Cromwell looked around him at the s.p.a.cious, 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 ma.s.ses 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, sc.r.a.ping 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 b.u.t.tock.

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 towards the large, grey rectangle of the house. He seemed to perk up as a young woman approached, her long, full skirts brushing over the dusty ground.

She scooped the boy up into her arms and he smiled delightedly. 'There now, my boy,' she said. 'It is time for your bed. Say goodbye to Master Oliver.'

The boy frowned and shook his head.

The woman wagged her finger at him. 'Say goodbye, now, Charles.'

He buried his head in her breast and, m.u.f.fled by her ap.r.o.n, he stammered, 'G-goodbye.'

The nurse smiled, shook her head and gave Cromwell a little wave and turned back towards the house.

Cromwell remembered thinking the boy was very rude indeed. He had no thought then how could he? that one day he would be putting that boy, that prince, on trial for his life.

Opening his eyes, Cromwell found John Thurloe standing before him.

'Yes, John?'

Thurloe, a middle-sized, extremely neat man with a horsy face and spa.r.s.e beard, gave a little bow. 'They have arrived, General.'

'Who?' frowned Cromwell.

Tliurloe coughed into his gloved hand. 'The prisoners.

The... er, seer and his doctor.'

Cromwell's face lit up. He felt immensely cheered already.

'Oh! Yes. Yes, bring them in.'

He rubbed his hands together. For a rational, G.o.d-fearing man Cromwell was inordinately fond of the mystical. He had recently taken much notice of a wise woman from Cornwall who had predicted that the whole of London would be destroyed by a plague of angry cats within the century. She had been very convincing.

Cromwell adopted his most sagacious-looking pose on the chair and let his chin rest on his hand. No, no, no, too contrived, he thought.

He sat back and opened his legs, resting his hands on the heavily carved arms of the chair. Too regal.

He heard Thurloe returning and made a snap decision to stand by the globe. He set it spinning and then leaned over it, his lower lip jutting out thoughtfully, his hands behind his back.

Thurloe swept in moments later with a young man and a funny-looking fellow with untidy black hair. Both wore long black cloaks and had a somewhat sheepish air about them.

Cromwell looked up and tapped his finger against his chin.

'Well now,' he mused. 'What do we have here?'

The fire was burning a little low in the kitchen grate when Frances Kemp entered the room. She made straight for the range, ignoring the hunched figure of her father, who was staring broodingly into the flames. There was a large tray of ale and cheese on the table before him, covered by a fresh cloth.

Frances set to work at once to revive the fire, twisting to avoid the spits on which four suckling pigs were skewered.

Kemp turned his head and scowled at her. 'Do you not have a word for your father, girl?'

Frances reflected wryly that she had several words for him, but none that he would like. 'Good afternoon,' she said at last.

Kemp grunted. 'A good afternoon is it that sees a king to be put on trial for his life?'

'I meant-'

'I know what you meant,' growled Kemp, hawking up a ball of phlegm and spitting into the fire.

Frances tugged nervously at her knuckles. 'The King is to stand trial, then?'

Kemp nodded and then raised his head a little arrogantly.

'I have it on the best authority.'

Frances looked up at the ceiling. 'From your friends upstairs?'

With sudden and startling ferocity, Kemp leapt to his feet and grabbed his daughter by the front of her dress. He pushed her against the kitchen wall and pressed his face close to hers, his eyes flashing with menace.

'You would be well advised, daughter, to keep all thoughts of my visitors out of your head.' Frances felt herself shaking and cowered from Kemp's wrath. 'Is that understood?' he hissed.

She nodded and Kemp let her go, stumbling to his chair.

Frances rapidly rearranged her clothes just as a bell began to clatter in the corner of the kitchen. Kemp looked up and then shot a dangerous glance at Frances. He got to his feet, picked up the tray, and backed towards the door, exiting without another word.

Frances sat down heavily and rubbed her throat. She felt tender and vulnerable. The funny stinging sensation in her palms told her she was close to tears.

What made everything worse was that she knew it had not always been like this. Her father had always been a supporter of the Crown, of course, but not with this strange, stupid, blinding pa.s.sion.

He had been a wonderful father, too. Gentle and funny, quick-witted and popular with his customers and adored by his wife.

But that was before Marston Moor and the loss of his beloved Arthur.

Now William Kemp was like a man possessed by an angry ghost. He could not, would not, spare a kind word for anybody. And gradually life in the inn had changed beyond all recognition.

The wrong kind of person came there now rough and unsavoury people who didn't care that their landlord spoke not two words to them all evening.

Odd, thought Frances, that it should be called the World Turn'd Upside Down.

And now there was Thomas. The timing could not have been worse. With the King about to be tried, her love for a Roundhead would be like pouring salt into her father's gaping wound.

She glanced up at the bell, which was still gently tinkling.

What was going on in that upstairs room?

The Doctor walked boldly up to Cromwell and gave a very deep bow. 'General Cromwell,' he said. 'This is a pleasure.'

Cromwell nodded slightly and spun the globe again. 'No doubt.' He stuck out a big, thick finger and stopped the spinning. 'You're a doctor, I hear.'

'The,' said the Doctor without a trace of immodesty.

Cromwell grunted. 'That good, eh? Well, Doctor, what do you know of boils? I'm a martyr to them, sir, a martyr.'

The Doctor shrugged. 'Alas, General, it is not quite within my purview.'

Cromwell shrugged, disappointed, and made his way back to the chair. 'You have some connection with this lad, then?'

The Doctor pushed Jamie forward. 'May I present the McCrimmon of Culloden, for whom I have the honour to act as... er... spiritual s.e.xtant.'

Cromwell frowned. 'A what?'

The Doctor waved his hands airily. 'I guide him through the highways and byways of the other world.'

Cromwell nodded and sat down, shifting his weight and grunting as his boil connected with the cushions.

He beckoned Jamie towards, him. 'Is it true, lad? Can you see beyond this mortal veil?'

Jamie looked at the Doctor, who nodded discreetly, Then he drew himself up boldly. 'Yes,' he stated simply. 'That I can.'

Thurloe came to stand by Cromwell's side, raising an eyebrow suspiciously and coughing lightly, as though trying to clear a small blockage from his throat.

'The jailer tells me you know of the King's imprisonment.'

'Oh yes,' said the Doctor.

Thurloe folded his arms over his tightly b.u.t.toned black tunic. 'Information that any Royalist spy might have wrung out of a loyal Parliamentarian.'

'Oh, no, no, no,' cried the Doctor. 'The McCrimmon saw it in a vision.'

Cromwell seemed to consider this. He thought again of the Cornish woman and the plague of cats. Then of the plague they all knew too well, that had ravaged the city only twenty years before. And then of his memory of the little prince with the sad eyes. There was so much he wanted to know.

'Well, then,' he said at last. 'Will there be more visions?

What can you tell us of the future?'

The Doctor frowned. 'Well '

'These are mad and fast times, Doctor,' interrupted Cromwell. 'The world is giddy about our ears. And great matters are being decided.'

'Yes,' said the Doctor gravely, 'I know.'

'Then,' said Cromwell grandly, 'tell us what we must do.

Tell us how we may best serve the Lord our G.o.d and heal this wounded land of ours.'

The Doctor smiled pleasantly. 'Ask away.'

Cromwell looked at Thurloe, who coughed again into his glove, 'What of the King?'

Jamie began to follow the usual procedure, moaning softly to himself and waving his hands about close to his ears. Then, after a great bellow of pain he announced, 'I see a vacant throne!'

'And a vacant hat!' put in the Doctor, enjoying the theatricalities immensely.

Cromwell and Thurloe looked quickly at each other. 'I should cut off his head, then?' asked Cromwell with ponderous gravity.

Jamie cleared his throat, aware that any answers he might give could have historical repercussions. 'You must look to your own... conscience, Oliver Cromwell. And seek the counsel of the Lord.'