Traitor's Field (67 page)

Thurloe held his expression; held his breath. 

‘Among the many friends we have in every town in England, among the men we have infesting your administration, there was. . . at least one, in Doncaster. Unhappy to find that the ideals you’d used to fire all those years of war had turned out to be deceits and vanities. A man who passed us, as so many do, useful information; in his case, time by time, the plans and tactics for the siege. My brother devised a plan to meet him. A plan to give himself the run of Doncaster and let the man reveal himself. The attempt to kidnap Rainsborough was an entertaining cover for all that.’

‘Kidnap? Rainsborough was killed.’

A shrug.

‘And if your aim was to contact your informant, you didn’t succeed.’

Paulden sat back again. ‘Perhaps we did not, Thurloe. Perhaps we did.’

‘You did not. I have re-watched that morning as if from every window. You met no one. You gained nothing. Your source was just another ghost.’

The smile was fixed, grim. ‘Perhaps, Thurloe. Perhaps you will learn otherwise.’

The life had gone out of the conversation. Paulden roused himself to his former alert consideration of his visitor, but the momentum was gone.

Thurloe stood, and turned to leave. Paulden went to open the door for him, but instead his outstretched arm held it closed an instant, blocking Thurloe’s exit, the flare of red hair close to him.

Once again, the voice had the strange whimsy of the confrontation in Pontefract. ‘Perhaps only my brother knows the truth. But he told me a little of his plan. And if ever a man should show a strange inclination to refer to the history of Doncaster, Thurloe, you will learn.’

Sir Mortimer Shay in other men’s spring: a man slumped at the edge of a room, waiting; a man on a horse, crossing and re-crossing the endless moors of northern Britain.

In the councils, oblivious to the debate and watching the divisions. Watching Leslie, the grey professional soldier; Hamilton, the fatalistic bulldog; and the young King, a beautiful youth among the dull stones and plaster, by turns bored and baffled.
A young man after my own taste, I think; but this world of grim observances and earnest stratagems is not yours, is it, lad?

Sport with his companions, watching the three lads and shooing away the grasps of nostalgia or regret. He and Teach would rehearse their sword and musket drill together, because even an old soldier must keep up to the mark, and because especially an old soldier likes to show off when he can. An occasional intimate conversation with Constance Blythe, allowing her to reminisce and telling himself it was for her benefit, feeling himself drifting into a comfortable unchangeable past. Meg’s death had left him notionally freer – as if that had ever worried him – but sexless, as if that activity felt like a habit from a phase of life now closed.

In the mornings or the dark hours, the silly traffic of intelligencing work: the papers read, the papers written; the solitary journeys; the private signs on trees and windows; faces in scarves, and faces in shadows – always the shadows. And the meetings – in stairways, doorways, stables and taverns – exchanging the little intimacies of indiscretion: a flask of wine; a hand on a shoulder; a pose of incredulity; gold. Where necessary he used his companions: Vyse or Manders for a front; dispassionate, early-worn Balfour for the more patient work; Teach when it mattered. They knew the game they were playing, though Shay kept his plans his own.

In the afternoons, or the evenings, sitting with one or two others – Leslie, or ancient Leven, or Teach – and naming forgotten brutal German towns and eccentric European Princelings. Old soldiers’ tales: ritual, reused, soiled. Shay had always hated the habit; it used to be a pose, to cultivate men of that sort for his purposes. Now it felt like duty: his obligation to his age.

Then he would haul himself up onto his horse again, and trot off into another dusk or another dawn, a half-glimpsed rider heavy-wrapped against the cold of the world.

His boots were smeared with the mud of a dozen different counties across the north and east of England. In April he plunged south through the heart of the country, as far down as Warwickshire and the sad escarpment at Edgehill, and crossed into south Wales. Thirty different beds for those thirty nights: in a grand house in Cheshire, a stubborn grey Yorkshire manor, cottages, inns, barns, mossy tree-roots, a church porch. He was checking his arrangements – the places to sleep, the places to hide, the places to leave a message or dress a wound or find a horse, the places to get a drink or a musket or a ship. He was rekindling the embers of rebellion – reminding men of duties, of loyalties, of friendships, of better times, of the attraction of a purse of money. Among the bruised and grieving loyalists of Norfolk he commiserated for last November’s fiasco, and when like mewling puppies they produced noises of defiant determination, he would welcome and encourage them and wonder at his own weariness.

Sometimes he was at Astbury, once more the stranger coming out of the night, taking some heat from the fire, retiring to the room that was kept for him, wondering at the secrets the house still hid from him, unable to return Rachel’s searching looks. Sometimes, even when in the district, he avoided the house, stuck to the tavern on the Ashbourne road.

In a wayside inn in Lancashire, ten hours in the saddle behind him and food a distant memory before that, he tramped heavily up the stairs to a private room. He stood on the threshold, but it was empty – a fire burning well, a chair beside it – and. . . no, a figure in darkness the other side of the hearth. He closed the door behind him, and stepped in.

He waited, but the figure was silent. After a moment, Shay said, ‘Have you travelled far, pilgrim?’

The figure didn’t move: between the boots and the wide-brimmed hat there was a heavy cloak, swept up over the figure’s face and shoulder. 

Shay stepped closer. ‘Have you travelled far, pilgrim?’

The cloak swooped away from the face, a heavy bird flapping towards the warmth of the fire.

‘Not worth mentioning, sir. No service too much.’ The figure leaned forward, and the firelight picked out a heavy nose and a moustache to match. The jaw came forward under the moustache, and the voice said with stolid earnestness: ‘God – save – the King.’

There were protocols for this contingency; Shay had devised some of them himself. 

But he hesitated, shook his head, and sat down across the fire. ‘Is the food edible here?’ he asked.

‘I don’t – It should – That is, if you think it advisable – Not to draw attention, you know?’

Shay rubbed roughly at his face, seemed to feel its wind-stung crevasses. ‘I think I’ll manage a meal in an inn without rousing the county. Boy!’ The last word was yelled, hoarse, towards the door. ‘Sir Greville Marsh?’

Sir Greville Marsh glanced towards the door. Quietly: ‘I am, sir, and I’m proud to meet you.’

Shay looked at the face: a fat man hollowed out by sickness and hunger, a wine-blasted nose busy with hairs and spots, the moustache shot with grey. Shay held out his hand. ‘It is I who owe you honour, sir.’ Marsh shook hands warily, as if over-honoured. ‘Our cause depends on men like you, and those of us who live freer of Cromwell’s rule should be humble before you.’

‘Oh, it’s not all that bad, really.’ Marsh pulled at the chair and it scraped over the boards towards the fire. ‘One lives; one lives.’

There was a clattering on the stairs and the boy stuck his head in. Shay commanded food and drink, and waited for the door to close again. ‘Now—’

‘What vexes me’ – Marsh was leaning forward, conspiratorial – ‘is the new men. Oh yes. Popping up all over the county. The new County Committee, now, take that. Very efficient it may be, and I’m not saying that a little improvement wasn’t needed, but it’s got everyone’s backs up.’

‘Of cou—’

‘I know what you’ll say! Be flexible, that’s what they all say. Accommodate oneself. I’m a stubborn soul, I know it. Bend with the wind a little, I should. I do sir, believe me. I do try, I’ve tried to get on good terms with the Committee. Responsibility, d’you see? But all the changes, they upset the mood of the common folk.’ He coughed, throat crackling. ‘Rot set in under – no disrespect, sir, ’pon my word – to be honest it was in the time of His late Majesty. The old customs, you know? Now, some of the new men, the rabble-rousers, they made their names complaining at the royal taxes, but the new taxes: worse, sir, worse!’ Another cough, and he swallowed uncomfortably. ‘It trickles down, that’s the trouble. Upset the administration at the county level, and it causes problems in the village: we’ve had some very nasty little problems with the election of the constable, and with the ale-conner. There’s a. . . a tension, in the village.’

A stew came, miraculously thick and hot, and a flask of wine, and Shay ate absorbed in the tastes while Sir Greville Marsh described his land dispute with Mr Bailey of Crossgill – ‘if you could see how he treats his oaks, sir!’ – and the continued rancour arising from an opinion that he, Sir Greville, had been obliged to give – ‘and honesty, sir, that’s what a gentleman owes to the common folk, that’s what I say’ – in the case of Tetlow, the preacher, in 1641.

Shay finished the stew and put the wooden bowl and spoon down by the hearth with respectful care, and took a mouthful of wine, and gave a vast sigh of animal content, eyes closed and head slumped back. 

Sir Greville broke mid-sentence for a moment, with something like concern at Shay’s behaviour. Shay opened his eyes, and narrowed them and sat up. ‘You’re a good man, Marsh,’ he said, and he meant it. ‘If the young King could see you, it would give him heart.’ Marsh bridled in embarrassment –
Strange,
Shay thought,
I reckoned him a mere inflated bladder, but I believe he truly cares for nothing more than the good of his little hamlet
– and made to speak, and Shay hurried on. ‘But I must know – the crisis is coming – perhaps a couple of months, perhaps a little more – these discontents you speak of – will the country hereabouts rise?’

Marsh sucked in a long breath. ‘It’s diff—’

‘Will – they – rise?’

Marsh sat back, frowned unhappily, a little cowed.

Shay managed a smile, trying to take the edge off his impatience. ‘You know them, sir, what do you think?’

Marsh nodded, confidence warming once more, and leaned forwards. ‘They’re good simple souls in these parts, sir. Loyal. And with good men at their head, well. . .’ He sat back, apparently getting momentum, and then plunged forwards again. ‘Rivers, of Littledale, he has a scheme for a handful of us – just a handful, that’s the way, you see? – a handful of us to arrest the Mayor of Lancaster on market day – Toulnson – one of the new men, and not popular – he’s on the County Committee – arrest him, d’you see? for corruption, and put up Shuttleworth in his place, whom everyone respects, all sides – and the great thing is that Rivers’s cousin is Captain of the militia in the town, and though Toulnson when he was Commissioner put a lot of his own people into the militia, at the moment John Rivers says they’ll follow, there’s been that much sharp practice with commissions recently. . .’ He hesitated, as if hoping that Shay would reset the sentence for him. ‘There we all are then: our man as Mayor; the militia loyal, and able to control the gates; we suspend all new taxes levied since the beginning of last year, pending a proper review, and freeze bread prices in the market at a penny lower than they are today.’ The voice low and urgent: ‘The old ways, d’you see? Make folk feel comfortable again – with their local habits, the prices, the preaching – declare for the King then.’ He sat back, and nodded, satisfied, as if he’d just placed the crown on Charles Stuart’s head in Westminster Abbey.

‘It could work,’ Shay said.
Staggeringly, there’s a faint chance it actually could work
. And then he looked at Marsh again, at the life-beaten face.

‘Couldn’t it, though?’ Marsh smiled, and looked into the fire. ‘It would be something, wouldn’t it? Something to tell the grandchildren.’ He looked up apologetically. ‘My son – well, he’s gone – he – he. . .’ He shook his head, lost in the fire again. Then tried again, more reflectively. ‘It would be something, wouldn’t it, sir?’ He turned to Shay again and – perhaps it was just a trick of the fire – there was a new light in the eyes, a fat man’s geniality hiding in a thin man. ‘Something for the old ways.’

Shay watched him; watched them both, somehow distanced from the routine.
Are you the world I am offering Vyse, and Balfour, and Rachel? Why are you alive, and Meg not?

He hungered to spend the night there, but couldn’t risk it and couldn’t stop so early. Soon he was pulling himself up onto the horse again, and man and beast weaved out of the inn gate into the gloom and began to tramp northwards.