Rebels and Traitors (16 page)

There had been a stir in Birmingham for days. It was the middle of October, the first autumn of the war. It was, though nobody knew it yet, the week before the first true battle, which would be fought at Edgehill on the next Sunday. The King was travelling among the Midland shires, trying to out-manoeuvre the Parliamentary Earl of Essex, who had just mistakenly turned towards Worcester. Charles had come down on a slow route through Bridgnorth to Wolverhampton, where his usual appeals for funds and recruits were announced, while locals were plundered and a church chest broken open so that a man could tamper with title deeds relevant to a quarrel he had locally. A bronze statue, taken away to be cast into a gun, was rescued by the family of the Elizabethan dignitary it honoured. After summoning the people of Lichfield to send all their arms, plate and money to his standard — which most were disinclined to do — Charles had spent Tuesday night, yesterday, at Aston Hall, as the guest of Sir Thomas Holte. The irascible baronet had refused the King’s entreaties to patch up the quarrel with his elder son, though as a keen business tycoon, Sir Thomas must have welcomed the visitation; it would enable his descendants to promote Aston Hall more commercially. Every stately home needs a royal bedchamber to show off to the paying public.

Mistress Lucas told Kinchin that this morning the King had addressed a scattering of new recruits nearby — including, Kinchin discovered later, her own brother Rowan, looking for adventure. Afterwards King Charles trundled his way through Birmingham and was believed to be heading to Kenilworth Castle.

Despite slow recruitment, the royal army had reached sixteen thousand. The soldiers took some time to force their passage down the narrow, curving main street of Birmingham, accompanied by traders’ curses. Most people in town were unsympathetic and too occupied with their Wednesday morning’s business to take much notice, though the goose that flew onto the carriage won laconic instructions to shit on the roof. These townspeople had a self-deprecating manner and a pessimistic drone to their voices, both of which they were proud of; they were all cocksure and bloody-minded. Bitterness seethed in Birmingham too. Eight years earlier the town had suffered particularly badly from plague. It happened just before the King tried to levy his notorious Ship-Money tax from inland counties, districts which thought naval matters were nothing to do with them. Times were already desperate. Many businesses had been forced to close during the plague. Birmingham was outraged to be assessed for Ship Money at a hundred pounds, the same as the county town of Warwick. Representations were made, unsuccessfully. The injustice had brought out the brooding side of the local character then, and still rankled. There were Royalists in Birmingham but they were a minority; the town would be decried by the tetchy royal historian, Clarendon, as
‘of as great fame for hearty, wilful, affected disloyalty to the King as anyplace in England’.

At first, the royal army passed through without incident. There had been looting earlier, but the King hanged two captains as an example; the Royalist version made much of this as a strict response after the captains had allegedly only taken trifles of small value from a house whose owner was away in the Parliamentary army. No one in Birmingham was impressed.

For Kinchin and her rescuer, the troops meant waiting at the corner of Well Street, until a gap in the ranks of foot soldiers enabled them to scamper hand in hand across the cobbles and arrive breathlessly in Little Park Street.

As they walked to the Lucas home, nothing was said about the mad minister. But Lucas’s wife seemed to understand how troubling Kinchin found it. The man’s perversions were becoming worse. Kinchin was increasingly enslaved to the minister’s carefully wrought fiction that she was his special choice. She knew no way to escape.

After crossing Well Street with its many small forges, the two women continued down Little Park Street to a slightly larger house than some, in sight of the church steeple and within sound of Porter’s steel mill. All the backstreets rang with one-man businesses. Some forges were in adapted huts and outhouses, some had been specially constructed to the purpose. Lucas was a good craftsman, with a reputation for sound work, and had done well for himself. He and his wife lived in four rooms, with his forge roaring separately behind their house; it was a few yards down a narrow garden that extended towards the pool from which he obtained water.

Kinchin had been indoors here before. From time to time she was allowed to enter the spotless kitchen and sit at the rectangular scrubbed table. When today Mistress Lucas gave her the promised bread and butter, she ate slowly. She wanted to prolong her time in the warmth of the kitchen fire — and to look around for goods to carry off. No fool, Lucas’s wife kept a beady eye on her. The couple were of modest means yet their kitchen contained many portable, saleable items, from the fire irons to the pewter tankards and brass vessels and skimmers. It would be easy for Kinchin to seize upon tongs or a colander, a chafing dish, an iron candlestick, a kettle, a mortar or a fancy trivet. Like all homes in Birmingham, a town full of cutlers, this was well stocked with knives — from sharp-pointed shredding knives to cleavers in several sizes … Feeling the housewife’s gaze upon her, Kinchin dropped the wicked thought from her mind. She knew the rules: the food would stop if she broke faith.

‘This capon pie has come three times to table, Kinchin. Will you help me to see it finished?’ It was a delicate way to give Kinchin the last of a deep and delectable cold pie, now well matured in its coffin of mutton-broth paste. Seizing the dish, Kinchin let one side of her thin mouth slide sideways in what passed for a swift smile.

Mistress Lucas watched curiously as Kinchin savoured the rare treat, lingering as if it was to be her last meal before hanging. She did not snatch and gobble; her small grubby fingers were picking apart the pie with a strange delicacy, then she raised each mouthful at a dreamy pace. Kinchin acted naturally, scarcely caring whether Mistress Lucas noticed her delight. This seemed simply the best dinner of the starveling’s life.

She was skin and bones, bulked out only by her bunched garments; the girl was an insubstantial fairyweight. It was as well she ate so slowly, or her stomach might have rebelled at the unaccustomed rich fare. Her face looked blanched, her eyes hollow, with dark rings beneath. Her tangled hair was greasy as an old sheep’s wool, while bloody scratches on Kinchin’s forearms and forehead told their own story of fleas and lice.

The housewife sighed. She had more compassion than many. Birmingham was a puritan town, with a famously outspoken minister, Francis Roberts. The inhabitants earned their livings by their skill and enjoyed their independence while they did so, but they had imagination and knew good fortune was easily lost. Any accident in his forge could render Lucas unable to work; then his penniless wife would have no support for herself and the baby that was gnawing its rattle in the wooden cradle. Another plague year, sooner or later, was inevitable too. The last bad epidemic had struck when the Lucases were first married. To be a young bride while trade was in the doldrums had taught hard lessons. Pie had been a rarity. The couple had eaten not even bread and butter, but bread and dripping if they ever had it, or plain crusts otherwise.

Everyone was more prosperous now. Mistress Lucas could afford to be charitable. Even so, she knew that to give more than occasional food and friendship would risk bringing down a flock of Kinchin’s feckless relatives, all scrounging and whining for more than the housewife wanted to afford. She was wise enough to go warily, however much her heart pitied the pale waif.

She was preoccupied anyway. While she was out at market she had heard that the King’s soldiers wanted to buy swords. ‘Kinchin, lick up that dish and then run out the back and see if Lucas has anybody with him at the forge.’

Kinchin caught the troubled note in her voice. She scrambled to look outside, then squeaked excitedly that several men were arguing with Lucas. Seizing the girl by the wrist (still thinking of the danger to her pewter tankards and the firedogs if she left Kinchin indoors alone), Mistress Lucas rushed outside and approached nervously down the path. ‘Oh no; I feared so. It is the King’s men, wanting swords!’

Lucas had come out from the forge and was barring its wide door. Some of the soldiers had given up and were moving on, but a couple remained and were remonstrating with him.

‘Tell them that you have none, Lucas!’ called his wife.

He has some swords and has hidden them!
thought Kinchin, in amazement, since resistance seemed so perilous. Wide-eyed, she assessed the strangers. Their court accents sounded ridiculous, as if they were exaggerating their voices as a jest. Not many such fanciful suits and boots crunched down the cinder paths to the backstreet forges. Unlike the stolid farmers who visited Birmingham, standing feet apart with their arms folded as they bought and sold cattle, these men positioned one foot in front of the other like dancing masters, while they leaned back in exaggerated poses; they had done it for so many years the stance was natural. They tilted their chins up to survey Lucas snootily, while he squarely blocked the entrance to his smithy and stared back. Beyond the group, Kinchin could see two tethered horses, expensive and glossy: wild-eyed, high-stepping beasts, too risky to be offered carrots.

‘I will not sell to the King,’ Lucas reiterated steadily. He was taking pig-headed pleasure in refusal. A strong man, red-faced from the fire and sure of his competence, Lucas normally conducted himself quietly. Blacksmiths had to be intelligent — and they had to be independent. He was unimpressed by the cavaliers’ outrageous manners, and unafraid. He showed it.

‘Five pounds the two dozen — we have offered the best price.’ The King’s agent spoke with astonishment. They thought money was all. Having a tradesman talk back came as a shock too.

‘Not enough to buy my conscience.’

Then you are a rebel and a traitor!’

‘So be it.’

‘You will be sorry. Your whole damn traitorous town will regret this!’

Lucas merely shrugged. Mistress Lucas and Kinchin shrank together as the cavaliers strode off to their tall horses, cursing.

A while later, Kinchin left Little Park Street and made her way into Digbeth to search for relatives in the taverns. The streets were quiet; the unwanted troops had left.

It took some trouble to run her father to earth, for he was not at the Bull, the Crown, the Swan, the Peacock, the Talbot, the Old Leather Bottle, the White Hart or the Red Lion. When she found him, pretending to wash pots at the Old Tripe House — which rarely sold tripe now, since it was easier to offer ale only — he told her that one of her brothers had answered the King’s call for local recruits. ‘Our Rowan. He thinks they will pay him — he’s a fool but so are they. If they don’t use his head as a firing mark, he’ll take anything he can grab and run away’

‘Shall we ever see him again?’

‘Who cares? He’s a mardy good-for-nothing, all mouth and snot. He’s only gone for the rations and the plunder. Any army that takes him is piss-poor and ready for defeat.’

Suspecting that Rowan might really be quite clever to enlist, Emmett changed the subject. He had further news. Local men had ambushed a small group of Royalists who were tagging behind the main cavalcade with the baggage. Some of these guards had been killed; the rest were made prisoner and sent for safe keeping to Coventry, a better stronghold than Birmingham. The captors refused even to speak to their prisoners, thereby coining a new catchphrase:
sending to Coventry.
Correspondence, plate and jewels seized from the baggage train had been despatched to Warwick Castle.

‘They should never have done it,’ grumbled Tew. He was a thin wraith who hovered on the edges of taprooms, drawing suspicion to himself by the very furtive way he lurked. ‘They will rue the day they set upon the King — and I’ll tell you —’ He was wagging his finger insistently. He must have found plenty of people to stand him a tankard to celebrate the very ambush he was deriding. It will never be the hotheads who suffer for it, but innocents like us.’

‘The King stayed with Holte,’ Kinchin muttered, knowing the effect it would have if she mentioned the man who had made the Tews homeless.

‘Then the King is a whoreson bastard and I hate him!’ yelled her father. He banged his tankard down so hard a great wash of ale slopped out. Kinchin sat quiet. Almost vindictively, Emmett turned on her. ‘You have an admirer, my girl. Someone came looking for you, Kinchin! … Don’t you want to know who he is and what he’s after?’

‘No.’ Kinchin’s tone was drab. She knew it could only have been Mr Whitehall, the mad minister, wanting what he always wanted.

The sword Lucas was making had been hurriedly hidden from the cavaliers. He returned inside the smithy. It was purposely kept dark so he could evaluate the fire and judge from the colour of heated metal when it had reached the correct temperature — changing through a range of pale colours that did not show in the darkened forge, through dull red, sunrise red, cherry red, bright red, light red, orange, and yellow. Swords were forged at cherry red, then tempered at a lighter colour.