Part 5 — A Woman
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!?
