Chapter 1

The Midnight Raid

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The crashing yanked Richard Winslow out of a sound sleep. Or was he still dreaming? Was he in a castle with the enemy at the gate? No. As his wits came to him, he realized that he was in his own bedroom, and the banging and yelling came from the front door of his house just below his bedroom.

Bang! Bang! Bang! "Open up in the name of the king!"

A flickering yellow light came through Richard’s window and danced on the ceiling of his room. Then he heard his father calling out for the butler. "Walter! Walter—what’s happening? Who’s at the door? Someone light a candle."

Richard jumped out of bed as he heard his father run past his door and scramble down the stairs. Richard followed partway down the stairs in time to see his father open the heavy front door of their London house.

In barged two of the king’s men with swords drawn.

As Richard hesitated on the landing of the stairway, he could see other soldiers outside. One had a torch in his hand, and its light cast a flickering glow into the dim hallway.

"I am the captain of the king’s guard," barked the older of the two soldiers inside the house. "Is this the home of Obadiah Winslow? Are you Winslow?" He took a threatening step toward Richard’s father.

"It is, and I am," said Mr. Winslow as he pushed his nightcap back on his head and stood up straighter. But it was hard to appear as a dignified gentleman in a wrinkled nightshirt and bare feet.

"Who else lives in this house?" demanded the captain as he ducked down to peer up the dark stairway toward where Richard crouched on the landing. Richard crept back from the edge and tried to make himself invisible.

Obadiah Winslow also glanced up the stairs, then stammered, "J-just my family—my wife and children."

"Is that all?" The soldier looked toward the back of the hall. "What about back there?"

"Well, there’s the maid . . . and the butler," Mr. Winslow said as the side door swung open and the old butler tottered into the hall holding a candle high with one hand. The old man’s mouth hung open, and in the dim glow of the candlelight he appeared dazed.

"Who are these people?" he muttered. "I am the butler here, and I have not given you permission to enter this—"

"Silence, old man!" shouted the captain. "This is none of your business." He turned back to Richard’s father. "Obadiah Winslow, I arrest you in the name of the crown for high treason. You will come with us."

"Treason! B-but this cannot be," stammered Obadiah. "I have done nothing wrong. Who is making these outrageous charges? What led to them?"

"I cannot say," said the captain. He tilted his head back and looked down his nose at his prisoner. "I am neither judge nor prosecutor. However, I do recall that you had a rather long and close association with that traitor, Oliver Cromwell. You were his assistant secretary, weren’t you?" The captain smiled slyly.

Shock spread across Obadiah’s face. "W-why, yes. But, but—he died in 1658, over two years ago, before young King Charles returned to England. Besides," said Richard’s father, trying to regain some control over the situation, "I thought that the king granted amnesty to anyone associated with Cromwell. He promised it in his Declaration of Breda. Everyone knows that."

"What the king promised or didn’t promise is none of my business," said the soldier. "The king is the king, after all." The captain slid his sword back into its scabbard and looked Richard’s father up and down. "You’re a sorry sight to be going to the Tower," he snarled. "Go put on some clothes, but make it quick. We don’t have all night."

Obadiah sucked in his breath. "The Tower? Why the Tower?" But seeing that he could not evade the king’s soldiers, Obadiah Winslow took a candlestick off the mantel, lit it off the butler’s candle, and trudged up the stairs. When he got to the landing on which Richard crouched, he put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, "Come along, son."

The bewildered butler was left downstairs facing the soldiers—as though such a feeble old man could stop them from invading the Winslow house any farther.

Upstairs, behind closed doors, Richard’s mother, Eunice, and his three younger sisters pelted Obadiah with anxious questions. On the far side of the room, Molly, the maid, stood holding her skirt up to her mouth as she cried bitterly.

"Just calm down," Mr. Winslow said firmly. "I don’t know what’s happening. It’s some mix-up about Cromwell. But before the king was even allowed back into England, he promised freedom to all his enemies—though I have never considered myself an enemy of the crown. I’m sure I’ll be released in the morning as soon as we get this mess sorted out. Don’t worry about me. Just calm down and put yourselves back to bed."

Sensing the fear in their mother, the girls began to cry as they clung to their mother’s nightdress. The whole thing seemed like a nightmare—the banging on the door, soldiers arresting their father.

Richard found that he was shivering uncontrollably even though he didn’t feel cold, but he gritted his teeth and refused to cry. He was tall for twelve, with a shock of dark, wavy hair that would have gone to curls had he let it grow long. His face was square with a strong jaw for his age. He watched nervously as his father pulled on his trousers and buckled his shoes.

"Keep a stiff upper lip," his father said as he patted him on the shoulder. Richard knew that meant he wasn’t to cry; it would only upset his sisters even more.

Once his father had been taken away by the soldiers, Richard’s three weeping sisters crawled into bed with their mother, but Richard was much too old for that. He went back to his own room.

The June night was warm, but his bed felt cold, and he continued to shiver. It all seemed so unreal. Maybe none of it had happened; it was nothing more than a bad dream. But no . . . dreams wandered from one scene to another, and even in the most vivid dreams there were always things that didn’t fit—like the stairs turning into a waterfall.

But the midnight raid had been one continuous sequence, and the only thing that didn’t make sense was why. Why had soldiers come for his father? It made no sense.

It was true that his father had worked closely with Oliver Cromwell as he led his armies against old King Charles. And after the king had been defeated and executed, Obadiah Winslow had assisted Cromwell when he ruled England for five years as the "Lord Protector." But all that was in the past. Cromwell had died, and now Charles II, as he was being called, had been brought back from Europe to sit on the throne.

All the old quarrels were supposedly put to rest, everyone pardoned for earlier allegiances. It had all been politics, and politics made enemies, but who could tell right from wrong?

So why had his father been arrested?

Richard thought about the Tower with a shudder. The Tower of London was about two and a half miles down the Thames River, across London from where he lived. He had been by it several times. There were two high stone walls—one inside the other—that surrounded a tall, square "keep" with turrets on each of the four corners. This structure was "the Tower." Earlier, it had been used as a castle by the king or queen—something no enemy could invade. However, when someone realized that invaders could not enter and prisoners could not escape, it became a prison. But it was not a prison for common thieves and mischief makers. This prison housed only major criminals and enemies of the king. Very few prisoners who went through its gates came out alive.

Richard moaned and pulled the covers over his head.

At some point he must have fallen asleep, because the events of the midnight raid merged into a dream . . . or nightmare, as it became. The king’s soldiers were after him, but the faster he tried to run, the more difficult it was to move his feet. The street seemed to turn into a muddy field, and with every step his boots gathered more mud until his feet were so heavy that he could hardly pick them up. He became exhausted, and the soldiers were just about to grab him when he finally woke up.

G G G G

It was morning. Birds were chirping and the fishmonger was coming down the street calling out, "Eels, two a penny! Fresh eels! Get ’em now or let ’em go! Salted herring. You need it? I got it!"

Richard got out of bed and pulled a blanket with him, wrapping it around his shoulders as he shuffled to the small window overlooking the street below. As his blue eyes gazed down, the night’s horrors came back to him: His father had been arrested and taken to the Tower!

Quickly, he threw on his clothes and ran downstairs. "Has my father come home?" he blurted to Walter as he burst into the kitchen.

"No, Master Richard," Walter said as he set down the coal bucket by the open fireplace. "We haven’t seen a whisker of him."

"I’m going out to see what I can learn," announced Richard.

"Oh no. You mustn’t. After last night, it’s not safe," clucked Molly, pulling a large loaf of fresh bread out of the oven.

The Winslow family did not have a large household staff—only Walter, who was called the butler, but he did many other chores as well, and Molly, who also served as a cook and nurse for the children when necessary. In spite of Obadiah Winslow’s close association with the former head of the English government, the family was not wealthy. So they made do with what they had.

Richard looked at Molly as she set the fresh bread on the table. "Can I have some bread and butter?" he asked.

"Certainly, but I don’t think your mother would want you running around in the streets."

Richard cut a thick slice of the hot bread and spread butter on it. The butter melted immediately and smelled delicious. He didn’t want to argue with Molly. She’d just call his mother, and then he would have to stay home. So he took such an enormous bite that no one could have understood him when he mumbled, "I won’t be gone long," and rushed out the back door.

He ran down the alley, then ducked between two buildings and came out onto the street. The day was already warm. Not far away, the leaves on the trees around Westminster Abbey, the great church, still had the yellowish green of new growth. But Richard had no sooner started to enjoy the beauty of the day when his thoughts slammed against the memory of his father’s arrest.

Westminster Abbey . . . Oliver Cromwell was buried there, inside the stone cathedral. The boy clenched his fists angrily. His father was not a traitor for having worked for Cromwell! Richard wished the old man were still around to explain to the king or the judge or the soldiers that his father was a good man.

As Richard approached Westminster Hall, he became aware of a crowd, restless and murmuring. The faint smell of something musty and old wafted on the morning breeze. He stopped in shock.

Hanging from a tall pole was a dark and twisted shape wrapped in what seemed to be old clothes. It looked like a skeletal corpse had been hung from a gallows. Richard pushed his way through the crowd until he could read a sign mounted on top of the pole: "Here hangs the remains of Oliver Cromwell, guilty of treason. Let all traitors beware! This will happen to you!"

Horrified, Richard backed out of the crowd and tripped over a stone and fell. But the jolt of hitting the ground was not nearly as great as what he had seen. Scrambling to his feet in panic, he ran for home.