Anna Keay reviews Charles Spencer's book about the hunt for King Charles II

Charles Spencer's latest book, To Catch a King, tells us the story of the hunt for King Charles II in the six weeks after his resounding defeat at the Battle of Worcester in September 1651. And what a story it is. After his father was executed by the Parliamentarians in 1649, the young Charles II sacrificed one of the very principles his father had died for and did a deal with the Scots, thereby accepting Presbyterianism* as the national religion in return for being crowned King of Scots. His arrival in Edinburgh prompted the English Parliamentary army to invade Scotland in a pre-emptive strike. This was followed by a Scottish invasion of England. The two sides finally faced one another at Worcester in the west of England in 1651. After being comprehensively defeated on the meadows outside the city by the Parliamentarian army, the 21-year-old king found himself the subject of a national manhunt, with a huge sum offered for his capture. Over the following six weeks he managed, through a series of heart-poundingly close escapes, to evade the Parliamentarians before seeking refuge in France. For the next nine years, the penniless and defeated Charles wandered around Europe with only a small group of loyal supporters.

查尔斯-斯宾塞（Charles Spencer）的新书《追捕国王》（To Catch a King）向我们讲述了国王查理二世在 1651 年 9 月伍斯特战役中大败后六周内的追捕故事。这是一个怎样的故事？1649 年，他的父亲被议会党人处死，年轻的查理二世牺牲了他父亲为之牺牲的原则之一，与苏格兰人达成协议，接受长老会*为国教，以换取加冕苏格兰国王。他抵达爱丁堡后，英国议会军队先发制人，入侵苏格兰。随后，苏格兰入侵英格兰。1651 年，双方最终在英格兰西部的伍斯特对峙。在城外的草地上被议会军全面击败后，21 岁的国王发现自己成了全国通缉的对象，并悬赏巨款捉拿他。在随后的六个星期里，他通过一系列令人心惊肉跳的惊险逃亡，成功躲过了议会军的追捕，随后前往法国避难。在接下来的九年里，身无分文、战败的查理在欧洲四处流浪，只有一小群忠实的支持者。

Years later, after his restoration as king, the 50-year-old Charles II requested a meeting with the writer and diarist Samuel Pepys. His intention when asking Pepys to commit his story to paper was to ensure that this most extraordinary episode was never forgotten. Over two three-hour sittings, the king related to him in great detail his personal recollections of the six weeks he had spent as a fugitive. As the king and secretary settled down (a scene that is surely a gift for a future scriptwriter), Charles commenced his story: 'After the battle was so absolutely lost as to be beyond hope of recovery, I began to think of the best way of saving myself.'

多年后，50 岁的查理二世复辟称王，要求与作家兼日记作者塞缪尔-佩皮斯会面。他请求佩皮斯将自己的故事记录下来，目的是确保这段最不寻常的经历永远不会被遗忘。在两次长达三小时的会谈中，国王向他详细讲述了自己作为逃亡者所度过的六个星期的个人回忆。当国王和秘书落座后（这一场景肯定是未来编剧的天赋），查尔斯开始了他的故事："在战斗彻底失败以至于无望挽回之后，我开始思考拯救自己的最佳方法。

One of the joys of Spencer's book, a result not least of its use of Charles II's own narrative as well as those of his supporters, is just how close the reader gets to the action. The day-byday retelling of the fugitives' doings provides delicious details: the cutting of the king's long hair with agricultural shears, the use of walnut leaves to dye his pale skin, and the day Charles spent lying on a branch of the great oak tree in Boscobel Wood as the Parliamentary soldiers scoured the forest floor below. Spencer draws out both the humour – such as the preposterous refusal of Charles's friend Henry Wilmot to adopt disguise on the grounds that it was beneath his dignity – and the emotional tension when the secret of the king's presence was cautiously revealed to his supporters. 

斯宾塞在书中使用了查理二世本人以及他的支持者的叙述，这也是本书的乐趣之一，因为读者可以如此近距离地接触到当时的情况。书中逐日复述的逃亡者的所作所为为读者提供了可口的细节：用农用剪子剪掉国王的长发，用胡桃树叶给他苍白的皮肤染色，以及查理躺在博斯科贝尔森林大橡树的树枝上，看着议会士兵在下面的林地里扫荡的那一天。斯宾塞既展现了幽默--比如查尔斯的朋友亨利-威尔莫特以有失尊严为由拒绝乔装--也展现了当国王的秘密被小心翼翼地透露给他的支持者时的紧张情绪。

Charles's adventures after losing the Battle of Worcester hide the uncomfortable truth that whilst almost everyone in England had been appalled by the execution of his father, they had not welcomed the arrival of his son with the Scots army, but had instead firmly bolted their doors. This was partly because he rode at the head of what looked like a foreign invasion force and partly because, after almost a decade of civil war, people were desperate to avoid it beginning again. This makes it all the more interesting that Charles II himself loved the story so much ever after. As well as retelling it to anyone who would listen, causing eyerolling among courtiers, he set in train a series of initiatives to memorialise it. There was to be a new order of chivalry, the Knights of the Royal Oak. A series of enormous oil paintings depicting the episode were produced, including a two-metre-wide canvas of Boscobel Wood and a set of six similarly enormous paintings of the king on the run. In 1660, Charles II commissioned the artist John Michael Wright to paint a flying squadron of cherubs* carrying an oak tree to the heavens on the ceiling of his bedchamber. It is hard to imagine many other kings marking the lowest point in their life so enthusiastically, or indeed pulling off such an escape in the first place. 

查尔斯在伍斯特战役失利后的冒险经历掩盖了一个令人不安的事实：尽管英格兰几乎所有人都对其父被处死感到震惊，但他们并不欢迎其子率领苏格兰军队的到来，而是坚决地关上了家门。这一方面是因为他率领的看起来像是一支外国侵略军，另一方面是因为经过近十年的内战，人们迫切希望避免内战再次爆发。因此，查理二世本人后来如此喜爱这个故事就更加有趣了。他不仅向所有愿意听故事的人复述了这个故事，引起了朝臣们的反感，还采取了一系列措施来纪念这个故事。他成立了一个新的骑士团--皇家橡树骑士团。一系列描绘这一事件的巨幅油画问世，其中包括一幅两米宽的博斯科贝尔森林油画和一套六幅同样巨大的国王逃亡油画。1660 年，查尔斯二世委托画家约翰-迈克尔-赖特在他寝宫的天花板上画了一队飞翔的小天使*，载着一棵橡树飞向天堂。很难想象还有哪位国王会如此热情地纪念自己生命中的最低点，或者一开始就能完成这样的逃亡。

Charles Spencer is the perfect person to pass the story on to a new generation. His pacey, readable prose steers deftly clear of modern idioms and elegantly brings to life the details of the great tale. He has even-handed sympathy for both the fugitive king and the fierce republican regime that hunted him, and he succeeds in his desire to explore far more of the background of the story than previous books on the subject have done. Indeed, the opening third of the book is about how Charles II found himself at Worcester in the first place, which for some will be reason alone to read To Catch a King. 

查尔斯-斯宾塞是将这个故事传承给新一代的最佳人选。他的散文节奏明快、可读性强，巧妙地避开了现代习语，优雅地将这个伟大故事的细节娓娓道来。他对逃亡的国王和追捕他的凶残的共和党政权都抱有不偏不倚的同情，他成功地探索了故事的背景，远远超过了以往关于这一主题的书籍。事实上，该书开头三分之一的篇幅都在讲述查理二世是如何在伍斯特发现自己的，这对某些人来说仅仅是阅读《捉拿国王》的理由。

The tantalising question left, in the end, is that of what it all meant. Would Charles II have been a different king had these six weeks never happened? The days and nights spent in hiding must have affected him in some way. Did the need to assume disguises, to survive on wit and charm alone, to use trickery and subterfuge to escape from tight corners help form him? This is the one area where the book doesn't quite hit the mark. Instead its depiction of Charles II in his final years as an ineffective, pleasure-loving monarch doesn't do justice to the man (neither is it accurate), or to the complexity of his character. But this one niggle aside, To Catch a King is an excellent read, and those who come to it knowing little of the famous tale will find they have a treat in store. 

最后，剩下的诱人问题是这一切意味着什么。如果这六个星期从未发生过，查理二世会成为一个不同的国王吗？日日夜夜的躲藏肯定会对他产生某种影响。需要乔装打扮、仅靠机智和魅力生存、使用诡计和潜规则从狭小的角落里逃脱，这些是否有助于塑造他？这也是本书没有完全击中要害的地方。相反，书中把查理二世晚年描绘成一个碌碌无为、贪图享乐的君主，这对他本人（也不准确）和他复杂的性格都不公平。不过，撇开这一点瑕疵不谈，《捉拿国王》是一本出色的读物，那些对这个著名故事知之甚少的读者会发现他们将大饱眼福。

* cherub: an image of angelic children used in paintings

* 小天使：绘画中天使般的儿童形象