Marston Moor (19 page)

They fanned out in the area immediately to the east of their quarry, where the road from Prescot dipped towards the Mersey estuary. The scouts set off to investigate the terrain, while quartermasters and their teams began the arduous task of finding billets for the men. In reality it was only the most senior officers who would find warm quarters, for the villages in the region were small and sparse, and it was clear that there would not be enough houses to sustain this new population. Those fortunate enough to have canvas began pitching their tents. Those without were forced into patches of forest to construct rudimentary shelters out of branch and bracken. For a while the deep rumble of ordnance bellowed at them from Liverpool’s walls, but they were out of range and the guns soon fell silent.

It was around one o’clock when Stryker’s party reached the sprawling encampment. Hood went ahead, returning a short while later having found a modest clearing in the centre of a birch and beech copse. Mercifully, the rain had stopped, and it did not take long to stake the flax canvas sheets over freshly cut poles and bring the cart into the green shelter of a soaring beech tree.

Faith Helly emerged from her hiding place just as Stryker was shaking the rain from his hat. She went to the edge of the tree line and he followed. They could just discern the town’s outline from here, and he saw she was staring wistfully at it.

‘It will fall,’ he said.

She did not look up. ‘Pray God it does not.’

‘It will.’

‘Like all the others.’

He nodded. She was vehemently opposed to the king’s cause, and nothing he could say would change that. Indeed, he found that he respected her all the more for it. ‘The Prince will call on the garrison to surrender.’

‘Then I pray they do, for I would not see them share Bolton’s fate.’

Stryker wiped a gloved hand over his chin, pushing away the rain that had gathered on his short beard, and replaced his damp hat. ‘I will ask Skellen to light a fire.’

She turned, touching fingers to his elbow. ‘The men talk of battle.’

‘We will storm the town, aye, if its governor is foolish enough to resist.’

She shook her head. ‘Battle, Major Stryker. Real battle. They say you will soon fight the Scots.’

‘And more besides.’

‘Will you win?’

This was a question Stryker had suppressed thinking about in the days since he had learnt that the army of the Eastern Association had joined the siege at York. No one knew if they would eventually march to the Marquis of Newcastle’s aid, but all suspected it. Now he imagined those combined forces. Twenty thousand? Thirty? Perhaps more. He looked her directly in the eye. ‘Of course.’

She saw through the lie. ‘What will I do, if—?’

‘You survived Bolton, Mistress Helly. You will survive my demise.’

‘Do you not fear death on those cursed fields, sir?’

‘Idle armies breed nought but disease. I would rather face steel and shot on the field than plague in Oxford.’

‘I do not want to lose you.’

He shot her a crooked smile. ‘It gladdens me to hear it.’

‘Look,’ Faith said suddenly. Her gaze had returned to the town, and Stryker followed her pointing finger. Three figures were on the rampart; two women and a child, to judge by their coifs and the diminutive stature of the third. It was difficult to see what they were about, but the distinctive pose they each took up described a trio of archers. They held the bows high, aiming for the brooding clouds, and loosed, one after another. Stryker and Faith watched as the arrows careened skyward, vanishing to black specks, and then they were larger, darker, like diving peregrines on the hunt. Further out, in the open ground before the town where the beginnings of saps and gun batteries were being marked by teams of engineers, men shouted the alarm, but the arrows fell well short, thudding into the mud almost a hundred yards from any target. The Royalist teams jeered as they made obscene gestures at their would-be assassins, baring lily-white rumps to taunt the women, but the message was clear. The people within the town were not there under duress. There would be no repeat of Wigan’s joyous celebrations here.

In reply, one of Rupert’s small field pieces, a leather gun that was not part of the main train, spewed its murderous iron up at the walls, forcing the plucky archers to shy quickly away. The Royalists cheered again. And the siege of Liverpool had begun.

Prince Rupert’s regiments began to set themselves up for a siege even before the first summons to surrender was rejected. The lie of the land told them that much, for Liverpool’s western border was the Mersey, and on the east it was protected by a medieval wall, strengthened by mud and stake so that it was high and strong. A ditch ran in an arc around the landward side of the town, screening the looming stone from assault, and a stout castle dominated the southern approaches. In effect, she would not fall easily, and the men scattered around her likely knew it all too well. So after the tents came the latrines and the grain stores, the powder magazines, livestock pens and troughs for fodder. Foraging parties went out in search of berries and nuts, vegetables, wild watercress and meat, and all the while the engineers rode as close to the walls as possible to plot the points deemed most likely to degrade under heavy cannon fire. The prince himself – with his ever-present cavalry – was up on a high ridge overlooking the port. The slopes were capped by the emerald bands of mature hedgerow, while the summit was blotted by the stonework of some ancient monument.

‘Beacon?’ Skellen asked, as he came to stand beside Stryker. It was a murky afternoon, and they were out in the open, their copse behind, staring up at the ridge.

‘Like as not. In readiness for invasion.’

Skellen grunted. ‘By the Diegos, not the King.’

Stryker laughed. ‘Aye, I suppose you’re in the right of it, Will.’ He studied the high ground. There was a village halfway up, its chimneys spewing smoke, and he presumed Rupert and his men would be billeted beneath those inviting thatches.

Skellen took a tight ball of something resembling grass from his snapsack and pushed it into the side of his mouth. He gave a green-gummed leer and thumbed the air in the direction of the trees. ‘Brooklime and chickweed. Found it back there.’

‘Cannot abide the stuff.’

Skellen shrugged, and stuffed some more past his lips. ‘They told our herald to piss off, sir, beg pardon. We’ll be here a while, methinks, and I’ve no stomach for an empty belly.’

The first summons had indeed been rejected, and the cannon had continued to fire from Liverpool’s battlements. At least, Stryker thought, they had found a reasonable place to wait it out. He glanced back at the copse. The heady scent of wood smoke announced Simeon Barkworth’s successful attempt to light a fire. They walked back, high-stepping over clawing brambles and stooped bracken, to discover Lieutenant Hood had returned from a sojourn to the main camp with a good slab of venison and a wolfish grin. He had had the gumption to pay the quartermaster a decent bribe. Faith sat with them as they ate, perched on a damp log, saying little and forever scrutinizing the trees for interlopers. When she had finished, wiping greasy fingers on the wet grass, she waded into the undergrowth with her Bible, keen to find somewhere quiet to read before the day faded to dusk.

‘Never had children, did you, sir?’ Hood asked.

The question startled Stryker. ‘Not that I am aware of,’ he said, then he realized he must have been staring at the girl as she disappeared into the trees, and was immediately embarrassed. ‘I do not think her my child, Tom.’

‘That was not my assertion, sir.’

‘You thought it,’ Stryker said. ‘And mind your tone, lad.’

Hood, seated opposite Stryker at the far side of the fire, stared quickly into the flames. ‘I apologize, sir.’

From the trees the whinnying of horses roused them, and as one they spun around to look. Skellen’s mount, a bay mare named Bess, promptly lifted her tail and deposited a hillock of dung amongst the foliage. The men laughed, Bess trampled her steaming shit, and Stryker’s irritation was gone. ‘No matter,’ he said to Hood. ‘Her presence has set my mind to work.’

‘You ponder what your offspring would be like?’ the lieutenant ventured. ‘With Mademoiselle Gaillard, I mean.’

‘Fearsome,’ Skellen muttered.

Stryker smiled. In truth he had thought of little else. Fight the Good Fight of Faith Helly was a firebrand, to be certain, and might one day be a rare beauty, but to him she was the rag doll he had scooped up in the charnel house that was Bolton. She was a child, to be protected, and he could not help but imagine how his own offspring might have been. There was small chance of such a thing, of course, unless he considered the bastard whelps of whores that might, even now, be living out their lives in Zeeland, Frisia, Pomerania or Saxony, unaware of whose blood might have given them raven-black hair, a long, straight nose, or grey eyes that shone silver when anger flared. But children with Lisette? He doubted she would ever want them. She was too damaged for that, her own childhood tale of horror putting paid to the ambition of bringing yet more young lives into the world. And besides, he was not so sure he would ever see her again. He had betrayed her trust when last they had been together. She had been under threat of rape and death, and he had given her tormentors the information she was prepared to die to protect. He had done it for love, and she would never completely forgive him.

‘I should be pleased with children like her,’ Hood said, nodding towards the gap between two trunks through which Faith had walked.

‘She is a rebel, Tom,’ Stryker chided. ‘Through and through. We should imprison her, rather than protect her.’

‘She is courageous, sir,’ Hood argued. ‘Forthright. Educated.’

Stryker nodded. ‘Aye, she is those things too.’

‘What to do with her, though?’ Simeon Barkworth said. He was kneeling before a pot to the side of the fire, preparing the pottage that he would cook for the rest of the day. ‘We cannot see her all the way to Sussex. Not when we likely march north.’

‘She stays with the army for the time being,’
Stryker answered. ‘That is all I can say.’

‘What of the Vulture, sir?’ Hood said.

‘He cares nothing for Mistress Helly, believe me. He ravished the Sydall women, and would have ravished her, had I not stumbled upon his crime.’ Stryker watched as Barkworth dropped various ingredients into his pot. ‘She is right to be frightened of him, but there is no design upon her.’

‘What of his clandestine dealings?’ persisted Hood. ‘That fellow he met with. You have not seen him since?’

‘No,’ Stryker said. The rendezvous in the field near Standish had unsettled him, but he had not witnessed anything of note, and had nothing to act upon. ‘I would not know Kendrick’s companion if he tripped over my boot, Tom, so dark was it. They were trading sotweed, for all I could tell.’

‘What you got there?’ Skellen asked of Barkworth.

The tiny man held up a bunch of sprigs. ‘Wild fennel. Plenty to be had now that we’re near the coast. Always better near the sea.’ He glanced up at the covering branches of the magnificent tree. ‘I’d like to use beechnuts too, but they’re no ripe yet.’

Stryker followed his gaze. He guessed the ancient beech was all of ninety feet tall, the smooth silvery-grey of its bark soaring above their little encampment, pointed-oval leaves dripping water when the breeze shook them.

Barkworth cackled happily. ‘Belittles the concerns of man, sir, does it not?’

‘Aye,’ Stryker replied, just as new raindrops began to spatter his face.

‘Beechnuts taste no better than punk’s piss,’ Skellen said.

‘You’d know,’ replied Barkworth.

Skellen grinned maliciously as the fire hissed beneath the rain. He held out a spadelike palm. ‘Miss Helly’ll ruin her book if she opens it in this.’

Stryker found Faith Helly near the edge of the copse. She was perched within the cleft of a tree where the trunk split in two, hunched over the open Bible cradled in her lap. She looked up sharply when he stepped on a crackling branch.

Stryker held up placating hands. ‘You cannot read in the rain, Mistress Helly. Not even Scripture.’

She closed the book. ‘I seek comfort in His Word.’

‘And the words will soon run off the page. Come back with me. Simeon is cooking pottage for later. Perhaps you might assist?’

Her eyes narrowed accusingly. ‘Because I am a woman?’