CROMWELL: We met a young man earlier who says he knows you, in fact more than knows you, wishes to be betrothed to you. Is the father of your unborn child…

ELIZABETH: What? Who is this man, is he here still?

HARRISON: One George Fitzgerald.

ELIZABETH: Oh…

CROMWELL: You know this man?

ELIZABETH: Knew, yes.

CROMWELL: You are with child by this man?

ELIZABETH: He told you this?

CROMWELL: Come daughter do not play games with me, are you with child by this man?

ELIZABETH: Father, can we not speak of this in private, and not amongst these good people?

CROMWELL: This is not a time for coyness, Elizabeth, they have heard Fitzgerald’s story, I feel they should hear yours. Leave us not in suspense. You are here with your father, who is honest remember, as you are.

ELIZABETH: As you wish, father. Yes, as I say I knew George Fitzgerald, a young man of great charm, his father was killed at Marston I believe, one of your infantry…

CROMWELL: One of my, but…?

ELIZABETH: Father?

CROMWELL: No matter, carry on.

ELIZABETH: We met outside The Treasury Office one evening, where I solicited alms for the poor. He offered to walk me home, and as we did so we talked, and he told me of the plight of his mother.

CROMWELL: You took him home, fed him?

ELIZABETH: Yes? Father, let me tell the story. As I say I took him home, mother fed him and prepared a basket of food for his mother. It was the least I, we, could do. After that we met most evenings, and during the summer you were in Ireland we often walked along the river to Battersea, and across the bridge to the fields, where…

CROMWELL: Where?

ELIZABETH: Where he’d read poetry to me.

CROMWELL: Poetry?

ELIZABETH: Yes. He wrote poetry, a little too Shakespearean for my liking, but heartfelt.

Your lips are like a budding rose:
Too perfect to be kissed,
Suggesting other lips that must be kissed…

(Harrison laughs…)

ELIZABETH: Juvenile really, but honest enough. He fell in love with me, father, there can be no doubt of that, and I too fell a little in love with him.

CROMWELL: Enough to marry?

ELIZABETH: Not then, but I did sing him the betrothal song.

CROMWELL: Where The Wild Thyme Grows?

ELIZABETH: Yes. Perhaps I should not have done. And we made love, father…

CROMWELL: I knew it! Did I not say so, Thomas…

ELIZABETH (Angrily): You said so? Here? You said so, here?

(Cromwell is wrong footed)

CROMWELL: I…

ELIZABETH (Angrily): You had no right to discuss me here, in front of strangers, good people they may be, but strangers the same. What did you say? (Elizabeth gets up and points at Cromwell) What did you say? Oh. I know. ‘Did you mount her, sir, for she needs mounting?’ Is that what you said, father?

CROMWELL: I…

(Harrison laughs. Elizabeth pulls one of her pistols, cocks it and points it at Harrison)

ELIZABETH: Cease your laughter, sir, or by God I shall put a pistol ball between your thighs!

HARRISON: Madam, I.

ELIZABETH: Father. Do not talk about me in such a manner in future. You have a side to your character that is less than in keeping with your public image. Oh, I know I take after you, but I always speak about you in the same fashion, whether in front of you, or behind your back, I say nothing that is not known by you.

CROMWELL: Daughter, I am belittled by you, and rightly so. I apologise.

(Elizabeth kisses her father)

ELIZABETH: We made love, father, he did not mount me, we made love, and for him it was the first time, it was very special, very gentle, and a part of my heart will be his forever, father.

CROMWELL: Where is he now?

ELIZABETH: He re-enlisted with your 10th Infantry…

CROMWELL: But he is a Royalist daughter, a member of the Kings Dragoons.

ELIZABETH: No, father, he fought with the parliamentarians as a 15 year old at Edge Hill, and beyond.

CROMWELL & HARRISON: What?

CROMWELL: But he told us…

(There is a knocking at the door. Harrison gets up and opens the door, and as he does so a hooded unconscious body falls into his arms.)

HARRISON: I fear it is the spy, sir, Fitzgerald.

CROMWELL: What?

(Harrison sits the Spy at the table)

ELIZABETH: A spy?

HARRISON: Aye, your Fitzgerald.

ELIZABETH: George? A spy? No?

(Elizabeth faints. Jeremiah and Cromwell go to her.)

HARRISON: What in God’s name goes on here?

(Elizabeth comes round)

ELIZABETH: I don’t understand, George was no spy, and a Royalist, never. His family were staunch parliamentarians, unflinching.

(There is shooting outside and the sound of horses. Harrison runs from the room)

CROMWELL: I don’t understand this.

(Cromwell goes to the Spay and removes the hood to reveal Bunyan. Harrison enters, is about to speak, but then sees Bunyan)

HARRISON: Good, God! Bunyan?

CROMWELL: So, daughter, your lover was a spy after all…

ELIZABETH: No father, it cannot be.

CROMWELL: But you have seen with your own eyes…

ELIZABETH: No. You have seen with your eyes. George died a month ago, I have it from a good friend that he was captured by the Royalist at Knutsford. His mutilated body was found a few days later.

[ Cromwell goes to his daughter and embraces her. Beckett goes to Bunyan and gives him a drink.]

CROMWELL: My dear Elizabeth.

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CROMWELL: Thomas, when I was a young boy, I remember the news of the Gunpowder Plot came as a great shock, as did the death of Prince Henry. I was saddened beyond my years, I thought the whole of the outside world was a bloody battlefield, that is until I went to Cambridge.

HARRISON: Described by your Milton as a place with an intellectual diet of “ sow thistles and brambles.”

CROMWELL: Aye, Milton would. But I found it a wonderful place. I was barely seventeen when I entered Sidney Sussex College, on the very day Shakespeare died, and we celebrated his death until the early hours. It was not unlike my first day in parliament. Old Richard Howlet was my tutor at Cambridge. Do you remember I introduced you to him in Ireland?

HARRISON: Aye I do, a very discreet and moderate old man I recall.

CROMWELL: Much loved in that benighted island. I loved the sport, such as it was in those days: cudgels, and football. But I could never get my dim fenland head around poetry and art.

HARRISON: You give yourself too little credit, you have a fine collection of portraits.

CROMWELL: Trinkets. But I did love mathematics and history. Raleigh’s History of the World I read until it fell to pieces in my hands. I still tell Richard he must read it, but to no avail. I barely lasted a year mind, not too fond of the rules and regulations, or of the beatings when you broke them. Anyway, father died in June 1617, so I left without a degree and went back to Huntingdon to wind-up his estate and manage his properties. I then took myself to London to learn the Law, but must admit found the Latin a trial. But a smattering of Law did enter my head, enough to see it as an ass! (Pause) Thomas, I’ve never told anyone else this, but I was in Palace Yard a year later when Walter Raleigh laid his sweet head on the block.

(CROMWELL becomes silent)

HARRISON: Oliver?

CROMWELL: He gave the executioner a gold coin, I saw it glint in the October sun as he laid his head on the block, and (Cromwell chops the side of his hand hard onto the table) he was no more, just a quivering body, and his head held high by the hooded executioner.

HARRISON: Do you remember how, after the King was executed, some in the crowd dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood?

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CROMWELL: A woman?

FITZGERALD: A woman I love…

CROMWELL: Love? Love!?

FITZGERALD: Aye, do you not know it, sir?

(Cromwell jumps up and hits Fitzgerald hard against the side of his face)

CROMWELL: Do not talk to me of love. I have known more love than you could know. Do you hear me, sir, more than you could know.

Pause

FITZGERALD: I hear you.

CROMWELL: Who is this woman? Do I know her?

Pause

FITZGERALD: Your daughter Elizabeth…

CROMWELL (Shouting): What!? What!? My Elizabeth? No sir, oh no sir, not my Elizabeth, I…

FITZGERALD: I came to tell you we are to be betrothed.

CROMWELL (Shouting): Betrothed?!

FITZGERALD: Aye.

CROMWELL: She is a child! Do you hear me? A child!

FITZGERALD: She is twenty-two, old enough.

CROMWELL: A child. My child.

(Cromwell is beside himself with anger and paces up and down, then sits and laughs)

CROMWELL: You jest, sir? I know you jest.

FITZGERALD: No.

(There is a heavy silence)

FITZGERALD: We met two years ago…

CROMWELL: Where?

FITZGERALD: I was a clerk in the Treasury Office, not a very good one mind, but I had to earn money, my poor mother was alone. My father had been killed, a good Royalist. I had to earn money. Then one day I met your daughter on my way from work, she was giving alms to the poor, thought it an appropriate place to do so, outside the Treasury.

CROMWELL: Aye, she would. Go on.

FITZGERALD: We spoke awhile, I told her of my mother’s plight…

CROMWELL: And Elizabeth took you home and fed you, and gave you victuals to take home to your mother?

FITZGERALD: She did…

CROMWELL: Does it all the time. Has cost me a pretty penny I can tell you. Go on.

FITZGERALD: She was outside the Treasury most evenings after that, we would walk cross the bridge at Battersea, and sit in the fields, she said it reminded her of Ely. She would sing…

CROMWELL: Where The Wild Thyme Grows?

FITZGERALD: Yes.

(Cromwell sings)

CROMWELL (Singing): There is a place where the Wild Thyme Grows,
Close beside the sweet water’s edge,
A place that only I, and my true love knows,
That place where the Wild Thyme Grows.

(Beckett joins in on the next line..)

Where the Wild Thyme Grows.

BECKETT (Singing alone): A place for a courting and a betrothing pledge;
A loving corner where her virgin body did a glow;
As mine did cleave unto her own wild thyme,
In that place by the sweet waters edge.

CROMWELL & BECKETT (Singing together):
Yes, there is a place where the wild thyme grows,
Close beside the cool, sweet waters edge;
A place where we did make love awhile,
A top our grassy bed.
There, where the wild thyme grows,
Where the wild thyme grows.

(Cromwell embraces Beckett at the end of the song)

CROMWELL: Thank you, Jeremiah.

BECKETT: My old grandmother taught me that song when I were but a mistlethrush to a crow. I taught the young Miss Elizabeth if you remember, sir?

CROMWELL: I do Jeremiah, I do. Bring more drink for our guests Jeremiah.

BECKETT: Sir.

CROMWELL: Elizabeth must have taken a shine to you to sing that song. Go on with your story, boy.

FITZGERALD: We spent most of that summer…

CROMWELL: When I was in Ireland?

FITZGERALD: Yes

CROMWELL: Did you mount her, sir, there in the grass of Battersea fields?

HARRISON: Oliver, enough!

CROMWELL: Hmm? He did, I know he did.

FITZGERALD: I did not, sir, not…

CROMWELL: Well, sir, perhaps you should have? Mounted her there and then in the buttercups and the daisies, as no doubt she wanted, for I tell you, sir, mounting she needs, and well, before…

FITZGERALD: She is pregnant, sir, barely three months.

Pause

CROMWELL: What!?

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