Traitor's Field (74 page)

‘You’re born. Without fortune, without looks, without luck. And you survive.’ The empty smiled flickered again. ‘Something about General Leslie, was there?’

‘Will we survive here?’

‘Ask me tomorrow, boy.’

Rachel Astbury opened her mouth to speak again, jaw set and eyes insistent, but Shay held up a heavy finger.

To live we must first survive.
He stared into the lovely face.
Where now is the essence of the cause?

‘Rachel,’ he said, and there was a new lightness in the voice, ‘would you take a glass of wine with me? I will need to be away quite soon, and I must get my affairs straight with you.’

Somewhere above them, Anthony Astbury dozed, in the bedroom where he spent most of his time now.

A flask between them, Shay smiled soberly at Rachel’s uneasy face, and tried to align his thoughts.

‘As you saw, today I suffered a. . . a great disappointment. Great frustration. A lot of my work is in jeopardy.’ He smiled heavily. ‘I shall fight on, because that is what I do. And I shall probably win. But whatever I do, whatever stratagems I contrive, whatever blood I spill, I cannot save England entirely unaided. The young King, the Scots, this man Cromwell and his troops – there is a chance they may thwart me somehow.’

She smiled. ‘But you’ll probably win.’

‘Probably. But perhaps not immediately. Not for a while. Perhaps England is destined to take a different path, at least for a time.’ One heavy eyebrow lifted. ‘It is possible that your young friend Thurloe may represent my end, and your future.’

She leaned forward, cross. ‘Uncle Shay’ – the words came hard – ‘I am quite sick of men telling me what my future shall be.’

He didn’t smile; merely nodded. ‘Well enough,’ he said. ‘But if you’re to decide for yourself, you must know – you must be absolutely clear – what is essential to you. I had to remind myself of the point a few moments ago.’

He took a mouthful of wine. ‘For example: to be you – to survive, to have a future possible – do you need to be ruled by a Stuart King?’

She frowned. ‘But—’

‘Yes or no?’

‘I’ve survived without.’

‘Yes, you have. Good. Do you need any King?’

She shrugged. ‘No.’

‘Bishops – a particular structure in state and Church – particular forms used in the pulpit?’

A little shake of the head. ‘For me, no. But there must be something – something to believe in, surely?’

He drank again. ‘Of course. But we start with the essential, and then you may develop such passions and loyalties as is your fancy.’ His head came forward closer to hers. ‘Do you need Astbury?’

She recoiled a little. ‘It’s – it’s—’

‘I know. It’s all you’ve ever known. It’s your family and it’s your identity and it’s a beautiful peace, which I – who have seen horror and foulness and sin and man at his basest, and who have been that man – which I hesitate to touch for fear it will vanish. But do you need it?’

She shook her head deliberately, but there was venom in her eyes.

‘Well enough.’ He sat back, and gestured airily with his goblet. ‘Rachel, I fiercely hope that you will always have this place, and indeed I might wish to grow old here myself, and die here among your apple trees and your children.’ The goblet rattled onto the table. ‘But there may come a moment when all things are in the balance, and you must choose. It’s useful to have confirmed to yourself what is truly essential.’

‘This is not a pleasant game, Sha—’

‘Humour me. I’m old and bitter and I see my plans collapsing to dust. Humour me.’ He watched her. ‘Could you leave, I wonder? Could you really do it? Just get on a horse and ride away?’

‘Of course I could.’

His observation was more deliberate. ‘Yes, I think you could.’ Then, lighter again: ‘What would you take?’

‘What—’

‘Yes – Cromwell is at the door – you jump on your horse – you have seconds to fill your saddle-bags, perhaps a satchel – what would you take?’ She continued to talk through a scowl. ‘Food, perhaps. Money, I suppose.’

‘Good. But you’re not that ruthless. Leaving Astbury for the last time and you only think of money?’

‘I have a locket – a miniature – of my mother.’

‘Bless you for that.’

‘A few family jewels.’

‘That’s good.’ A sudden inspiration. ‘Rachel, I have a handful of family trinkets of my own. When I leave here I’d like to put them in your care – just until I return from what may be a battle.’

Very uneasy now – the game more real – she nodded.
Is this what women are supposed to do? Indulge the caprices of their men before battle?

‘Thank you,’ Shay said pleasantly. ‘That’s good. If you’ll take an old soldier’s advice, while the times are unsettled you’ll keep your few precious things close by and ready.’

She continued to watch him, warily.

Shay stood suddenly. ‘Very well.’ He smiled broadly at her. ‘Thank you for indulging an old man. There’s little enough light in my life now, and I have to be reminded of why I care for what I still care for.’

Rachel stood too, slowly, and then blurted: ‘The family Bible.’

‘The Bible?’

‘I’d take that. Father would like me to. Who we are. . . it’s in there.’

Shay shook his head. ‘You Astburys. So sentimental. But it’s a charming idea, and your father would like it.’

‘I think you’re not so hard as you claim, Sir Mortimer Shay.’ She pulled herself taller. ‘Is this uncomfortable game over now?’ Then she looked at him coyly. ‘If it means anything to you, Uncle George did not behave half so distracted as you do, even at the very last.’

Shay considered this.

‘Perhaps he didn’t see as clearly as I do.’ He stepped forward, and went to rest his hands on the lace at her shoulders, but stopped and let them drop. He searched her eyes. ‘I once said that you were the world I was fighting for. I meant it. Your spirit is strong, and you will survive. And whether I die next week or in fifty years, things that I care about will survive in you.’

Mortimer Shay arrived at Worcester by old tracks marked not in maps but in the rhythms of man – the tracks taken by sheep drovers, by poachers, by rebels, for more than a thousand years.

As he dropped down off the horse, pulling a sack with him, there was movement past a series of windows, a hurrying face, and as Shay’s glance reached a doorway Balfour was standing in it. He looked sick and somehow ashamed, and Shay’s gut kicked.

Balfour hurried forward, gave a sort of nod of the head, and stared Shay in the eye bleak. ‘Hal’s dead,’ he said. ‘Fever. Not two hours ago.’ He added, ‘I’m sorry,’ but Shay had barged past him and was striding towards the building.

Henry Vyse was laid out on a bed in the commandery, so conclusively pale that he seemed an extension of the rumpled sheets and battered pillow. Teach was sitting beside him, and turned as Shay stamped in and stood and moved aside. ‘He didn’t seem right two days ago,’ he said, ‘then yesterday. . .’ – but Shay wasn’t listening. They stepped past each other, Shay suddenly slow and unwilling to see the truth on the bed, and Teach got the same bleak stare of accusation that Balfour had. As their eyes met, Teach nodded sadly, and gently knocked Shay’s arm with the back of his fist, a tiny nudge of humanity.

For a long time Shay stood staring down at Vyse’s white face. The boy looked younger, and more beautiful, and utterly at peace. Shay could feel sentiment and suspicion of sentiment squabbling in him, and this twisting of reactions revolted him.

The beauty of Vyse’s bones and fresh skin were his mother’s, and as Shay looked down at Hester Carraway for one last and unexpected time, something died, a final door closing on a piece of his past, a particular intensity of life guttering and expiring.

Behind Balfour, Miles Teach stood in the doorway watching Shay with compassion. His hand dropped casually to his pocket, to the slender glass vial in there.

A short walk after supper, a grind of the heel, and any alternative truth would be destroyed: Henry Vyse would have died of fever, and there would be nothing left to tell the contrary.

Shay entered the Council meeting late and last, face grim and eyes distant, and everyone in the room turned, watched his dark striding progress over the flagstones. He stopped beside the young King’s chair, gave a brief nod, then strode on to his customary place against the wall. Teach was nearby, and nodded as he sat. Shay ignored him.

The Duke of Hamilton kept his eyes on Shay a few moments longer. A good man, this Shay. The men in Holland had been right. A man of few words, and sensible ones. A quality of silence that appealed to Hamilton, in this court of peacocks and politicians. And each time somehow darker, as if fate itself were taking possession of Mortimer Shay and becoming him, or swallowing him.

It was only fate now, Hamilton realized that. The return to Scotland, the jostling there, and now this risky march into England: at no point could he remember taking a true decision, being given the choice of alternatives and ignoring them. It was the destiny of the Hamiltons in this generation that they would tie their fortunes to the Stuarts, and march with them against their own kingdom. His glance shifted to the young man beside him, at the head of the table.

The things we have suffered for Charles Stuart
.

Charles Stuart had also watched the ominous man longer than was necessary. A strange man. Unsettling. Not one of his close advisers –
has he even been presented to me? Is this my world, of unknown shadow-men on the edge of my decisions?
– but always here. The man had an overpowering sense of the ominous to him, and age. The King’s attention shifted to the mouths at the table, chattering at him and about him and over him, then back to the man at the edge of the room.
I am a latecomer to a play that I do not know and cannot fully understand.

‘The worst news: Derby and the men of Lancashire are beaten quite. No help from that quarter.’

‘There may be worse yet.’

‘Or better. Granted Derby would have helped, but—’

‘Helped? We’re outnumbered two-for-one.’

‘But we can still attract men, and we can still fight and we can still win. This is the King’s army.’

‘It’s a Scottish army – God save Your Majesty – and it repels as many as it attracts.’

Skittering feet on the stones, then a young courier, with awed and hasty bow to the King, was whispering frantically in Leslie’s ear. Hamilton watched implacable; the young King with uncertainty.

Leslie said: ‘They’ve crossed the Severn. Below us. Somewhere called Upton.’ He reached for one of the maps on the table.

‘That’s not ten miles from here.’

‘They’re surrounding us.’

‘Cromwell has brought his Army down at impossible speed.’

‘Right. I don’t credit the story.’

‘If he’s whipped them all the way from Scotland this fast, they’ll be too whipped to fight.’

‘If Massey here can bring his people over with him – give us Gloucestershire – we’ll be stronger still.’

‘But can you, Edward?’

‘It’s good sense.’

‘It’s good sense but it’s brought no men. Chancers and hungry peasants. Pitchforks and broken nags. Cromwell is surrounding us while we wait.’

‘We have no choice now.’