William Falkland 01 - The Royalist (5 page)

‘The manacles, Falkland,’ said Warbeck. As I put them on I told myself I was doing this for Caro. For our future. That there would be other chances and better ones and that I owed it to my children to wait and take them as they came. And as I told myself these things I knew that Newgate had made me into a coward.

The wounded deserter lay on his back. He lay where he’d fallen and barely moved. Once I was chained, Warbeck lowered the musket and turned. I caught a flash of moonlight on steel as he drew out a dagger.

‘Warbeck!’

He stopped. The moonlight caught his eye and I knew I’d been wrong about him. His voice might sound syrupy, but Warbeck was no jester. He was a cold killer. ‘Falkland?’

‘At least give him some words.’

‘Words to a King’s man and a deserter?’ He shook his head and spat, turned away and then paused again as if struck by some second thought. ‘God will judge each and every one of us, Falkland, when our time comes. If it troubles you to see a papist pass without his last rites then give them.’

He moved aside and I shuffled out of the stable. I moved so slowly that I feared the man would be dead before I reached him, but as I knelt he was still breathing, moaning his harsh, ragged breaths. Warbeck’s ball had hit him in the back and he was lying on the wound. I couldn’t see exactly where it had taken him but the steady trickle of bloody foam that issued from the corner of his mouth told me enough. There was never a coming back from a wound like this. I started to search his pockets for a cross or a rosary but all I found was a small pocket Bible. The man lifted his hand and caught a hold of me. I suppose he thought I was looting him.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked him. He croaked something and more frothy blood ran out of his mouth. At the third attempt I thought I understood him. ‘Rowland?’

He blinked. Perhaps he nodded a little. Something in his face said yes.

‘Do you have a cross, Rowland? A rosary? Something you need?’ I’d hoped he might show me but he shook his head and pulled me closer.

‘No . . . popery,’ he said and reached for the Bible. As I handed it to him he opened it and the moon caught the words across the front.
The Soldier’s Pocket Bible
. His quivering fingers turned to the last page and then back and he returned it and pulled me close again. ‘I was with . . . Northampton’s . . . Regiment of . . . horse at . . . Naseby,’ he said, forcing out each part of every word with an effort. ‘Read to me.’ He stabbed at the book with a bloody finger. I looked at the page to which he pointed.

‘“The Lord is a man of war”,’ I read. ‘“Jehovah is his name. Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in its power: thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. And in the greatness of thine excellency thou has overthrown them that rose up against . . .”’ I stopped. The soldier had fallen quiet. He wasn’t yet gone but somehow his breathing was eased. But I couldn’t go on. I had a terrible sense of myself lying in his place, my Caro standing distant over me, black in mourning, her brilliant grey eyes hidden behind a veil of lace. And beside her my son and daughter, John and Charlotte, John all dressed up in a Venice red coat with a pike in his hand, Charlotte weeping into her arm, her long black curls quivering in a harsh, cold wind. I shivered; and then I felt Warbeck behind me.

‘Enough, Falkland,’ he said. ‘Leave him with me.’ His voice was oddly gentle as he drew me away and took the Bible from between my fingers. He returned to the dying man and crouched beside him, pulling back the man’s collar. Now Warbeck, too, read: ‘“Seeing that thou, our God, has punished us less than our iniquities deserve, and hast given us such deliverance as this, should we again break thy commandments.”’ He paused and put the Bible aside. The knife flashed once in the darkness, opening the dying soldier’s throat. He read on. ‘“I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I have sworn and I will perform it, that I will keep thy righteous judgements.”’

He leaned forward and ran a hand over the dead man’s face, closing his eyes. It was a mercy, that killing.

CHAPTER 5

I came to Devon on the back of a pack mule we found wandering in a farmer’s razed field. For the first hours of the day I rode with my wrists bound behind Warbeck, but he kept sneaking looks over his shoulder as if he thought I might try to throttle him. I’ll admit the thought crossed my mind more than once. The pack mule had been doing well for himself, finding clean shoots among the black stalks, but he wasn’t difficult to capture. I supposed he’d been part of a baggage train attacked and scattered. If so, he was fortunate to get away. I’d eaten my own share of horsemeat in the winters I’d spent in camps, and even a scrawny pack mule like this would have been a delight to a company of ravaged soldiers.

The snows had started to fall in earnest. We seemed to be travelling with the clouds following behind – Warbeck fancied London was entrenched in white now, that the Thames might never thaw again – and as we came into Devon they caught up. By midday the sky was thick with it and for much of the afternoon we were obliged to seek shelter and wait out the worst. I could see how this infuriated Warbeck. By evening the land was so white that it seemed almost day. The hills took on the ghostly glow of winter and we rode on until we came to a small hamlet. Here Warbeck found us quarters with an old spinster who, ignoring the prying eyes of her neighbours, found us more food than we’d seen in the whole of our journey so far and beds more comfortable than I’d had since Oxford. In return we listened to the story of her life – for Warbeck a torture but for me a sweet salve. I was glad to know people still wanted to go on living, even if these truly were the end times.

The hamlet sat on the banks of the River Exe, somewhere downstream of Tiverton, a town whose name I knew. In the morning we followed the water down. There were fish in the river and we boiled soup. It’s remarkable how good food can restore one’s vitals, a lesson every soldier learns but one that still feels like a revelation every time. By the evening Warbeck had changed our course, following a second river, this time against its flow and to my mind very much back the way we’d come. I began to wonder if he was lost, if the snow had confused his bearings. It was a greedy thought and from it grew others – that there might yet be another chance to escape. I was, perhaps for the first time since my imprisonment, daring to think that I was
strong
again. I wondered how long the feeling would last.

The river wound through two steep hills. I might have been in Yorkshire; and now and then, when a rise or a valley struck me as oddly familiar, the terror of those old battles forced itself upon me as surely as a bloodthirsty soldier upon a captured whore. The hills were thick with hawthorn and gorse. The snow had settled deeply on top of the branches, making winter crowns. There might have been men hiding in any one of a thousand different holes. I said nothing but Warbeck was sensing it too. He kept throwing looks into the forest.

‘We should have made camp by now,’ I said.

Warbeck nodded. ‘We’re almost there.’

Where the river twisted it was starting to freeze. By morning, I thought, it would be a ribbon of ice winding to the sea. We rounded another bend and I saw lights for the first time. We were closer to Crediton than I’d thought and it was, in my opinion, a foolish place to winter an army where roving bands could get so near without being seen. As we drew towards it, I saw that fires had been built along a low ridge. Below them, a hundred other lights pierced the darkness. It might have been a fancy but I thought I could hear the sound of men cheering. Warbeck drew his horse to a stand and jumped down, sinking to his shins in the snow. As my own pack mule teetered to a stop, Warbeck approached with surprising caution, considering how tightly I was bound. I managed a smirk.

‘You have to ride in a free man, Falkland. If there’s a rumour among the common soldiery of what you truly are then you might not come out of here very well. I shan’t weep, but Cromwell has a purpose for you and would not be best pleased.’

‘I thought half the New Model were royalists you’ve turned,’ I said.

Warbeck didn’t answer. He took hold of my hands and teased at the knot. His fingers were numb in the cold and it seemed to take forever to untie me. ‘Are you ready?’

I looked over his head at the fires. Now that my eyes were accustomed to the land, I saw the spire of a church and the outline of rooftops standing underneath it. ‘I’m ready.’

‘Then get off the mule.’

I threw him a curious look.

‘You can’t ride in there looking like that,’ he scoffed. Then, with a certain hint of disdain in his voice, ‘Take the horse, Falkland. I’ll be right behind.’

The camp began long before we reached the outskirts of Crediton itself. There were tents as I had seen in countless other winter billets – but there were wooden huts as well, things hastily erected and then extended out with annexes of timber and cloth. Snow grew in tall banks around the constructions and it looked as if some were miniature palaces of ice. And the size of it! This was more than a camp. This, I knew long before we reached the border fires, was much more than an army.

A single man was keeping watch over the fires but apart from him I saw nobody. We came through the border like ghostly horsemen. No one noticed us or cried out. No one saw us, yet still I had the terrible feeling we were being watched. It had been with me since we came out of the valley and now it got worse. Sounds came from among the huts and tents, snores here and there, a rattle of laughter, the muffled talk of soldiers that’s much the same everywhere and with every army. Except here there
was
a difference. Now and then, though the snow muted everything, I thought I picked out a strident voice reading what could have been a passage from the Bible. There was something missing. Singing. No one was singing.

Abruptly, close enough to startle Warbeck’s horse, a door slammed from one of the huts and a man came stumbling out, hurriedly pulling down his breeches and muttering at the cold. He was so intent on the urgency of relieving himself that he didn’t see us right away, though we were no more than a dozen paces short. When he did, I’ve never seen a man’s face change so utterly. He stared at us, bewildered at first to see two men riding in in the dark; and then a moment later his jaw dropped and his eyes bulged and his demeanour changed to an expression of an abject fear more profound than any I ever saw, even in the condemned of Newgate. He turned and opened the door and flung himself inside, tugging at his breeches as he did. As we passed I heard him speak in an anguished cry:
He’s here
. We passed the hut and I looked back and saw the door ajar once more and pairs of eyes peering through the opening, though they withdrew quickly enough when I met them. The door slammed shut again but they knew I’d seen them.

‘What was that about?’ I asked Warbeck but he seemed as bemused as I. One thing had been clear to me, though. When that man’s face had turned to fear, he’d been looking directly at me. He’d barely noticed Warbeck at all. I wondered if we’d once faced each other in battle. Had I ever been face to face with my enemies and warranted such terror? I found I could not see how. If I’d ever made such an impression on a man, would I not remember? And even if I had, what unlikely twist of fate would cause our paths to cross again in such a way?

Warbeck signalled me to a cluster of huts hunched around what might once have been a farm worker’s cottage. I nudged the horse as he directed. Paths had been cleared through the drifting snow but more kept falling and the horse moved slowly. We stopped some distance away and dismounted. The doors of the farmhouse were open and the light of oil lanterns spilled out. Warbeck led his pack mule on and saw a young boy appear from a neighbouring tent; he beckoned and the lad came to take the horses away. He couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve years old.

‘Boy!’ Warbeck called after him. ‘Where will we find Black Tom?’

The lad was hesitant.

‘Black Tom?’

The boy paused a moment more and then tipped his chin at the open farmhouse and hurried away. Warbeck smiled grimly. ‘Well, Falkland, here we are. You ask about him often enough. Now you get to meet him. Good luck.’ He laughed and led the way into a welcome haze of warm, smoky air and a hubbub of men and talk that stopped dead as we entered. Officers – men in red coats with hair cropped close – stared at us. I met their gaze one by one as I looked about. The farmhouse had been gutted, most of it opened out into a single room with a great fire smoking in a hearth. At the head was a single chair and in the centre a table that, I hazarded to guess, would be fed to the fire before long. It wasn’t hard to deduce which one of them must be Fairfax. He was younger than I’d imagined, younger than me by five or ten years. He had hair of jet black and a swarthy complexion. A scar, not old but not fresh, crossed his right cheek. It was certainly a new world that would put this sort of man in charge of an army. I didn’t know what I thought of that. I supposed it must have seemed a delicious insult to put a man like Black Tom at the head of the New Model.

‘Warbeck,’ he said, though his eyes had settled to meet my own. ‘This is him, is it?’ Fairfax had the strongest Yorkshire brogue I could remember. The sort of voice that still strikes ridiculous terror in me, even though it’s as dull and simple as most Yorkshiremen are. He didn’t wait for an answer but nodded to himself, then turned to his officers and shooed them out with expansive waves of his arms. They filed out past us, one by one, looking us over, most with expressions utterly devoid of interest, a few with a sneer or a shake of the head. That much I’d expected. What I did not expect were the ones who hurried past nervous and too afraid to meet my eye. One flinched away when I moved, and I was left to wonder what struck them so, like the man from the hut who had seemed to know me. I was no officer with some great string of victories to my name, nor the perpetrator of any great mercy or atrocity. Who was I, I wondered, to be so feared?

Apart from Warbeck still sloping around the edges of the room, we were alone. Fairfax moved slowly to the chair and sat, fingers steepled beneath his chin as he regarded me. His look was shrewd and calculating. ‘So you’re the intelligencer. What did Cromwell tell you?’ he asked.

A serving boy appeared with cider and rabbit meat. He placed it on the table and then disappeared. Fairfax nodded to it, indicating that Warbeck and I should eat, though there were no other chairs on which to sit. Warbeck seemed troubled by this but six years of soldiering had taught me to take food when food was to be had. I might have sat on the table itself in other company. As it was I stood, and as I ate and drank I told this Fairfax all that Cromwell had said. I left nothing out. I knew he was testing me.

‘It isn’t uncommon that an army would have deaths in winter, Master Falkland,’ mused Fairfax when I was done.
Master
was certainly his way of speaking down to me. To him I was royalist filth. ‘In an army of this size I wouldn’t care if we lost three hundred men. Soldiers quarrel and fight. They whore with the wrong girl and catch a disease. Accidents occur. And I’ll be honest, Falkland. We haven’t the food to last out the winter without forage and plunder.’

‘Yet here I am.’ I’d had the same thoughts, yet somehow Cromwell thought his entire army under threat. There had to be something then, didn’t there? And this Fairfax, something about him needled me. ‘There was a manner about these deaths,’ I said.

‘A ritual to it,’ said Fairfax. ‘That’s fair to say. How is it they were drawn to Cromwell’s eye?’

I opened my mouth to reply that I didn’t know, then saw that no answer was expected. The question was for Warbeck, not for me, and it wasn’t a question at all but a rebuke. ‘There must be rumours,’ I said.

Fairfax snorted, ‘Master Falkland, an army without rumours? That’s like a dancing girl without the itch.’

‘All the same,’ I said again, ‘here I am. I’m told there have been desertions.’

He nodded. It was a curt nod that said: Cromwell sent you; I did not
ask
. ‘Aren’t there always? They’re nothing Cromwell needs concern himself with. Men who haven’t the stomach to fight in my army have no place here.’

I thought of the two men who had rescued me from the pantry. They’d deserted from the New Model. Had they come from here? They’d been seasoned soldiers, not scared raw recruits yet to be bloodied.

All of a sudden Black Tom grinned. I wasn’t expecting it and it made a curious picture with the big sabre scar on his face. ‘We’ll look after you, Master Falkland. We’ll provision you and put a roof over you. More than you’ve been used to. Do as you are required to do. You’ll see soon enough that all’s well.’

It sounded the same as prison to me. I hoped the food was better.

‘There is even entertainment, if it’s entertainment you’re after.’

‘Entertainment?’

‘These boys can’t be drilled all winter long, Master Falkland. They’ll have tournaments. Duels. Contests. Anything to while away the hours.’ There was a change in him now. His arms were open and the smile had turned into a beam that took over his entire face. It was like a strange mockery of an innkeeper working his hardest to win trade, and I wasn’t sure of the jest. ‘Come with me, Master Falkland. I’ll see you and Warbeck to your quarters.’

Black Tom pulled the fastenings tight on his leather jerkin and swept past me towards the open door. ‘If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d rather see the camp,’ I said.

‘The camp? Tonight?’ In the corner of my eye I saw Warbeck give an imperceptible shake of the head. But I’d been told what to do by that sickly sweet impostor for long enough. The sooner I got out of here the better. I meant to be done with this and return to my Caro. Cromwell was concerned as to the well-being of his army, was he? I wasn’t sure why I should care, nor why he thought that I might.

‘With respect, sir, I didn’t come here for entertainment,’ I said. ‘I didn’t come here for tournaments or contests. I came here because I have a task. As soon as it’s done I can be gone.’