Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) (18 page)

‘So you will publish my story?’ Tom said, raising the cup to his lips and sipping the beer.

‘It would be an honour, Tom Rivers,’ Birkenhead said, eyes narrowed as though he feared their lustre would belie the grave expression he had affected. ‘It cannot have been an easy matter to decide to bare your soul and seek to make recompense for your foolhardiness.’ He pointed a finger that was ink-black to the knuckle. ‘But your story will persuade other young
miscreants that it is not too late to abandon Parliament’s hopeless cause and come over to the King. Perhaps we might persuade your brother to contribute to the piece.’

‘It’s possible,’ Tom said, then nodded resolutely. ‘Then I shall call on you again next month when I return to Oxford.’

‘You’re leaving?’ Birkenhead’s eyes were wide enough now.

‘I’m afraid I must,’ Tom said. ‘I’m to ride north with the Earl of Northampton and earn
my
spurs by helping to turf the rebels out of Lichfield. I will prove my mettle.’

‘But my dear boy, our story will not wait a month,’ Birkenhead announced, pushing his cup to one side as though the time for such pleasures was past. ‘We must strike now, while the block is inked. You must come with me to my workshop and together we will put the flesh on the bones of your remarkable story.’ He stood, his small frame rigid with purpose, those editor’s fingers thirsting for ink.

Tom frowned. ‘At this hour?’

‘At no other, Tom,’ Birkenhead said, head dipped, one neat eyebrow arched. ‘What say you? Do you have a story to tell, lad? Shall
Mercurius Aulicus
help reclothe you in the honour a Rivers deserves?’

‘I am in your debt, sir.’ The grin stretching Tom’s lips was as real as the cup in his hand. He downed the last of the ale in one great wash. ‘And at your service,’ he said.

Tom did not turn round. He did not need to. He knew that Penn was following them, could sense eyes on his back as they walked through the shadow-played city, north up Mousecatchers’ Lane and then east at the junction onto New College Lane. The plan had gone better than Tom could have hoped and he had not had the opportunity to step out and tell Penn that he had made contact with John Birkenhead, but it had not mattered and Penn was tracking them.

‘What about the night watch?’ Tom asked, avoiding a great puddle which would by the looks have reached halfway up
his boots had he not at the last seen its surface glistening in the moonlight. There were other folk about, some merry with drink, but most were observing the curfew.

‘The men of the watch know me, Tom,’ Birkenhead said, ‘besides which, since His Majesty and the army moved in, the curfew has been more … relaxed. Take this parish,’ he said, throwing an arm out towards the timber-framed houses, the halls and colleges whose windows glowed dully against the newly fallen night, ‘these days it’s full to the rafters with noblemen, knights and gentlemen. Such as they do not take kindly to being told by the watch when they must be abed. Especially in time of war. They want their ale, their women and their games.’

‘And they don’t mind the stink?’ Tom said.

‘The smell is from the ditch outside New College and is, I’m sorry to say, noisome to the whole town,’ Birkenhead said. ‘But there are some five thousand souls now quartered in the city and all those … expulsions have to go somewhere.’ He smiled. ‘I assure you that you’ll hardly notice it by tomorrow.’

They followed New College Lane a little way south, but before it snaked eastwards, becoming Queen’s Lane, Birkenhead led Tom through a pitch-black passage and across a patch of grass and mud to a low, stone-built building behind which loomed the great bulk of All Souls chapel, whose sharp spires rose like silent sentinels keeping watch over the college.

‘I dare say you expected something rather more grand for the home of
Mercurius Aulicus
, scourge of the rebels and organ of our cause,’ Birkenhead said, turning the key in a stout iron-studded door and then pausing to look at Tom, one brow hitched. ‘But we’ve got corn piled in the law and logic schools, wood, grain and hay cramming the colleges, and even the town hall is bursting with provisions in the unlikely event that we are besieged. And so we must make do with what we have. Not what you’re used to, I’m afraid,’ the editor said, pushing open the door.

‘I have grown used to many things that I had not thought to,’ Tom replied, and no longer able to resist the urge he turned and took one look back along the street but saw no one.

‘As have we all, Thomas,’ Birkenhead said thoughtfully, then swept a short arm into the room, inviting his guest to make himself comfortable. Then he locked the door behind them. ‘A strange thought, is it not, that our king lodges at Christ Church not half a mile from where we stand now?’ Birkenhead said, using what little light there was by the window to see as he struck flint and steel, showering sparks onto a swatch of charcloth in a clay dish.

‘I’ll wager the King says the very same about John Birkenhead,’ Tom said with a grin, and the editor gave a short bark of a laugh just as the charcloth caught in a little burst of yellow flame. In no time his candle was burning and he took it up and neatly went from lamp to lamp until the workshop was illuminated and Tom could gain an appreciation of it.

‘I have never seen one before,’ Tom said, genuinely impressed by the great wooden machine that stood in the middle of the workshop. Seven feet long, three feet wide and seven feet tall, with its great screw and windlass, its frame in which the text-blocks were placed and inked and another two frames which were even now covered with paper ready to be folded down onto the inked type.

‘My fellow editor calls it a glorified wine-press,’ Birkenhead said, standing and staring at the contraption as though it still awed him. ‘And yet even Mr Heylin, who appreciates a fine drop as much as the next fellow, will assert that the nectar of our endeavour is more intoxicating to man than any French wine.’

Tom’s muscles had begun to tremble the way they did before a fight, and the thought that the King of England himself and all his loyal knights were only a few hundred strides away did nothing to calm him. He ran a hand along the smooth flat bed, recalling what Captain Crafte had said about the printing press
being a weapon more powerful than any cannon, an opinion which Birkenhead clearly shared.

‘For we deliver what folk across the land crave. News of the King and the cause and of the base villainy of the rebels,’ the editor said, as Tom took hold of the hand-smoothed lever that had been hauled across countless times to lower the screw and transmit the pressure through the platen. ‘I will gladly give you a demonstration afterwards,’ Birkenhead said, beckoning Tom across to the desk behind which he was pulling up his chair to sit, ‘but first, Tom Rivers, we must write our story.’ He took up his quill and dipped it into the ink pot. Then he froze and looked across the room, his eyes fixing on Tom’s. ‘But it was appropriate to celebrate and be glad, for this, your brother, was dead, and is alive again. He was lost, and is found,’ he said, then grinned. ‘I must admit the Gospel of Luke is my favourite.’

And Tom drew his sword.

‘If you’re a God-fearing man now would be the time to make amends,’ Tom said, striding towards the editor, candlelight glinting off his rapier’s blade.

‘My God!’ Birkenhead exclaimed wide-eyed.

‘That’s a start,’ Tom said.

‘What is this? You mean to kill me?’

‘I mean to do more than that,’ Tom replied. ‘I’m going to blow up your press, Mr Birkenhead.’ He held the rapier’s point an arm’s length from the man’s neck. ‘Unless, of course, you can prove here and now that your precious words are a match for cold steel.’

‘You’re still a rebel,’ the editor said, dropping the quill and slumping back in his chair as though resigned to his fate. ‘You have played me like a prize carp, Rivers. I am humiliated.’

‘That’s the least of your worries.’ There was a knock at the door. ‘Open it,’ Tom said and Birkenhead walked over with his key and unlocked the door with a trembling hand, stepping back as though afraid of what might be on the other side. And he looked no less perturbed when Dobson walked in
brandishing a club, his face all bristle and scowl as he glared about the room like a bear looking for hounds to rip apart.

‘It’s just us,’ Tom said and Dobson nodded, glancing at Birkenhead with an expression that was half disappointment, half indifference, then turning to step back out into the night to help the others, who were unloading barrels from a handcart.

‘So you’re the quill-driving bastard who mocks us,’ Weasel gnarred at the editor whilst rolling a barrel across the tiled floor, ‘and this is the machine that vomits your lie-ridden papers,’ he said, placing the barrel beneath the printing press’s flat bed.

‘In thy foul throat thou liest,’ Penn said, rolling his own barrel and setting it against Weasel’s. Then he snatched up a page of
Mercurius Aulicus
that had been set aside because the ink had smudged. ‘An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told,’ he said, ripping the paper into pieces and tossing them aside.

Birkenhead raised his neat-bearded chin defiantly. ‘Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end,’ he said, his riposte also plucked from Shakespeare’s
Richard the Third
, or so Tom suspected. ‘And you call me a liar, yet you, sir, and your fellows are all other than what you purport to be.’

A fair point, Tom thought, given his own performance, and his companions’ being begrimed with stone dust when none had ever shaped a stone.

‘Slit his throat and shut him up, Tom,’ Dobson growled, bringing another barrel in.

‘Where’s Will?’ Tom said.

‘He’s keeping an eye out,’ Dobson replied, nodding towards the door as he put his barrel in the room’s far corner, which meant it must be one of those that contained ale not black powder. To Tom’s eye they all looked the same but he trusted the others knew which were which.

‘The night watch came sniffing,’ Weasel said as though he had read Tom’s mind. ‘Suspected we were up to no good
moving ale around in the dark. But when we gave them a barrel, thanking them for keeping the streets safe for honest folk, their questions seemed to run dry.’ He grinned, revealing small pointy teeth. ‘A curious thing.’

Tom nodded, not dwelling on how close they had clearly all come to being discovered. ‘Get over there with your contraption,’ he said to Birkenhead. ‘We need rope.’

‘Got some,’ Dobson said, heading for the door. ‘Used it to lash the barrels down.’

A moment later Trencher came in with a length of rope, having left Dobson on watch outside in the dark. ‘I wanted to see this here printing press before it goes up in smoke.’

‘You won’t see drier timber,’ Weasel said, pouring black powder from a flask in a trail across the floor. ‘We didn’t need all this damned powder nor the risk of getting caught with it. That press’ll burn like a witch dipped in wax.’

‘We could not risk someone seeing the fire and putting it out,’ Tom explained, taking the rope from Trencher.

‘Aye,’ Trencher said, staring at the printing press with an expression of reluctant admiration, ‘and I’d wager a nice explosion is Captain Crafte’s way of answering their arsewipe newsbook. Get on with it, lad,’ he growled to Weasel who had evidently pilfered a chisel from Guillaume Scarron’s tool cart for he was using the thing to punch a hole in a barrel which lay on its side and had been wedged to stop it from rolling away. ‘If we get caught they’ll string us up, pull out our guts and send pieces of us to each corner of the land.’

‘Don’t do this thing. This is a base act, Tom Rivers,’ Birken-head said, jerking, straining against the rope tying him to his press as Tom tested his knots. ‘This is unworthy of your blood,’ the editor dared, eyes wide with terror now, saliva churned white at the corners of his mouth, his whole body trembling.

‘What do you know of blood? Hiding here with your books and your ink. Weaving lies whilst other men die in the fields. Whilst they who were hale and strong are butchered like beasts
and sob for their mothers.’ Satisfied with his knots Tom put himself face to face with the editor and glared into his tear-filled eyes. ‘We are at war, Mr Birkenhead. Real war, not some squabble of words and pathetic lies. And you have lost this fight.’

‘Your father would be ashamed,’ the editor spat, dredging up some courage or hate in the face of death. ‘He would turn in his grave.’

‘My father has no grave,’ Tom said, and with his knife he cut Birkenhead’s falling band from the neck of his doublet, cut it down and rolled it, stuffing it into the editor’s mouth and tying the ends behind his head.

‘We’re done,’ Weasel said, standing to admire his work. The powder trail would have stretched forty feet if it had been poured in a straight line. But it was not straight. It followed a saw-blade pattern which would slow the flame and give them enough time to get clear of the workshop before the three barrels exploded and the printing press with them.

‘We’ve a better chance of slipping out of the city alone than as a group,’ Tom said as the others gathered round. ‘The Scot will be waiting for us to the north-east by the river. There’s a footbridge. If any of us do not make it the rest must go on. The Scot won’t wait for sunrise, he’ll be gone and any of us left on foot in the valley will soon be rounded up by King’s men. So we go no matter what.’

‘I love you all like brothers,’ Weasel said, ‘but that’s not nearly as much as I love not swinging on the end of a rope. When The Scot rides east Weasel will be squinting at the sun.’

‘Good luck, lads,’ Trencher said, gripping each man’s arm in turn and finishing with Tom’s. ‘May the good Lord see us safe out of Oxford while the King’s curs are pissing on this fire.’

‘Off you go,’ Tom said, then walked over to Birkenhead’s desk and took up a candle lamp. ‘You too, Will. I’ll see you at the bridge.’

‘If you have no objections, Tom, I’d be the one to light the
fuse that makes charred splinters of that thing,’ Trencher said, gesturing at the printing press. ‘That’d be something to tell my children’s children when I’m old and they’re readying to put me in my eternity box.’