The Bleeding Land (34 page)

‘I will take my disobedient daughter back to the house and when I come back we will discuss how we can make life unpleasant for our unwelcome guests.’ With that she led Bess up the gentle slope towards the long drive that disappeared into the birch and sweet chestnut wood on its way to Shear House.

‘And I will buy us time, Lady Mary!’ Radcliffe called after them. ‘I will bleed those rebel dogs and I will buy us time. You may rest assured about that.’ Then the old veteran strode up to the wall and, hands clasped in the small of his back, thumbs circling each other, he peered through a hole at the enemy.

Because the rebels were at the gates of his lady’s house and it was up to him to stop them.

Bess had made a crescent of several bed pillows and it was in this nest that she lay night after night, craving sleep that never came. The nest relieved some of the discomfort caused by her distended stomach and the weight of the child growing in it, but not all of it, and even when her eyes grew heavy and sleep lured her into its forgetful embrace it was fleeting, vanquished by a little fist or kicking foot inside her. For if the baby had once frightened her with its stillness, these days, it seemed, it rarely if ever stopped wriggling. But at least she had a bed, and Bess knew she ought to be thankful for that. Shear House was full. It had become a refuge and a garrison. It was a bastion loyal to His Majesty King Charles; a rock around which chaos in the form of rebellion flowed. Families bedded down wherever they could, many lying on fine old tapestries which Lady Mary had given them against the autumn chill, for much of the seasoned wood was stacked in piles reserved for cookfires and not to be wasted as fuel for warmth.

Her own breath pluming in the cold of her bedchamber, Bess shifted position and, lying on her side, pulled a bolster deeper beneath the weight of her unborn child. She scrunched her toes
and
rubbed her legs which had gone numb, though that, she was sure, had more to do with being with child than it did with these unseasonably cold October nights.

She placed a palm on her belly, above a probing hand or foot. Be glad you are cosy and warm, little one, she thought. For many are not.

Most of the men were out there in the dark defending the perimeter wall. Bess pictured them talking in low voices, shivering in their cloaks a mere five hundred paces from other men, their enemies, who were doing just the same.

A sense of guilt coupled with the need to feel her legs again made her throw off her blankets and she waddled to the window, leaning back to counterbalance her precious burden. Damn the rebels for starting this war. They would see the world turned upside down.

She focused her hatred on the one face she could summon without even trying. Captain Downing had called again on Lady Mary but this time she had not let him set foot inside the grounds and Bess no longer thought he was in the least bit handsome. The young Parliamentarian officer had stood beneath the imperious gaze of the gatepost lions and matched their pride with a new arrogance of his own: a haughtiness which he wore thick as his buff-coat, a defence against her mother, Bess guessed, who the upstart had learned was a formidable opponent.

‘You must yield up Shear House and all the persons, goods, and arms within it, into my hands, to receive the mercy of Parliament,’ he had said, this time not even deigning to look at Bess, much less ask after her health. ‘And I shall have your final answer by two o’clock tomorrow.’

‘You shall have it in the morning, at eight, Captain Downing,’ Lady Mary had replied. ‘Good day to you.’ And with that she had ordered the gates shut, and the captain had mounted and turned his horse around before the great beam was dropped into its stanchions.

‘Why did you not give him our answer now, Mother?’ Bess had asked, for she had wanted to see this man’s conceit pierced by a woman’s pride, had burned to see the grey flint flash in those brown eyes.

‘I have my reasons, Bess. Be patient,’ Lady Mary had said.

Now Bess stood alone in the gloom of her bedchamber, looking out across the grounds, her breath turning to cold water on the window glass. By the bone-light of the moon she could see men stationed behind barricades, gabions which Major Radcliffe had had them construct in strategic positions on the lawns in front of the house. These, along with the rose garden wall at the rear, would act as a secondary redoubt should the boundary wall be breached.
When
it was breached. The last defence, if it ever came to it, would be the house itself, but the thought of the rebels turning that hateful, thundering gun on Shear House’s walls did not bear thinking about.

A shiver of apprehension scuttled up Bess’s spine as she returned to her bed, because today was the day that Captain Downing would receive his answer from the mistress of the house.

Daylight woke her, and Bess realized she had slept for two hours, perhaps even longer, for which she was grateful. She would need all of her strength to support her mother and play her part. With Sir Francis, her brothers and Emmanuel gone, it fell to them, the Rivers women, to uphold the family’s honour and do their duty to their king. Come what may.

Now, she eased down onto her knees, resting her elbows on her bed, palms clasped against her chin. ‘Please, Lord, give me the courage to do what must be done,’ she said in a voice barely above a whisper. ‘Make me brave like my mother, that I may fear no evil. Make me strong, Lord.’ The prayer was softly spoken and yet sent Heavenward with the force of a ball from a musket. For she would not let her condition weaken her in the face of the challenge. The child would not diminish her by its vulnerability. Rather it would lend its burgeoning strength
to
her own. The unborn’s vitality, its naturalness, would flow through Bess’s veins and steel her sinews against the enemy, against these unnatural traitors who would make war upon their own king.

She climbed to her feet and went over to the window. ‘You are my father’s enemies and so you are my enemies,’ she said, looking out across the dew-soaked lawns, beyond the defenders smoking their pipes behind their barricades and gabions, their muskets and pole-arms leant against the bulwarks. ‘God have mercy on you.’

There was a knock on the chamber door and at her word it opened wide enough for a shock of unruly copper hair to push into the room.

‘Lady Mary is expecting you, Miss Elizabeth,’ young Jacob said, his eyes fixed on the floor. Crab was there too, the wolf-hound’s big brown eyes looking up expectantly at Bess.

‘I’ve told you you must call me Bess, Jacob,’ she said, gathering up the fur-lined wool cloak she had taken to sleeping beneath, and throwing it round her shoulders.

‘Yes, Miss Eliz—’ He gave a chastised nod. ‘Bess.’

‘That’s better,’ she said, smiling at him and rubbing Crab’s head. The boy had become a quiet, serious young man in the months he had been living at Shear House and Bess’s heart bled for him. For all that he had lost. ‘That vain young Captain Downing is here for his answer then,’ she said, following Jacob and Crab down the stairs, ‘and so he shall have it.’

‘I heard some of the men talking . . . Bess,’ the boy said, glancing at her from beneath fair lashes. ‘They were laying a wager on whether Lady Mary would surrender the house.’

‘They still have money to waste?’ Bess exclaimed, as Isaac limped to the front door ahead of her and opened it. ‘Then we shall be able to buy more powder and shot.’

‘Ah, there you are, Elizabeth,’ her mother said. With her was Major Radcliffe and six of his best men, all armed with matchlocks and assorted blades. The men dipped their heads
at
Bess and she nodded and smiled back, hoping to give them a portrait of calm resolve. ‘Are you feeling up to a little walk, dear?’ her mother asked, a wry smile tugging her lips. ‘The young captain is waiting for us.’

‘The air will be good for me, Mother,’ Bess said, and with that the small party set off along the drive and the men at their positions in trenches and behind gabions filled with earth doffed their caps and stood tall as they passed.

When they arrived at the main gate Lady Mary ordered it opened and this time she invited Captain Downing to step inside the walls his demi-cannon had been pounding on and off for the last four days. The captain seemed surprised at the invitation and Bess saw an expression flash across his face that looked for all the world like relief, and she knew that he thought they had seen the sense of giving in to him. He believed they would yield up the house, and suddenly Bess feared that they would.

Two belligerent-looking men in buff-coats came with the captain and they eyed Radcliffe like farmers sizing up a bull at the market and wondering how much it would cost them. The Major of the House paid these men no heed at all and Bess saw how this riled them, though they uttered not a word, leaving all the talking to their young captain.

‘The time for civilities has passed, my lady,’ he was saying, ‘and this issue will be resolved.’ He held his three-bar pot under his arm and his other hand rested on the pommel of the sword at his hip, a subtle reminder perhaps of what the defenders of Shear House could expect if they resisted further. ‘You have done your duty and your husband could not expect more. You have put up an admirable show of defiance,’ he went on with a smile that was so many crumbs strewn across the ground for the hungry. ‘You have received the attentions of our big guns—’

‘You have only the one gun,’ Radcliffe interrupted, ‘a demi-cannon for which you’ve insufficient powder else you’d fire it more.
Though
you could have a cannon royal aimed at my arse and I would not break a sweat,’ he said, his one-eyed glare threatening to burn a hole through Radcliffe, ‘for your gunners could not hit a barn wall from the inside with the doors shut.’

‘I can assure you – Mister Radcliffe, is it? – that our powder cache is more than sufficient,’ the captain replied. ‘As for my gunners, do not mistake clemency for incompetence.’ To Downing’s credit he returned a glare of equal contempt to the old veteran’s. But there were other eyes lending their weight to this exchange too, Bess knew. Radcliffe’s men stared down from the makeshift ramparts or turned their faces from the loopholes in the boundary wall. She knew also that back at the house women and children would be pressed to the upper windows, eager to catch a glimpse of Lady Mary, their protector, talking with the rebels.

‘Now, my lady, I must insist on having your answer,’ Captain Downing said, clearly buoyed by his riposte to Radcliffe.

‘Very well, Captain Downing,’ Lady Mary replied, her voice considerably louder than it had been thus far. ‘You have persisted with this outrage, with this most grave offence, and as due reward I would have you hanged from this very post,’ she said, nodding up at one of the stone lions. ‘But, Captain, you are nothing more than the foolish instrument of a traitor’s pride.’ Bess saw the young captain flush, but he held his tongue. ‘Take this answer back to . . .’ she paused for effect, ‘Colonel Egerton, is it? That he, insolent rebel that he is, shall have neither persons, goods, nor house. If the providence of God prevent it not, my goods and house shall burn in his sight; and myself, my daughter, and my soldiers too, rather than fall into the rebels’ hands, will seal our religion and loyalty in the same flame.’ At this the men of Shear House’s garrison cheered and the three rebels looked around them warily. Major Radcliffe was grinning, the corners of his remaining eye creased like a crow’s foot.

‘God save the King!’ Lady Mary exclaimed.

‘God save the King!’ came the reply from those nearby and was echoed as it travelled across the lawns by other men at other stockades.

‘God save the King!’ Bess heard herself yell. And God save us, she thought, because death is coming.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Friday, 21 October 1642

TELL YOUR KING
he will find us at Kineton
. Tom’s words rolled over in Mun’s mind like pebbles tumbling in the never-ending surf, as rain seethed in the darkness. Twenty-four men rode hunched in their saddles, bad-weather cloaks cinched tight at their necks to keep the water off firelocks, wheellocks and powder flasks. At the head of the short scouting column rode Captain Nehemiah Boone, his mood as black and foul as the night because he did not trust Mun’s information and thought they were drowning in their own skins for no good reason. For Mun had claimed that one of the prisoners had betrayed Essex’s position to Corporal Scrope with the big man’s hand round his throat and his knife at his eye – before they had attacked Scrope, killing him and almost killing Mun, too.

‘They never mentioned Kineton to me, Rivers,’ Boone had said, smoothing his moustaches between finger and thumb, his eyes searching Mun’s as though he suspected him of some deceit. ‘I’ll wager the traitorous scum are still in Worcester.’

‘Corporal Scrope was persuasive, sir,’ Mun had said with a shrug of his shoulders, glancing at Prince Rupert. ‘The rebel
thought
we were going to kill him if he did not tell us what we would hear.’

The Prince had scowled at that, for he had already expressed his disappointment in Mun for going along with Corporal Scrope’s vengeful plan that night, saying it was not behaviour becoming a gentleman in Mun’s position let alone the son of a knight. But other matters had overshadowed the events of that night and now the Prince was still fuming at the prisoners’ escape. He almost refused to believe that the rebels had dared infiltrate his camp, blow up a powder magazine and break a handful of men out from under his regal nose.