The Best of Men (92 page)

“I’d show you greater respect, madam, were your husband to show the same to his King. But you have my word as a gentleman that you will not be harmed if you and your servants keep out of our way.”

“Then be done with your thieving as fast as you can.”

Tom turned to his men. “Curtis and Smith, upstairs. You fellows, to the stables. Wheel out any wagons or carts you can find, and start loading them. You, to the barns. Round up the livestock.” They scattered, knowing the drill. “And empty the cellars. We’ll drink a health to His Majesty when our labour’s done, if her wine’s not too sour. Ingram, look after the women. My word is my word.”

Ingram saluted: this was his penalty.

“How much time will they take to despoil my husband’s estate?” Madam Sumner demanded of him, as the house began to tremble with the thunder of boots.

“I can’t say,” Ingram replied. “You and your ladies might seek somewhere quiet to sit, where you’ll be safe from disturbance.”

“
Quiet
?
Safe from disturbance?
” She clenched her fists. “A week ago I lost my eldest son in a skirmish, and today I am losing my home.”

“We
all
have lost,” Ingram told her, his temper fraying. “My sister’s husband died before he could see the child she was to bear him. And Major Beaumont’s sister lost her husband at Chalgrove Field. She was made a widow at not twenty years old.”

“Is that how you excuse his conduct towards us?”

“No, madam. That’s how I explain it.”

“Let us go to the garden where there is little to steal, other than my herbs and rosebushes,” she said to her womenfolk.

“I’ll go with you,” Ingram said.

“Are they such brutes, that we require a guard dog?”

Ingram let the question pass, and followed them.

Even from the garden, they could hear smashing glass, thumps, and crashes; and doors splintered by violent kicks; and harsh exclamations as the men swarmed about in search of booty. A few of the women were weeping, but not Madam Sumner. Her courage reminded Ingram of his doughty aunt, who had worked so hard to preserve her livestock from Prince Rupert’s raids in Gloucestershire the previous spring. “Sweeping the commons, they call it. Robbery, is what I say,” Aunt Musgrave had protested to him, though she was a staunch Royalist.

“You do not appear to share their appetite for destruction, sir,” said Madam Sumner. “Or are you imagining your wife and estate in these circumstances?”

“I have no wife, madam,” Ingram said. “But I’m to marry at Christmastide, if our whole world hasn’t fallen apart. My betrothed is the Major’s youngest sister.” He saw her eyes widen. Trust a woman, he
thought: in the absolute chaos of her own life, she had caught the ill feeling between him and Tom.

As the autumn sun dipped and the garden grew chill, Madam Sumner implored him to go in and ask when the soldiers would depart. Walking through the hall, he saw that it had been fouled with excrement; and not by a single man, but by the efforts of several. “Swine,” he muttered.

He found Tom in the courtyard, where troopers were herding horses, cows, pigs, hens, and geese from the barns, and loading wagons with sacks of feed, barrels, and the carcass of a huge sow dripping blood at the neck. More men poured from the kitchens weighed down by silver and pewter jugs, goblets, and salvers, legs of mutton, baskets of eggs, and loaves of bread, as if in preparation for a feast, while smoke rose in plumes from the outbuildings.

Tom and a horde of others were congregated by an open cask, filling their mugs. “Ingram,” he called over, “come and wet your whistle.” When Ingram made no move, Tom grinned and strolled over to him. “What’s wrong, man? Has one of the ladies swooned?”

“I beseech you,
Major Beaumont
, to call your troops to order, before they’re too drunk to obey you.”

Tom stopped grinning and leant forward, to hiss in Ingram’s ear, “Talk to me once more like that and I shall raze this house to the ground.”

“This house might be your father’s.”

Tom’s eyes flashed. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “It was a joke, Ingram. Why in God’s name can’t you take a joke?”

CLAIRE LETEMENDIA
was born and raised in Oxford, England, and lives in Toronto. After completing a doctorate in Political Theory and lecturing for some years, she chose to pursue a career as a writer and editor. Since childhood, she has been fascinated by the English Civil War.
The Licence of War
is her second novel; the first, introducing Laurence Beaumont, was
The Best of Men.