Excerpt from Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Instead, he merely said, 'I shall speak of him some other time.'

Gookin said quickly, to change the subject, 'Perhaps you will favour us with a lecture in our meeting house here, Will? We should be glad of your instruction.'

'Is that wise?' asked Mary. 'For them to show themselves so openly?'

'A fair point,' agreed Will. He glanced at Ned for guidance. 'And I am out of the habit of public speaking.'

'We came to Cambridge to be with men and women of like mind,' said Ned. 'If they invite us to join them in studying the Scriptures, we should do so, else why are we here? After all, Mrs Gookin, although your attic is a splendid place, we cannot spend the rest of our lives locked up like prisoners in a single room.'

Mary opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it.

After they had finished their meal, the officers wished their hosts goodnight and retired to their attic.

Ned stood smoking his pipe, looking down at the river, bluish grey in the fading light, the dark piers of the unfinished bridge piercing the surface like the spars of a shipwreck at low tide. He opened the window. A slight breath of air rippled the drifting layers of smoke. Often in the past, at just this time of an evening, he would walk from his house next door to Whitehall Palace to share a pipe with the Protector, who loved tobacco almost as much as he did music – sometimes, if he heard someone playing, or better still singing, he would roam his official residence until he found the source, and stand there listening with tears in his eyes.

If you want to know what he was like, there is something for you; something that you might not have expected.

Will sat nearby at the table, bent over the small pocket notebook in which he kept his journal. He wrote in shorthand, both for privacy and to save paper: he had managed to bring only a few volumes with him and had no idea when he would be able to acquire more.

27 July 1660. We came to anchor between Boston, and Charlestown; between 8. & 9. in the morning: All in good health through the good hand of God upon us: oh! That men would praise the Lord for his goodness, as psalm 107.21, &c.

He was too exhausted to write more. He blew on the ink to dry it, then knelt by the bed to pray for Frances and their five children. The eldest was only six, the youngest a baby born while he was on the run, whom he had never even seen. 'Dick, Betty, Frankie, Nan and Judith – protect and preserve them, Lord, from evil, and deliver them into thy holy grace.' Ned was right: it was foolish to dwell on them too often. He must have faith that they would meet again. Their separation could only be God's plan. But the sight of the Gookins' children had brought his own to the forefront of his mind. And yet he found that their images were becoming hazier with each passing day. The little ones must be walking now, and talking. They could not be as he remembered them. He saw them as if through fog.

A tapping sound recalled him to the present. Ned was knocking the bowl of his pipe against the windowsill. Will's mind had seized with tiredness. It was all he could do to drag himself up onto the bed. The strangeness of lying on a mattress rather than in a hammock – the solidity of it, the absence of the motion of the sea, the lack of shouts or footsteps on the deck above; the silence. He was barely conscious of the mattress creaking as Ned stretched out beside him, and in an instant, he was fast asleep.

Excerpted from Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris. Copyright © 2022 by Robert Harris. Excerpted by permission of Harper. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.