Traitor's Field (86 page)

The news of the chaos at Astbury House had sent Thomas Scot hurrying there, fed intermittently with uncertain and confusing reports of the chase across the middle of England.

When he arrived in the first grey hours of the morning, he found a solitary old man in the heart of the wrecked house, sitting on a chair, a large book clutched to his chest.

Scot knew the power of books, of words, and snatched it out of the feeble hands.

The cover was ancient – thick and gnarled. In one discreet corner of it there was a seal – a heraldic badge with which he was not familiar. He began to turn the pages.

The flyleaves were as old as the cover; stained and blotched. But then there was a break in the binding, and pages of a different quality, with the unmistakable form and language of God’s holy book.

Thurloe said: ‘You’ve distracted me with baubles before. What did I really let go into that boat, aside from that molten relic of history?’

Shay looked up from the table, where he had just placed his own pistol and the dead soldier’s. ‘A book; the book. The secret register of the Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey. And a lovely and remarkable young woman.’

‘Crowns, and secrets, and beautiful women. Have we not had enough trouble?’ Their eyes caught. ‘And the other crown? The unmelted?’

‘Oh, that’s around somewhere. In case you, or someone, should find a crown useful again.’

Thurloe smiled cautiously. ‘And you,’ he said, ‘are Sir Mortimer Shay.’

‘And you are John Thurloe.’ Shay extended his hand. Thurloe watched it, and his glance returned to Shay’s face. He transferred his pistol to his left, and slowly reached out and shook hands.

The abandoned chapel closed around them, dank. It was barely twenty feet long, half as wide, but the ink-black corners and niches were too much for the single lantern. On the plain table – who had needed a table here, and why? – it huddled for security between the two men. On all sides the charcoal slabs ran with marsh water.

Shay said, ‘Your wife’s uncle was Overbury, I think; who died in the Tower in James’s time.’ Thurloe frowned, surprised; then nodded. Shay let out a long ‘Mm’ of thought, and seemed to consider the tangent for a moment.

Thurloe waited, but nothing came of it. ‘We’ve been in correspondence two years now, I think,’ he said.

‘I had come to assume so. I. S. is too weak a cypher, by the by. George Astbury did the like.’ Shay pointed a heavy finger. ‘I think it’s something in you learned men – you can’t miss a chance to be clever, and it makes you stupid.’ A great sniff. ‘But you had me after Dunbar. I relaxed too much in my little game. Always a mistake, and this time it cost us our position in Scotland.’

‘As you had played me before Dunbar. Was that your intent? Merely to manipulate a little?’

‘Just a sortie of opportunity, at first. Throwing a line into a dark stream. Nine chances of ten, my letter would never have been read. But you got it, and replied to it, and so I took the chance to spread a bit of misinformation – and make the little graves of the Levellers throw big shadows.’

‘You had us worrying and searching ourselves a year longer than we needed.’ Shay nodded cheerfully. ‘But there was more. You were trying to learn about Pontefract, and Doncaster, and the Levellers there – just as I was.’

‘Yes. J. H., the melancholy Royalist, was a useful masquerade.’

‘There was a real Royalist source, though.’

‘No. Just me.’ Shay smiled consolation.

Thurloe frowned stupidly. ‘Scot was getting reports out of besieged Pontefract. I know it.’

‘Low-level gossip, perhaps. A penny or a meal or a whore, for a hungry sentry.’

More earnest, confused. ‘No. A very particular source. Recorded faithfully in Scot’s private ledger.’ The memory of his wild ruse, the frantic flicking through the pages. ‘I’ve seen the summaries. And since before Dunbar, Scot has had direct reports of Royalist strategy. The decision to come south into England; the decision to march for Worcester rather than London.’ Thurloe watched the old gaze lengthen, lost. ‘You didn’t suspect this? This wasn’t what you were about?’

Shay’s face was grim. 

He glanced up, and away again. ‘All along, I wondered what so obsessed George Astbury. Why he spent his last days looking towards Pontefract. Why he was so haunted.’

‘He knew something?’

‘He knew something was wrong.’ Shay's eyes were hard, wary at the revelation. ‘And for some reason he was focused on Pontefract and not the Scottish army coming south for the King.’

‘And your masquerade – J. H. – was intended to learn more of this.’

Have I lost my way quite?
‘I thought I was confusing you. I ended by confusing myself more.’

Thurloe was feeling his way. ‘The idea of a Leveller agent in Doncaster, in contact with Royalists. After Dunbar I thought it merely a ruse in your letters: trying to unsettle us about the Levellers, trying to learn more of Pontefract and Doncaster.’

‘It began as both of those things.’ Shay shook his head. ‘I came to realize that it built on truth; perhaps that was why it was powerful. One of your soldiers in Doncaster was sympathetic to us. The idea of an alliance was nonsense, but this man didn’t like the direction General Cromwell was taking this country. He learned about the contact between Reverend Beaumont and Pontefract, and he used it to send messages in.’

‘There was definitely a source? Your man Thomas Paulden – I thought he was bluffing me – said that the raid, when Rainsborough was killed, was an attempt to meet this man.’

‘It was an attempt to rescue him.’

Thurloe’s mind was screaming.
Surely this would be madness. The Leveller hero?
‘This makes no sense.’

‘It must do, because it happened.’

‘But what happened? You must know more!’

Shay laughed once, hollow. ‘I’d hoped you did.’ A smile. ‘Between us, perhaps.’ And Thurloe nodded, wary, faintly entertained.

‘So, royal Pontefract is besieged, by your Army based in Doncaster. There is a strong Leveller strength in the regiments there, centred around the man Rainsborough.’

‘A Leveller hero as well as an Army hero,’ Thurloe put in, trying to reassure himself. ‘The great orator for the new liberties.’

‘And an inconvenience for your Generals, yes? The Generals he spoke against in the Leveller debates. And someone in Doncaster is unhappy enough with the direction of Army and Parliamentary policy that he decides to give information to the Royalists in Pontefract, trying to help them last out, perhaps, until a relieving army can reach them from Scotland and turn the tide in the north. Yes?’

‘Yes. Scot had logged a report of someone in Doncaster passing information out.’

‘Because there’s also a spy in Pontefract communicating with Scot’s people. And he learns that Pontefract is getting helpful messages from Doncaster, and he reports it.’

Thurloe remembered the Adjutant in Doncaster. ‘There was an argument. One of Scot’s men came up from London – Tarrant – asking questions. He had a – a confrontation with Rainsborough.’

‘Wait. There’s a step missing there, surely.’

Thurloe nodded, slowly. ‘There’s a report missing, in fact. Thomas Scot had torn a page out of his own private ledger, because for some reason he decided that one report, perhaps two, couldn’t be allowed to stay in the records.’

‘Scot’s sympathetic to the Levellers. Most likely—’

‘Most likely the report was from Parliament’s spy in Pontefract confirming that the man communicating with the Royalists was a Leveller.’

Shay watching Thurloe intently: ‘Then what?’ 

Thurloe rehearsing the faces and the habits: ‘Lyle, in Doncaster, would have got the report. He’d have known its significance. No doubt he normally shared this material with Rainsborough, the local commander and a man to whom he was sympathetic. Not this; he rushed this to Scot in London, very alarmed. Scot was shocked, and eventually destroyed all reference to the report, and sent Tarrant to Doncaster to investigate.’

‘And there’s not much to investigate, but he says enough to Rainsborough to provoke an argument. Perhaps’ – Shay looked at Thurloe’s wary face – ‘perhaps he suggests that there’s suspicion coming close to Rainsborough himself. And the next thing—’

‘Is the raid on Doncaster.’ Thurloe nodding, hurrying on: ‘Supposedly an attempt to kidnap Rainsborough, but actually an attempt to rescue the source.’

‘Who must have got word out that he was under suspicion, in danger.’

‘Which suggests he was well aware of what Tarrant was saying.’

‘Wait.’ One of Shay’s fingers flicked up. ‘We’re supposing it’s an attempt at kidnap, but we’re only supposing it’s an attempt at rescue too. Because what actually happens – stripping away all the chaos and the stories—’

‘Is that Rainsborough was killed.’

Shay nodded. ‘An agent is supposed to be rescued, and Rainsborough is killed. By William Paulden, or more probably by Austwick.’

‘But why would one of—’

‘Wait.’ The whole hand held up now, Shay grasping for sense, scrabbling to remember a conversation in a lightless ditch. ‘There’s confusion, chaos. According to Austwick, he finished off Rainsborough, but the first wound came from Rainsborough’s Lieutenant. In the chaos, he shot Rainsborough.’

‘Wait – you mean it wasn’t an accident? Rainsborough’s own Lieutenant was trying to kill him?’ Thurloe hissed his frustration: at his own confusion, at the madness of his world. ‘Scot and Tarrant and Lyle learn that one of their Leveller friends is a traitor. Tarrant comes to Doncaster and threatens Rainsborough. The traitor decides he needs to get away. A Leveller Lieutenant attacks Rainsborough, and he dies.’

Shay whistled. ‘Your friend Scot is more efficient than I thought. He set this Lieutenant as watchdog on Rainsborough, and assassin?’

Thurloe was staring into one darkened corner of the chapel. ‘But how did the Lieutenant know? I can’t believe it.’ His head was shaking slowly again. ‘Did Rainsborough do something – say something – suspicious?’

‘Blackburn said that William Paulden had told his comrades to look for a signal.’

‘A word of recognition from this agent?’

A slow nod from Shay. ‘Miles Teach thought the man was supposed to contact Thomas Paulden, at the north bridge.’

‘Thomas Paulden said his brother was giving the chance for the man to reveal himself anywhere.’

‘Austwick described Rainsborough using elaborate words; a curse – intestines of Satan, or something.’ Thurloe was trying to read it all: the faces of Scot and Tarrant and Lyle leering into his mind; an attempt to conjure up the scene outside a Doncaster inn. Shay pressed on. ‘And immediately afterwards the scuffle started, and the Lieutenant fired at Rainsborough.’

‘He’d been told to watch Rainsborough presumably, and then he finds himself in this mad escapade, being dragged off by Royalists, and then Rainsborough says something unlikely, and the Lieutenant understands that Rainsborough’s identifying himself as the source.’

Shay’s faced screwed up in discomfort. ‘It seems too. . . There’s someone else who would have wanted the source dead, isn’t there? After all, who actually killed Rainsborough?’

‘But the Lieutenant makes sense. For Scot and Tarrant, it would have been the end of their dreams if Rainsborough had been known for a traitor. The Leveller hero; their hero. Tarrant would have got the Lieutenant crazy with anticipation, waiting for Rainsborough to betray himself.’ Shay was watching him, scratching his jaw discontentedly. ‘He did betray himself, and the Lieutenant saw what was happening, and was so outraged and so tight wound that he reacted immediately, even though it might cost him his own life.’

‘Which it did.’

Thurloe nodded. ‘He was killed immediately.’

‘Yes,’ Shay said slowly. ‘By Teach.’

‘Yes,’ said the echo. ‘By me.’

Miles Teach stepped out of the blackness behind Thurloe.

Shay had known he was there, but it still had his heart pounding. Thurloe’s heart all but exploded in his chest, spinning him round and thundering the blood through him.

Teach had his pistol out, levelled ready.

Shay said, ‘My apologies, Thurloe. I assumed he was here and I didn’t mention it. I’d wanted him along in case of difficulty, and I knew this was where he’d come if nowhere else.’ The words were steady, neutral. ‘This is Miles Teach; about the bravest fighter your General Cromwell has ever faced. Teach, this is Thurloe. About the cleverest man I’ve ever faced.’