"Madam, you are unwell." "She needs a hot dinner, brother Chimney." "I saw her first, brother Joliffe." "Do not tire yourself, sir." "We travel before first peep of day." "Well, Madam... what say you?" "What has been your business in Oxford, sir?" " To sell corn, my dear." " You're a farmer?" "I sell corn... which is a mite easier than growing the stuff." "No armies trample over my profits." "And the King's court must still be fed." "Shall I call the boy?" "You want me drunk, madam?" "I knew it were so!" "Such a bonny lady, such a fine face, but we must all eat, must we not?" "!" "In times as these, a man must make hard bargains... and a woman must sell what a man will buy." "Shall I call the boy?" "No, dear Madam..." "for I am lusty enough." "Come, come." "You've had your pay." "Come, let me help you." "Sir, I beg of you." "We'll have no tears." "For we are jolly here." "Now off with the rest, open your pretty legs and all is done." "Sir, I think you have a wife somewhere." "I beg you think." "Madam." "No more of this." "Will you run me through?" "I think you will not." "Madam, will you get on your back?" "Well, then I see you need another smack." "Oh, God!" "Do not call for God, sir." "He's turned his face from us both." "The country starves, Thomas." "But there is food enough for those with coin to pay for it." "Parliament men sign themselves passes through my lines and sell corn to our enemies in Oxford." "The country looks to the Army for justice." "The country looks for order." "They want their King back in his place." "They want their world safe again." "You know my mind on that." "What is yours?" "We are as one, and ever will be." "But Charles Stuart will ever be King." "How can Charles Stuart be King and the world be safe?" "God will provide us the answer." "The starving copyholder nor the unpaid soldier will not wait for the firmament to split and shine God's beam on us!" "We must make our own light shine." "On the King, on the parliament of thieves and on property." "Property?" "Land should be a common treasury." "Let every man have a share of it and there'll be no starving." "Men will feed themselves." "Where's that land to come from?" "It must be taken from those who have too much." "You would have us turn to robbery then?" "Farewell, Colonel." "Farewell, General." "Why did these members of parliament induce us to fight in the name of freedom only that we might now endure their greed or suffer their prisons?" "I tell ya, this is no freedom except for them!" "And where sat they while we fought for their profits?" "At home counting their money." "I tell ya, we are robbed once more." "Not by King alone this time, but by parliament as well!" "Voice of the people, John." "Let them!" "Let them come!" "Comrades!" "We fought side by side for liberty!" "What did you fight for all that time?" "To be the dogs that parliament would throw me to?" "Incarcerate me, sirs, I am a free born man!" "Try again." "I was told you were dead at Kineton fight." "Death indeed sought me out." "Like a lover." "But yet I live." "I thank you." "God in heaven... help me, please!" "You are much changed, my Lady." "You are not, I see." "Where to?" "Tonight I know not." "Tomorrow, London." "There to make a new beginning." "It'll be dark soon." "They'll not have gone far." "There's rabbit." "How did your husband die?" "He died because I was not tame." "The world would have you tame." "Aye." "Then the world is full of fools." "How came you by those clothes?" "A man gave them to me." "I killed a man." "Nothing remains of who I was." "At Axholme, where I was born, men came to drain the fens" "and when the water flowed away, they found men  buried in the peat." "Like this." "Hands tied to legs." "Holes here..." "Stones or hammers..." "And a black god  made in wood," "kept perfect in the ground." "Where is that god now, I wonder?" "If all his worshippers are buried in the ground with him, is he still a god then?" "If a King runs away from his country, is he still a King then?" "He left England?" "He gave himself to the Scots, hoping for a new Army, they say." "But the Scots know a bargain." "They've sold him to the parliament." "How can you laugh?" "I thought Charles Stuart King," "God and Father once." "Madam." "We enter the world alone and in blood and leave the same way." "What happens in between means little." "I will be no man's whore." "Do nothing but sit by the fire and look like a feast." "Look what I found on the road to London." "A whore in a dead man's shirt." "Take his clothes from her." "You will pay with your own life, for that of my friend." "But first..." "Lay her down." "Or would you rather I kill him?" "You're the devil, sir." "And you, madam, the devil's whore." "Enough, enough killing." "The devil's whore gives the orders." "What times we live in." "Go home, sir, to your wife." "Your money will go to the poor whose taxes you live on." "A whore and a Leveller too, well may you prosper as Master Lilburne does." "Walled up in stone." "By whose order?" "By the parliament." "We will meet again, madam." ""Free Born" John walled up again." "His wife will need money." "Then I see you have found another god to worship." "The Holy Trinity, truth, liberty and justice." "And what is that but more blood?" "And tell me, when all the blood is spilled, what then?" "Who will be master and who will be slave?" "Will I be King?" "Will my lady work in the fields?" "There is a madness in you that feeds on the times, Sexby." "Do not laugh at me, sir." "Between blood of birth and blood of death there is life." "And this fight is now my life." "What is yours?" "To laugh at hope?" "To live and die alone?" "Nay." "I would not have that life." "Turn your back." "I wish to dress in my skirts again." "Must you?" "Must I what, sir?" "Put on your clothes?" "I mean only to swim." "Swim naked with me, madam  And we will both take gold to Honest John." "He can have my share too." "All I ask is that you swim with me." "Stand off." "Will you not swim, Sexby?" "I never could swim." " From a friend in the Parliament?" " Indeed." "I knew not I had a friend in the Parliament." "£28." "Enough to buy a new printing press." "And some clothes for the children." "Aye, a new press." "I thought the fight had lost you, Edward." "No, John." "The fight will never lose me again." "My sword is drawn." "This is the fight now." "Words?" "Read." "You hold his life in your hands." "Both sides will call it treason." ""Parliament to be forcibly adjourned" ""and a new one elected by all men of good faith," ""not only those with property."" "The levelling up of men cannot begin until this is accomplished." ""That new Parliament to have Charles Stuart..." ""..." "Arrested."" ""And tried as a man of blood..."" "Who will do the levelling up?" "The army, Edward." "Where you should be still." "There is no other engine to drive the world's turning but the army." "Will you take these pages out?" "They must find their way to a press." "I am searched." "Even my skirts." "The dogs." "Where is the press?" "At your house, madam, with Thomas Rainsborough." "We must search you, sir." "On my master's orders." "And who is your master?" "That you need not know." "Madam?" "Go, madam!" "Where is she?" "This was my mother's chapel." "My, er, soldiers are godly men." "They will not tolerate idolatry." "My mother worshipped her God through painted clay." "I am glad to see you safe and well, madam." "These two years I tried for news of you many times." "I feared you were sick." "Or worse." "I was never more alive." "From Honest John." "We are in your debt." "This house is given to the army for a while." "Though I must make free with a part of it, the rest is yours." "How fares Joshua?" "Madam?" "God sent these floods to trap you." "Now he sends you Rainsborough and Cromwell, like Joshua and Gideon to drown you in fire and blood." "You broke a King's heart." "And killed some innocents too, madam." "My hands are stained in blood." "A Joshua indeed." "I've heard that all of your family is in the New World, Colonel." "My mother, my brother, and my sisters." "But not your wife then?" "I will have no wife until this quarrel be over." "And how would you settle the quarrel?" "By making England a republic." "And if England wants Charles Stuart on his throne again?" "Then I will leave England to its King and go to Massachusetts." "And find me a wife there." "And what shall she be, Colonel?" "Such a one as lives and worships in freedom." "One that knows how to truly love a man and be loved." "Oh, and beautiful." "None such in England then?" "No, I would not have an English wife, madam." "Not a painted child that knows nothing but a thousand years of privilege and calls it "breeding" or "manners"." "Calls submission "duty"" "and lives only to please a man and pass on his property to his sons." "I will a have a free spirit, madam." "All this and beautiful too." "I fear you will not find this paragon." "I need not find her." "For I believe she will find me." "Will you not speak?" "Might you not hear a thousand years of privilege in my voice?" "Perhaps a hundred or two." "General Cromwell wishes to see you." "How is dear John?" "Well, General, when I saw him." "For a man with rats for bedfellows." "He is there by order of Parliament." "I cannot pluck him out." "You plucked me out." "You fought bravely by my side at Kineton and at Marston." "As did Honest John." "And at Naseby thereafter." "Where Charles Stuart lost his throne, did he not?" "He lost his power, Edward." "But he is King still and whoever has him has our destiny in his grip." "The Scotch have sold him to Parliament, and Parliament have him sitting in Northamptonshire." "And if the army were to seize him, the army would hold sway." "Then pluck him out of Northamptonshire, General." "That I may not do." "But other men might." "There is a woman in Oxfordshire." "Her true name is not known to God-fearing men." "She is known as the Devil's Whore." "Upon my life, General, this woman is the epitome of wickedness." "Truly, Master Joliffe?" "What form does this wickedness take?" "Lechery, sir." "She consorts with men." "And what, I pray you, should the army do about that?" "She is sent from the devil!" "I must confess, sir." "Confess?" "Aye, confess." "I don't want to be silent." "Her licentiousness has a purpose, sir." "That purpose is robbery and murder." "She..." "uses her... face..." "To trap men." "Well..." "Wickedness indeed." "The Parliament require you to make a troop available to me to search out and take this woman." "My America." "My Newfoundland." "Edward." "Still not dead, then?" "No, my Lady, it seems I must live." "I bring a message from the General, sir." " I'll leave you." " No, never." "Stay and listen." "He has eyes everywhere." "I believe not a one of us moves his bowels without Oliver senses it." " Craving your pardon, my Lady." " Given." "He wants the King taken and delivered to the Army but he would not give the order." "Aye***" "He would rather I did it" "Whoever does it, risks the wrath of the Parliament" "And yet it should be done." "It shall be done, then." "Think no more on it." "I will risk all in the cause." "Fear not, they will not harm me." "The country would fall to utter ruin without me." "Your business?" "Sire." "We have come to take you into safe-keeping." "On whose authority do you come to take away a King?" "It is a very good authority." "Oliver will never strike him down." "He would not be remembered as the man who threw over the King." "Deep down," "Oliver believes in the good old frame of government." "The cloth that went before cut to a different style?" "Authority where it was, rank where it was, land where it was." "The women sent home again to be silent wives in harness to their husbands." "In harness to property." "There are two roads to the future, Thomas." "The Leveller regiments will follow yours." "Then what will Oliver do?" "And what will Thomas Rainsborough do if the road is blocked?" "I will become an American." "Like my wife." "You swore you had no wife, sir." "Oh, I mean to have one." "If she will have me." "Colonel!" "Stay." "I will return for my answer." "Colonel, I heard not your question." "Will you be my wife?" "Colonel!" "Parliament men!" "Well?" "Come and find your answer when duty allows." "This need not concern you, Colonel, except your garrison will need to know of our presence in your area." "You bring a troop of horse to seek a woman who stole your purse?" "Read further, sir." "She murdered my dear friend." "Though, again, sir, it need not concern you." "It concerns me that the Parliament thinks the Army has no more pressing task than to indulge the grudges of wealthy men who stayed at home growing their bellies while others bled to death." "My Lady Angelica Fanshawe." "The mistress of this house." "Ah, my Lady Fanshawe." "Master joliffe sits in the Parliament tending the nation's wounds." "He is leaving." "A delight to meet you, madam." "And yet, I swear I have looked upon your face before." "At court, perhaps?" "Of course." "In the court." "I never could forget such a face." "And I never will." "Farewell, Madam." "Colonel." "Nothing will go well till these leeches are purged." " What was his business?" " To persecute some whore." "He means to have her hanged." "My answer, Madam?" "Do you see him?" "See who?" "You do not see him?" "!" "I cannot marry you." "There is no future." "There is only the past." "Purge of Parliament?" "Some thrown out, some kept in." "No, I cannot support it." "They are bloodsuckers." "One sweep of the sword and they are gone." " We begin a new." " Ah." "A new election?" "We know who the godly men are, the men who want the best for England." " Let them remain." " No election?" "No." " Why no election?" " John, the country is half-ruined." "There is famine in the north and west." "Corrupt monopolies flourish." "We must force Parliament to reform." "We need the support of Honest John Lilburne." "In God's name, john, we want to purge the men whose warrant keeps you rotting here!" "Why no election?" "Because the country will vote for the King's men!" "And you will turn to dust in this rat-infested hole and your wife and children will starve in a gutter!" "But I mistake, of course, for in truth, there is no more comfortable place on earth for john Lilburne than a prison cell!" "Where he is spared the trouble of considering the full-grown problems of governance and not the unborn children of liberty and truth." "Which will lie forever in the womb if we cannot make a world into which they may be brought!" "Comfortable?" "Think, john, a purged Parliament and a law quickly passed by which no man will have an income above 2,000 a year, not even Earls and Dukes." "By what authority would a law such as that be brought in?" "By this authority." "For there is none now else in England, I think you know." "Sir." "Within half a day of your departure, Mistress Fanshawe was arrested." "She's charged with robbery and murder." " They will hang me!" " Lies cannot hang you." "This was done to attack me, why else?" "Thomas, a word." " You must not tell him." " I killed a thief." " Will he not understand?" " No, he will not." "He is Thomas Rainsborough, not Edward Sexby." "Then he will hear me condemned in court." "Elizabeth will stay with you." "Let me pay a visit to Master joliffe." "Let me ask him in front of his wife and daughter," " how he met this Oxford whore." " Let him tell his lies," "Edward, the truth will out." "Angelica, you wanted to speak?" "No." "Mistress Fanshawe, the charges against you are as follows " "In the year of our Lord, 1646, you did most cruelly murder the com merchant," "Master Chimney." "And that with diverse others in Wytham woods, you did attack and rob Master joliffe." "And that you are the notorious felon known as, The Devil's whore." "What is your answer to these charges?" "That I am no whore..." "Liar!" "Whore!" "Hang her!" "... And never was!" "If your father continues with this case, your head will follow your hair." "We will proceed to the evidence." "Master joliffe..." "Master joliffe, will you come forward and give your account?" "I... mistook." "This is not the woman who robbed me." "That woman was a whore I used many times in Oxford." "All this I swear  on the blood of Christ." "Release the prisoner." "I ask your forgiveness." "For a while in the prison, a doubt crept..." "No, Thomas." "I killed a man who wanted my honour for pigeon pie." "I was..." "There is no past." "Only the future." "There is something more I must tell you." "I am with child." "A speedy settlement" "I will bring forward new proposals to the Parliament soon." "Your Majesty, my heart is filled with joy to hear that promise." "But I must tell His Majesty from the love that" "I bear Your Majesty, and ever will, there are some in the army that are put to worry by the many rumours that His Majesty yet seeks an intervention," " from the Scottish force." " No, no, no." "No." "And that is also a promise from His Majesty?" "Of course it is a promise." "Thomas Rainsborough." "What of him, Majesty?" "He is a fanatical." "A Leveller." "Should such a man be in such high command?" "I would sleep easier in my bed if he were removed from our affairs." "Thomas is the best man in England, sire." "And my friend." "Well, then let any man here tell me a better way." "Let any man here tell me any other way this ship can be brought into harbour other than to talk to Charles Stuart?" "He gave me solemn undertakings." " Promises from his own lips." " Which will prove false as ever before." "We have Royalist uprisings in south wales, in Yorkshire and in Cheshire." "Then let us crush them!" "Aye Thomas, we can crush them." "We can spend our lifetimes, and our children's, killing and killing again." "But when the killing stops, where is England?" "We cannot achieve all, my friends, but we can achieve..." " a sufficiency!" " A sufficiency of Charles Stuart?" "A sufficiency of bloated thieves in the Parliament?" "A sufficiency of soldiers who fought for their country, only to be told they must now starve for the wages promised." " I fought not for that sufficiency!" " Hear, hear!" "Well, what then, Thomas?" "More death, more destruction, what?" "We exile Charles Stuart." "Let him depart." "Let us govern the country through councils elected in the streets," " the guilds, the universities." " Elected in the streets?" " By whom?" " By all men." "For I think the poorest he that is in England has a life to live is the greatest he." "No more Parliaments for men with property only." "We should burn it down." "Well, then, Thomas  and all of you, my friends and comrades," "I must tell you this." "What Colonel Rainsborough urges this council to accept is a form of government unknown on this Earth, and one that will straightway fall into anarchy." "Rather than let this beloved England fall into such misery, I tell you now," "I would pull promises out of Charles Stuart's mouth another thousand years." "Then it's clear, General." "In this beloved England, one of us will not live." "If you rise up, you will be called mutineers and traitors." "Oliver is still the hero." "Then the regiments must be prepared for this convulsion." "Reason says we lose all in delay." "Now tell me what your heart says, Edward." "I have butchered men." "Here and in Germany." "But say the word, Colonel, and I will sharpen my blades once again." "This time for justice, not for pay." "But, Colonel," "Edward Sexby has nothing to lose on this Earth." "Others have." "Madam?" "One man only may unite the Army in this great matter, Thomas." "That man is you." "Thomas." "Charles Stewart has broken his promises." "Every one of them." "By escaping from Hampton Court." "Gone, it is thought, to the Island of Wight." "I come to apologise to you  and to all." "For that I was foolishly dazzled by him." "We will negotiate with this false man no more." "But, Thomas, there must now be unity amongst us or all will be brought to ruin." "There are new uprisings today in Essex and in Yorkshire and in Cheshire and in wales and in Bristol, too." "The country needs its Army now as never before." "What say you?" "When we have done, will all matters as to how we govern this country be for discussion?" "All matters." "And will all matters as to land and property be for discussion?" "All." "You are needed in Pontefract, Thomas." "A siege such as only you can lift." "But I beg of you, make speed." "Our enemies were making ready for this while I blinked in the sunlight of the king's gaze." " I will go tomonow." " Tonight, Thomas." "Tonight must be my wedding night, Oliver." "If my lady will marry a soldier that will be gone in the moming?" "She will." "May God grant you a long life together." "I must go to wales, a thing I never thought to do." "Fare you well." "Will you not offer me a wedding gift, General?" " If it can be done." " Let john Lilburne go free." "Overthrow Parliament's warrant." "It is done, madam." "By authority of the Army." "You will not make me a wife for one night, I hope?" "I must disappoint you, Edward." "No fight for you." "Till I return, guard this woman with your life." "Why do you sleep on straw still, Sexby?" "I wish you were by Thomas' side in Yorkshire." "Aye." "I wish it, too." "He is the best man I ever met." "Sexby, do you ever think of those times in Wytham woods?" "I have never been in Wytham woods, my lady." "Except once." "To swim one day when I was hot." "We come with a message from General Cromwell." "When you were the god of battles, there was ever a sign of your blessing on me." "Now when you rest upon my shoulders, my sight is dim." "I think I see the road  and yet I fear to tread it." "I know the man I must strike down and yet" "I fear the blood that will be shed thereafter." "Take men to the Island and arrest Charles Stuart." "He will be charged with making unlawful war on England." "Let others stand ready to enter the Parliament." "The time has come." "Husband." "Yes?" "There will be a life for us, will there not?" "One day the argument will be over." "There is a life to come." "Arrest her." " You shall not touch her!" " Sexby, desist." "What does it matter now?" "Let them hang me."