The Seeker by S. G. MacLean

Author:S. G. MacLean [MacLean, S. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782061663
Publisher: Quercus; Hachette Book Group
Published: 2015-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

The Presence Chamber

6 November

She supposed she would not walk these corridors much longer, and she was not sorry for it. Anne Winter was thoroughly sick of having doors opened before her by armed and liveried men. She wanted to open her own doors, to walk into a room and find discussions not of matters of state, but of life. Chamber after chamber she had passed through, and she faced the last door now. At this one, she knew, she must wait a little longer.

Grown men, it was said, trembled to stand where she did now, but that could only be, she thought, because they wished to please him, or because they had something to lose. Anne Winter felt only a mild curiosity as she awaited her summons from the Guard Chamber to the presence of the most powerful man in England. If she trembled, it was that her body had not yet comprehended that there would be no more opium. Those around Whitehall who observed her sickly pallor, her haunted look, read in them signs of grief.

It was perhaps ten minutes from the sending of a message that she had arrived before the doors were opened again, and this time it was that another might leave, rather than she enter. It was hardly unusual – he was at business almost all day, every day. What she could not have predicted, though, was that the figure leaving a private interview with Oliver Cromwell would be George Tavener.

Tavener himself looked startled to see her there, and paused a moment to nod to her, as if yet uncertain of who she was, before putting on his hat and continuing on his way down the passageways of Whitehall. Anne Winter watched him go, and wondered.

The Foot Guard in front of her nodded. ‘You may go into His Highness now.’

She straightened herself as the guards put up their weapons and stood aside, leaving her to step alone into the presence of Oliver Cromwell.

He had his back to her, and was poring over two large charts rolled out and weighted on a table of green marble with fantastically wrought gilt legs. She took a moment to look around her; the sight caught her breath. She had heard, of course, but John had not liked to speak of it so she had given up questioning him upon it, but now she saw that it was true: Cromwell, this Usurper, this champion of the cause of the people, surrounded himself with the majesty of Kingship. Here was a Mantegna tapestry, there, alongside Walker’s portrait of Cromwell himself, was a Titian, on a desk by the window the Lord Protector’s private seal. The hangings, carpets and furnishings were as exquisite as ever they had been, and as fit for a king, as in any royal court in Europe. Anne Winter thought of the desecration of churches – their statues and glass and ornament, the ripping out of their organs, the destruction of fine libraries, houses, all in the name of godliness, at this man’s command.

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