The Bleeding Land (35 page)

‘He
was
a rough fellow, your corporal,’ Prince Rupert had said to Boone, not looking up as he filled a pipe with tobacco, thumbing the leaves into the bowl.

‘I was somewhat persuasive myself, Your Highness,’ Boone had replied, clearly put out by the unspoken suggestion that Corporal Scrope would have inspired more fear in the captured Parliamentarians.

‘I am sure you were, Captain,’ the Prince said, raising a placating hand. ‘But perhaps the rebels decided to hold their tongues when they heard the hammers on the gallows you were building a spit away from their gaol. Not much point in talking if you’re for the rope anyway,’ he said, hoisting a dark eyebrow.

Boone had conceded the point with a purse of his lips as he took his own pipe from inside his tunic.

Then the Prince had looked up at Boone, fixing him with those intelligent eyes. ‘Take a small party and ride to Kineton. It’s a market town, is it not?’ Boone nodded. ‘Sniff it out, Captain. If Rivers believes the rebel was telling the truth then it is surely worth a short ride.’

‘But Rivers and Scrope were going to throttle the bastard,’ Boone had protested. ‘The runt would have said anything.’ He took a wax taper from the table and held it to a candle flame until it lit.

‘And you were going to hang them, Captain,’ the Prince
had
said, drawing deeply on his pipe and exhaling so that the smoke wreathed his handsome face and coiffured curls. Mun had felt Boone bristle beside him at that. ‘Besides, my uncle has already sent Lord Digby and four hundred Horse out west looking for the rebel curs,’ the Prince said almost plaintively. ‘Rather we find the enemy than Digby, heh?’

‘Digby couldn’t find his arse with both hands,’ Boone said, at which the Prince had almost smiled.

‘Ride to Kineton,’ Prince Rupert went on, ‘and then we shall know one way or the other.’

Boone had raised the taper to his pipe, the stem of which was clasped between his lips, then stopped and took the pipe out, a frown contracting his brow in the molten copper play of firelight.

‘Now?’ he’d asked, his top lip curled to reveal a flash of tooth.

‘The dogs of war heed not the rain,’ Prince Rupert had replied, one hand pulling the candle across the table to illuminate some crude maps, the other gesturing to the door, flapping languidly.

Now, the King’s army was on the march again, heading for Banbury to attack Parliament’s outpost there, thus opening the road to Oxford and undermining Essex’s stronghold at Warwick with its well-garrisoned castle. And Mun was soaked to his marrow and stretched on the rack of his own guilt. He had murdered Corporal Scrope albeit with his brother’s help. He had blown up a Royalist powder magazine and orchestrated an attack which had seen men on his own side killed. He had freed enemy prisoners, rebels who would conceivably kill King’s men in the next days. Even if none ever discovered the truth of it, if he managed to keep it buried until the end of his days, he would have to bear it. The betrayal would yoke him. And yet, he questioned what sort of man he would be if he had stood aside and watched them hang his brother. Family is family.

‘Blood is blood,’ he muttered to himself, earning a sideways glance from O’Brien. But the Irishman did not probe and Mun was thankful for that as the recent events turned over in his
mind
and his conscience scavenged like crows in a ploughed field, finding nothing of sustenance.
If Tom had seen reason and turned from his path of vengeance, I would not shoulder this shame
, a voice in his mind dared suggest.
We should be in this storm together, brother, fighting with father. Rivers men doing our duty to our king
. But the voice was drowned out by louder truths. I failed to turn Tom from his course, he thought. I failed us all.

‘You want war, brother,’ he murmured. ‘Well, it is coming.’

The brooding, rain-lashed Wormington Hills were no fit place for a God-fearing man to be on such a devilish night, so the red-haired Irishman O’Brien was saying when Daniel Bard came galloping out of the dark, his raw-boned face glistening beneath his pot helmet as he pulled up and walked his horse to Captain Boone. He had ridden to the top of a scrub-lined crest while the rest of the small troop had gathered beneath the dripping branches of a gnarly ancient oak, moaning about having to be out when others were keeping warm and dry.

‘They’re here, Captain,’ Bard said. His long grey hair was plastered against his hollow cheeks and Mun thought he looked like a living skeleton. A look the savage grin on his face did nothing to contradict.

‘How many, Corporal?’ Boone asked and Bard’s grin twitched at the use of his rank because he had not wanted the promotion. Boone and Prince Rupert had forced it on him. With Scrope dead the troop needed an experienced man and Bard was as experienced as they came.

‘All of them,’ Bard said. ‘Every mother’s whoreson. Every last bloody one of them by the looks of it.’

As Bard turned his horse back around Boone looked at Mun and for a heartbeat Mun almost thought the captain was about to acknowledge that Mun had been right and he had been wrong. But there was more chance of the sun suddenly appearing in the sky and drying their bones, he knew, as Boone
kicked
his heels and followed his corporal up the rise to take a look for himself. Mun and the others followed.

There, on the plain below, their myriad fires struggling against the deluge, was Parliament’s rebel army. It was vast and the sight of it made Mun’s breath catch in his throat. Well, little brother, his mind whispered, here we are. Just like you wanted.

But Mun wanted it too, he realized now, looking down upon the enemy camp. At last the game of cat and mouse could end and the real fight begin. The King’s righteous army would crash into these rebels like an avenging wave, sweeping them from the plain and drowning their sedition once and for all.

‘Now that’s a sight to freeze a man’s balls,’ O’Brien said, shaking his head in wonder.

‘Then it’s just as well you don’t have any, you Irish troll,’ Richard Downes said, spitting rain.

Vincent Rowe sniggered at that, earning a growl from O’Brien. ‘Another snort out of you, young Vincent, and I’ll ride back to camp with yer own balls ’neath my saddle,’ the Irishman threatened.

‘So Lord Digby is still chasing shadows and we have found the rats’ nest,’ Captain Boone remarked, as much in awe of the sight before them as the rest of them, or so it seemed to Mun. ‘Corporal, what would His Highness the Prince do were he here now?’

Leaning forward over his saddle’s pommel, Bard looked across at his captain, the whites of his eyes glowing dully. ‘The Prince would charge down this hill and put the whoresons to flight,’ he said, ‘the whole bloody lot of ’em.’ Mun got the impression he was only half jesting.

‘And I’d wager they would fly, too, like starlings, the damn cowards,’ Boone agreed. ‘But I fear His Majesty the King would resent not being invited to the ball. For it shall be quite the dance,’ he said, hauling his big mare round, his lips pulled back from his teeth.

Mun turned Hector and gave him the heel and in a heartbeat he was flying through the sheeting rain with the others, his nerves thrumming because they had found the enemy and now there would be a battle. There had to be. But as he flew, his world shrunken to himself and Hector and the mad rhythm of many hooves drumming the drenched earth, an iced rope snared his guts. It drew tight as a noose. Because he knew the time had come to tell his father about Tom.

Mun wished he had been there to see the Prince receive the news, but he could imagine well enough his reaction. It would be sheer feral joy, for the Prince was a child of war. Battle was what he lived for, it was the yardstick against which he measured himself and others. Mun had seen him shortly after Captain Boone had delivered his report. The Prince had walked through the camp like a common soldier, appearing suddenly in the feeble glow of the fire by which Mun and the others crouched and stood, trying to dry their clothes, for the rain had seemingly abated.

‘Rivers!’ Prince Rupert said. Beside him his white poodle, Boy, barked his own greeting and Mun crouched to rub the tight wet curls on the dog’s head. It gave a rolling growl and snapped its teeth and Mun pulled his hand away to the sound of the Prince laughing. ‘He’s eager for the fight like the rest of us,’ the Prince said. ‘Would you believe it but the rebels have written songs about him! They say Boy is the Devil in disguise come to help me. That he is invulnerable to attack and can catch bullets fired at me in his mouth! Now that’s a faithful hound, hey?’

‘They also say he can find hidden treasure, Your Highness,’ O’Brien said, grinning. ‘Now that’s what I call a dog!’ They all laughed at that, for the big Irishman, standing there drying his stockings above the fire, looked like a man who could use a few pieces of buried treasure.

Mun had also heard it said that the dog was the Prince’s
familiar
. He suspected others were thinking the same though none chose to mention it.

‘It would seem Corporal Scrope did not die for nothing, would it not?’ Prince Rupert asked him. ‘And we can be glad he squeezed that rebel like an arse sponge. Though it is a pity Scrope gave his life for the information.’

Mun smiled. ‘He was a good soldier,’ he said, which was no lie. There was something about the Prince that made Mun loath to lie to him.

‘Tomorrow at last we shall have our battle. If the rebels stand,’ the Prince added. ‘Is Hector ready for the tumult? There will be more guns than you have ever heard.’ He grinned. ‘It will sound like the gates of Hell opening.’

Mun was surprised and flattered that the Prince had remembered Hector’s name. ‘He is ready, Your Highness. As am I.’

‘We’re all keen to whip the rebel curs,’ a portly, red-nosed trooper named Lawrence said, stifling a great belch that threatened to explode his face. ‘We shall squash them. Like lice between your finger and thumb.’

‘Well said, that man,’ the Prince said, looking from him to the other men in the troop who were standing tall in his presence. He surveyed the big Irishman O’Brien and young Vincent Rowe, Corporal Bard, Richard Downes and the others, and he appeared to like what he saw.

‘I have come to tell you all that you will have the place of honour in the field, I shall see to that.’ Some of the men cheered and some raised their cups and pitchers towards the Prince, who received their gestures gracefully. Then with a swirl of his scarlet cloak he moved on to the next fire and the men around it, reminding Mun of a boy who is too excited to stand still for any length of time.

‘If Bard asks after me, I’ll be back before dawn,’ Mun said to O’Brien, taking up his helmet and rubbing it on a dry part of his tunic.

‘Where are you off to?’ the Irishman asked.

‘To see my father,’ Mun said.

‘Ah, well, give His Majesty the King my best when you see him, won’t you,’ O’Brien said, a grin splitting his red beard. ‘Tell him to be kind to Ireland, too, there’s a good lad.’

‘Anything for you, Clancy,’ Mun said, leaving a wake of bawdy laughter and a scowling Irishman.

‘Who told you?’ the Irishman called after him.

‘Your ma has sewn it into your tunic!’ Mun called behind him, and the laughter boomed in the night.

The regiments of the King’s army had been scattered across one hundred square miles of countryside between Kineton and Banbury, but Mun knew he would find his father near the King himself, who was at the home of Sir William Chancie at Edgecote. When, after an hour’s unhurried ride, he got there, he found the King’s camp a maelstrom of soldiers and horses and the many chaotic components of the artillery train. Mun had the sense that the air itself was trembling, like a great banner in a stiff wind, such was the excitement for the coming battle. Soldiers of the King’s Lifeguard, the Prince of Wales’s Regiment and Sir Richard Byron’s Brigade of Foot were striking camp and preparing to march, for this was the beating heart of the Royalist cause and the news of Essex’s proximity – and thus of a fight to be had – was spreading from this point, like trails of black powder whooshing in all directions.

It took a while, given the chaos, but eventually Mun found Sir Francis talking with Sir Edmund Verney, Knight Marshal to King Charles. The two men had come from a war council with the King himself and Mun knew that Prince Rupert would be furious to know that there had been such a meeting to which he had evidently not been invited. But then Mun knew that the upper echelons of the King’s officers had begun to form factions for and against the Prince. Mostly against if the rumours were to be believed.

His father smiled broadly at the sight of Mun. ‘My son
Edmund
,’ he announced proudly, ‘who serves with the Prince’s Horse.’

Sir Edmund Verney eyed Mun and nodded appreciatively, as though in Mun he saw what a son should be, and Mun cursed inwardly at his timing for he remembered that Verney’s eldest son, Sir Ralph Verney, had also turned his back on his father and sided with Parliament.

‘Your prince must be busy teaching his officers the Swedish tactics he has so faithfully studied,’ Verney said with evident sarcasm, snatching the broad-brimmed hat from his head and running a hand through his long hair, ‘for we had not the pleasure of His Highness’s company just now.’

Mun felt his hackles rise at the suggestion that the Prince had deliberately slighted the other generals. But then, perhaps he had.

‘Sir Edmund will have the honour of bearing the Royal Standard as we sweep the rebels from the field,’ Sir Francis said, reading Mun’s face and changing the subject.

‘Then you will not be left wanting for excitement, Sir Edmund,’ Mun said, trying to smile. ‘The rebels will be thick as flies around your party. May God be with you, sir,’ he said and meant it. For it took a brave man to wave the King’s standard at fifteen thousand enemies.

‘And with you, Edmund,’ Verney replied. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen. Sir Francis, I’m sure your boy did not trudge through the mire to wish me luck.’ One-handed he placed the hat back on his head. ‘For God and King Charles,’ he said.

‘For God and King Charles,’ Mun and Sir Francis repeated in unison, then Verney headed off into the whirling chaos of the King’s army.