The Bleeding Land (42 page)

‘As thee wish, Miss Elizabeth,’ the farmer said, turning his eyes out towards Shear House’s defences as Bess broke the wax and began to read by the cold light of the stars.

When she had finished she folded the letter neatly and slipped it down the front of her bodice.

‘Will you escort me to the gate, Cawley?’

‘Should I fetch the major?’ he asked. Bess shook her head.

‘Just walk with me to the wall,’ she said, ‘for I must speak with Captain Downing.’

‘Very good,’ he replied, fixing the glowing match in the serpent’s jaws. He raised the musket and pulled the trigger, checking that the match’s glowing end would strike the priming pan, whose cover was closed. ‘But may I ask that thee stay behind me?’

‘Thank you, Cawley,’ she said, and with that they set off down the long driveway. Towards the enemy.

Her heartbeat was suddenly loud inside her head and her breathing quickened, each exhaled breath fogging past her cheeks like the bow wave before a ship as her booted feet crunched the frost-stiffened grass. Her unborn child was kicking furiously and Bess wondered if this was a sign that she should turn round and go back, that no good could come of meeting with the arrogant young captain who had brought his war to their home. But her mind was made up and she did not turn round and anyway, perhaps the child’s stirring was an affirmation of her decision, a call to action. Besides, what was fear, she silently asked herself, if not something to be overcome?

‘The garrison looks somewhat sparse,’ she said, observing the great gabions and the men standing behind them, some of whom were looking their way, faces shadowed by helmets, broad-brimmed hats and cloak hoods. Bess felt her muscles begin to tremble with the cold and she clenched her hands together, squeezing them as she walked.

‘The major has whittled us deawn, that’s for sure,’ Cawley replied, hoisting a hand to a friend who had rasped a greeting from where he stood in a nearby trench that was wreathed in pipe smoke. But there were fewer men than Bess remembered. ‘A bunch of ’em went up to t’house at sundown. God knows what for.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Bess said. She recalled seeing men gathering at the rear of the house by the dairy and had assumed Major Radcliffe anticipated an attack from the north, despite earlier saying that such an event was unlikely due to the rocky, rising ground behind Shear House. ‘Though surely we will need every man here,’ she said, ‘for the rebels will come through the breach. Captain Downing may be a traitor but I doubt he is a fool. He will not leave his big gun without adequate protection.’ She had said this last as a question, but Cawley sniffed and, lifting his musket, dragged his coat’s sleeve beneath his nose.

‘Ask me to neuter a hog or plough a yardland and I could do it wi’ mi eyes shut, Miss Elizabeth, but matters of war I’d rather leave to the likes o’ Major Radcliffe.’ She sensed Cawley’s implication that she ought to do likewise.

But Major Radcliffe was not here now, was he? And there was no one else who would dare tell Bess not to climb through the ragged gap in the boundary wall looming before them and talk to the enemy.

‘You had better not go further,’ she said, for they were thirty paces from the wall and the great gate which was now more in the rebels’ hands than theirs. Bess could see musket muzzles poking through the loopholes Radcliffe had had his men cut into the wall, and whatever eyes were on her now, clearly the rebels had been ordered to hold their fire.

‘God be wi’ thee, Miss Elizabeth,’ Cawley said.

‘And with you, Cawley,’ she replied, glancing across at the great gate and noting that it was still intact and barred, though surely not for long. Then, taking a deep, icy breath, she began to cross the last bit of ground that could still be said to be
hers
rather than theirs, towards the breach in the wall through which the enemy would come on the morrow. And her heart was hammering like hooves at the gallop.

‘Miss Rivers.’ Captain Downing was standing on the mound of rubble, a gloved hand extended down to her, his lips spread in a tight smile. His lace-trimmed falling band glowed white in the dark. ‘Please. Allow me to help you.’ Bess did not want his help but she did not want to fall amongst the rubble either and so she nodded and reached for the offered hand, allowing the captain to guide her up onto the displaced bricks that shifted underfoot. ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said as she stepped down onto the frosty grass. ‘It cannot have been an easy decision given what you must think of me.’

‘Yet you judged that you had more hope of my coming than if you had written to my mother,’ Bess said.

She saw a flash of his teeth as he bent to pick up his three-bar pot. ‘Lady Mary’s resolve would be admirable,’ he said, straightening, ‘if it were not—’

‘Foolish? Futile?’ She spat the words like a challenge, daring him to agree.

But the captain shook his head, placing the helmet under his arm. ‘If it were not going to cost the lives of your garrison. And likely some of my own men too,’ he said.

This took Bess aback and she was not sure how to respond. Instead she looked around her. There were a handful of rebels at the wall, muskets pointing through the loopholes, but the bulk of Downing’s force was still fifty paces from the breach. She could see heads and shoulders sticking out from the trenches, faces moon-washed white, and other soldiers milling around gabions, the great wicker baskets filled with earth excavated from the trenches. A fire burned in the distance, crackling now and then, several shadowy figures huddled about it. Laughter and pipe smoke carried to her on the breeze. Somewhere, someone was singing a sad song of love found and lost and in that heartbeat she thought of Emmanuel.

‘You
must
know what will happen tomorrow, Miss Rivers,’ Captain Downing said, one hand resting on his sword’s hilt. Bess thought he looked different. Tired. Perhaps he was not made for sleeping under canvas night after freezing night. She looked past him again and this time could just make out the shape of the great demi-cannon sitting there, a fire-spitting beast in the darkness. Sleeping. For now.

‘I am not a soldier, Captain.’ She felt the cold trying to worm into her jaw bones and start them trembling.

He regarded her for a moment as though he suspected her of mocking him. ‘At first light we will bring our gun forward,’ he said, nodding back towards the hole in the wall, ‘and from there it will batter Shear House itself. Given time there will be nothing left but rubble. And that is the best you can hope for, if your . . . garrison . . .’ he said the word contemptuously, ‘should by some miracle hold.’ His eyes bored into hers, a little of the stars’ cold glow reflected in them. ‘What is more likely is that my men will sweep across your lawns in a rolling wave of steel and musketry, and your aged misguided Major of the House, Mister Radcliffe, will drown in a river of blood.’ He shook his head. ‘Blood that need not be spilled.’

Bess wanted to sneer at the man’s hyperbole, but there was something in those dark eyes that made her hold her tongue. Remorse? Pity? Whatever it was sent a shiver scuttling up her spine. Somewhere over to her right, near a copse of birch whose skeletal branches were silhouetted against night’s jewelled veil, a small herd of oxen lowed and snorted.

‘You are with child, Miss Rivers. A woman’s instinct must be to protect the life she is nurturing.’

‘And what would you know of a woman’s instinct, Captain?’ she asked, the fog of her breath rising between them.

‘My own child will be born any day now,’ he said, those words and his half smile disarming Bess and bringing to her mind an image of a pregnant woman somewhere, wishing her husband were with her instead of fighting in some God-awful
war
. ‘The King’s army is one hundred and forty miles away,’ he went on. ‘It is likely that they are already beaten and His Majesty’s cause lost. That Charles and his retinue are prisoners. Or else His Majesty has fled and is already halfway to France.’ The young man dipped his head respectfully. ‘I do not know your father, Miss Rivers, but I do not think Sir Francis would want his womenfolk fighting for him. Or his house destroyed. Does he even know what is happening here?’

‘My mother has written,’ Bess said, as though that were answer enough. In truth they had received no reply from Sir Francis, but she would not admit that to this recreant devil. ‘I am not a naive child, Captain. If the King were beaten we would know of it. And as for a mother’s duty, that is surely to bring up her child in the true faith and obedience to its sovereign lord. I will not have an act of cowardice his first example.’

His. Yes, it is a boy, she thought. I know it.

With this sudden assuredness that she carried a boy, the fog in her mind cleared and she knew beyond certainty what her answer to Captain Downing must be. There had been doubt. If not, why had she come to meet him? But now that doubt had dissipated like breath in the numbing air and she saw in her mind’s eye Emmanuel, Mun and Sir Francis on some far-away field, fighting for their king, doing their duty no matter the cost.

Captain Downing shook his head in a gesture that suggested this was a fight he was resigning himself to losing.

‘I beg you to reconsider,’ he implored, his helmet held like an offering, ‘to convince your mother to yield. For the sake of good men, yours and mine.’

Bess pulled her cloak even tighter, hoping he could not see her bones rattling with cold. And fear.

‘I am ashamed that you thought me less than my mother,’ she said. ‘That my courage and steadfastness were not equal to hers. But let me make this clear, Captain Downing. I shall put a musket to my own shoulder tomorrow. I shall fight you
with
a mother’s heart. A mother’s strength. And you will learn what duty is.’

He cocked his head, as though seeing her properly for the first time, then put on his helmet, pushing it down savagely in a gesture of intent that made Bess clench her teeth and want to step back out of his reach.

‘Get that gun moving!’ he bellowed into the dark, inhuman again with his head ensconced in cold steel.

And then the night exploded. Hooves thundered and pistols and carbines roared, tongues of fire licking the darkness, and suddenly Captain Downing flew at her, putting himself between her and the attackers, his arms thrust out behind him, corralling Bess so that she could not move.

Horses shrieked and men yelled and more firearms flared and now came the screams.

‘What in God’s name?’ Downing growled, though he did not step away from her as the riders slashed about them and some fired into the huddle of oxen who bellowed in pain and impotent fury. And then Bess saw her mother in back- and breastplate, red hair flying wildly in the half moon’s light, her white face all bone and shadow and fury. A rebel musketeer thrust his matchlock’s muzzle up at the rider next to Lady Mary and pulled the trigger, launching him from the saddle. Lady Mary hauled on the reins and her grey mare, Hecuba, reared at the musketeer, her hooves smashing his head open in a flood of black gore. Hecuba’s forelegs slammed down to the iron-hard earth and for a heartbeat Lady Mary looked over at them, the whites of her eyes glowing, then she howled and turned the mare and with a dozen others spurred off towards the big gun.

Captain Downing strode forward now, drawing his sword and yelling back to his men at the boundary wall to hold their positions in case of a full-scale sally from Shear House’s defenders. Horrified, Bess watched as soldiers clambered out of their trenches and formed into ranks, walls of musketeers
facing
different directions, blowing on their match-cords, muzzles pointing into the dark. But the attackers were already gone, the thunder of their hooves fading in the distance, and Captain Downing knew the attack was over before it had really begun. He turned and strode back towards her, eyes raging.

‘You knew about this?’ he yelled, his sword accusing her.

‘No,’ she said, hands pressed against her belly. ‘I swear.’

‘Damn it!’ he roared, scything his sword through the air and turning back round to assess the damage. From what Bess could make out, seven men and four of the six oxen lay dead. Several more of Downing’s troopers lay moaning and bleeding, their fellows gathered around them doing what they could. It looked as though only two of the attackers had been killed, men she could not identify, and her mother had got away safely. Her mother!

‘Keep the bitch as a hostage, Captain!’ a gaunt-faced soldier sneered, grabbing Bess’s arm with savage fingers, his stink filling her nose.

Captain Downing stepped up and backhanded the man across his face, sending him staggering, but he stood glaring at Bess still, yellow rat’s teeth bared.

‘Touch her again, Dix, and I’ll kill you,’ Downing spat and Bess felt herself recoiling from his fury as he turned back to her. ‘Get back to your people, Miss Rivers,’ he said, struggling to throw a bridle over his wrath. ‘Get out of my sight!’

Bess was already moving, clambering up the rubble of the breach, no offer of help now, numb fingers scrabbling for a hold on the sharp shards and bricks, the weight of her unborn child trying to pull her down.

‘And tell Lady Mary that she can expect no quarter! Do you hear me? Tell her men to get on their knees and make their peace with God!’

She did not reply, stumbling and almost falling but keeping her feet which were now on Shear House’s lawns. Then she heard a whistle and glanced left to find Cawley waiting in the
shadows
, beckoning her on with a flurry of hand. And she was relieved to feel the weight of his big arm on her shoulder as he threw his own cloak around her and led her up the slope towards the defences and the house. And she hoped beyond hope that their menfolk would return, that her father would ride to their defence.

Because a river of blood was coming.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX