Traitor's Field (69 page)

[SS C/S/51/50]

North Queensferry early on a summer morning: mist hangs sleepy on the expanse of the Forth river, the barrier to Edinburgh and England. Far out in the estuary, towards the sea in the east, the gannets are starting to shriek and reel. The tide is low, and these first few yards of the unmeasurable, unknowable north of Scotland are dark mud, rising gently from the mist to the few cottages of the village. The cottages are silent. The ferry’s oars haven’t moved for months, for the Forth is now a frontier; the ferryman drinks more now, and sleeps in.

An early cormorant splashes on the mud, trying its thin pools for food.

From the mist a thumping and splashing, a weird heartbeat of the predawn, and shapeless, consonantless voices. At night, drowned demons of men who died without God come from the firth to rot fish and steal away the souls of children. Thumping and splashing, then patches of mist darken and solidify and lunge forward towards the mudflats, a thousand men in new-built boats crossing the frontier of night and mist, Colonel Overton kneeling in the prow reciting the Lord’s Prayer as the shore materializes.

The thumping and splashing of the oars, and now urgent voices of exhortation, strangely subdued out of instinctive respect for the mist-spirits, and the boats slew and squelch into the mud, and boots begin to tumble out and stamp ungainly towards the village.

Thy will be done; Thy will be done; Thy will be done.

The news was in Stirling in hours, despite the winding miry roads it had to travel. Shay heard it first from Vyse and Manders, respectively hurrying and clumping into his room and insistent with rumours of an undefined English attack, until he hushed them both. Then Balfour arrived with a summons, and Shay heard the news a second time over the Council table.

‘Cromwell has outflanked us, Your Majesty, gentlemen.’ Leslie, voice reedy and pedantic. ‘He’s put men across the Forth, and we can’t stop him reinforcing them. He’s behind us.’

And heard it again. ‘This smacks of bad generalship. We’ve let him baffle us: he kept us looking one way, and he went t’other. While we focused all of our effort on Stirling, waiting dumb as ducks for him to hit us there, he’s leapt into the heart of our supplies and our recruits.’

‘Will he reinforce them? Put himself entirely to our north?’

‘Nothing to stop him.’

‘Pardon me.’ It was Hamilton, steady and austere. ‘If he does move entirely across the Forth, behind us, isn’t he trapped?’

Uncomfortable glances. Leslie took up the point warily. ‘He commands the sea. Supply is no difficulty for him. It rather depends on whether we think we can face him in pitched battle, on open ground, and defeat him.’

Silence. Then, from somewhere down the table, ‘He’s left the door to England open, surely.’

A moment while it was absorbed, and then noise like a flood.

‘Advance into England while he’s across our supplies? It’s madness.’

‘What are we fighting for if not England?’

‘Our priority must be to defend Scotland!’

‘We’ll gather supplies and recruits as we march. We’ll be heading towards our heartland!’

‘It’s a betrayal of the Scots.’

‘It’s dangerous.’

At the head of the table, silent and watchful, slumping and then catching himself, King Charles Stuart.
Everything seems to happen around me, and sometimes to me. Am I not supposed to lead?
Occasional uncomfortable glances at him from the men at the table about to speak, sometimes a muttered token ‘Y’r M’sty’ as they begin.
What am I supposed to say?

At the opposite end of the room, away from the table, Sir Mortimer Shay. His conversations were private, in corners, to single men – not in these circuses. Hamilton, Leslie, they had had such information as he could give them, and it was up to them to manage their dispositions as a result. He merely watched, half-listening. 

Is this where George Astbury sat? Is this what he heard, what. . . exactly three years ago, before they marched down to die at Preston?

When Manders entered Shay’s room, breaths coming hard and steady after the concentrated effort of getting up the stairs, he found Shay leaning against the edge of a table. Beside him were Lady Constance Blythe, silent on a chair, and a small wooden chest prominent on the table.

As usual Shay made no allowances for his incapacity, letting him clamber his way around the door and close it, and then starting into speech.

‘Manders; good man. I have a duty for you.’ Manders straightened on his single crutch. ‘You escort Lady Constance to the Continent tonight; you’ll start downriver at dusk.’

Manders fought for restraint as he spoke: ‘But – sir, that’s – the army could go south at any moment!’

‘Con’s days of hand-to-hand fighting are mostly done. You would likewise agree that she cannot be entrusted to some Scottish ferryman.’

Manders swallowed his frustration. ‘Of course.’

Shay read his expression. ‘Scotland will be left to Cromwell’s grim mercies. We don’t know what will happen in England. The expedition is a risk in itself. I will not compound that by risking you and in particular Lady Constance.’

Lady Constance said quietly, ‘Women are an encumbrance to the army, Michael. Even at the best of times, the men restrict their movements if they have to think about our safety.’ She didn’t sound as if she believed it, and Manders wondered at the conversation that had preceded his arrival and left her so subdued.

He grunted, and nodded to her as civilly as he could manage. His eyes strayed to the wooden chest at Shay’s elbow.

‘Yes. You’ll take this with you.’ Shay lifted the lid of the chest, and watched their widening eyes. ‘I have spent the last two days visiting some of the greater men hereabouts, invoking their commitment to our cause.’

The coins and jewels glowed and smiled from the dull box, and then disappeared with the snap of the lid under Shay’s hand.

Lady Constance seemed sad. ‘Mortimer, do you trust the cause so little, that you think only of smuggling these small treasures out?’

Shay shook his head. ‘Sad times, Con. There are men who would pay more attention to this box than to your face.’

Later, Shay and Manders standing together in a doorway, Balfour and Vyse waiting across the room. Shay’s words were low and earnest.

‘Whatever happens in England, men like you will preserve something of the old ways. That spirit will come home again – perhaps in a month, perhaps in a century. But it will survive in men like you.’

Manders just nodded heavily, his one leg shifting uneasily under the extra weight of Shay’s hands on his shoulders.

‘But first you must get safe out of here; more important, you must get her safe out of here.’

Again the nod.

Shay leaned closer. ‘My affection for that woman is unrestrained. But listen well, boy: in the uttermost, it were better that she were dead than captured. Do you understand me?’ Manders’s eyes widened, and he nodded uncomfortably. ‘Otherwise. . . Manders, at Dunbar you were reckless with your life; but Lady Constance – her freedom alone – is truly a cause to die for.’

‘She is a lady, sir; I need no more.’

Again he felt the old man’s hands holding his head, felt the great heavy eyes on him; then Shay had turned away into the night.