the lords in exile should reassure him that they were taking steps to save the king. On Sunday, he attended the church for the empty service of protestant communion, and prayed fervently in his own room. He went down three times to Queenhithe in case a ship had come in with a letter for him. Not even his father had written.

  On Monday he wrote again to his masters at The Hague that the court had met, and still the king would not answer to them.

  Tomorrow they will meet without the presence of His Majesty to hear witnesses. It is essential that someone contradicts their testimony. Can one of you lords or gentlemen attend to cross-question the witnesses? If they say that the king is a liar it does not matter that the court is unconstitutional—it is something that should never be said. If we do not challenge this, we are teaching the people of England that they can say anything.

  As the days went on, and James sent daily reports and received no reply, not even acknowledgment, he felt more and more that he, like the king, had been forgotten, and that he and the king would go on forever in this strange life in which every word uttered was of life or death importance, every word was on oath, and yet the boredom and banality of day after day in the Painted Chamber at Westminster, as the witnesses listed one dishonorable folly after another, was as painful as a man sucking on a decaying tooth.

  Ned, listening as hard as he could, pushed into a corner at the very back of the room, found it incomprehensible that the judges could find the courage to sit in judgment on their king, but not to force him to answer. He feared, as the bitterly cold January drew to an end, that the king would escape all justice by the simple technique of denying that anyone had the right to judge him. He denied their right to speak of him, he denied their right to listen, he denied their right to be.

  “It’s as if none of us is here,” he complained to his landlady in the cramped little inn that even