“Me nephew? Stupid kid. Thomas.”
Again, I looked at the boy. “You stay with your aunt?”
And again, the child refused to answer. I wondered if his aunt actually starved him. Or perhaps he was frequently beaten if he said the wrong thing, so preferred to stay mute. I was guessing, but she seemed somehow unpleasant and knowing of the demon, I thought her capable of a good deal.
The sound of the fighting was fading. The victors were moving. I had no intention of following. The woman was frowning. “Cromwell is bound to win now, I’d say, though the king’s men were in greater numbers. But I reckons if he done took the bastard king, there ain’t no one left to fight against us no more.”
“God’s will?” I suggested.
Her frown turned to a scowl. “That’s proper common knowledge, lass. We knows the great Lord God to be on our side, for the bastard they calls king be a traitor to heaven. ‘Tis our beliefs wot is pure. Reckon t’won’t be no more dancing nor singing in this God forsaken land when Master Cromwell takes his rightful place.”
It had been misty with a low dripping fog throughout the early hours, but now the June sunshine had oozed through and a pale warmth seemed to please the boy. He sat upright, looking around. There were few easier ways of speaking friendship to strangers than to offer food. This was the time of the Little Ice Age, and food was scarce.
Later that day as we packed out, preparing to move on, I offered Tom a second half sandwich with home baked bread, no butter, but thick fillings of cheese. He shrank back as though I’d offered him poison, then peered hopefully over his shoulder at his aunt.
She nodded and at once he snatched the food, cramming the entire sandwich into his mouth, rescuing each crumb, and chewing slowly.
“But I’s mighty hungry too,” she said, sticking her snub nose close to mine.
I had more, but I didn’t answer since the noise around us was overwhelming. An old man, limping, pushed his way next to me. Two other women, one with a sleeping baby tucked into her shawl, and a younger man, leaning on a crutch, sat closer to huddle into the small patches of unshaded sunshine. It seemed that the sight of food attracted an immediate crowd.
The young man balanced on his crutch and asked me to help him sit. “Or t’will be other leg broke an’all, lass. So give out your hand, if you will.”
One leg had been amputated just above the knee, and was still thickly bound in linen with a blue stocking wrapped over the stump. I helped him sit.
“I’s Francis,” he said, smiling. “Lost me leg at the last fight over in Saddleworth, and it ain’t proper healed yet. But I’m living, which ain’t true for three of me mates. You gives me some o’ that food, lass, and maybe I’ll live a mite longer.”
He thumped one of my own legs, as though testing whether it was flesh and blood. I pretended not to mind, although I did. “I’m Molly,” I told him, “and all in one piece. It must be hard to lose a leg.”
The first woman nudged me with her elbow. “Don’t encourage the bugger or he’ll have you under the bushes by nightfall.”
I fiddled inside my basket, not sure I had enough to share, but brought out the bread, the cheese, and the hopeful smile. This time I even managed to give something small to bloody Agnes, and a crust to Tom.
Chapter Eight
That evening, with the small sun westering and the camp followers gathering once more around the fire, I waited for Vespasian to come back to me. We were a smaller group, most having trudged home with those family members they had been following. But others, too far from home or without a home at all, still shuffled towards hope, and lit the fire that kept them alive.
The flames gusted high against the last fading colours of the sunset, golden points flaring up against a pale lilac and a flat pink line where the horizon sank from view.
I was equally homeless, and equally a follower. But it was Agnes I was following. Tom’s father had died, but Tom did not appear moved. There was no special effort given to the information, but a limping woman staggered down with the news, and I assumed she had come from the smaller camp where the injured lay on mats while some received a doctor’s help, and others, too close to death to warrant wasted time, were left alone to die.
“You he lad Thomas, son o’ Warren Oats?” the woman shouted at one young man sitting near.
He shook his head and pointed to Tom curled next to his aunt.
The woman limped over, clutching her skirts from the mud. “You Tom Oatss?
Well, sorry, lad, but your pa died an hour or so past. Battle injuries, that is, so you can say your pa died a hero.” Just an inconvenience, perhaps.
Even I was hungry now. But then two of the boys, cheering and waving their arms, bows slung over their shoulders, hurtled amongst us, pulling the carcass of a young deer they had poached. Quickly the dear was strung up on the skewers above the fire. Its skin crackled. I just felt sorry for the deer, but I also felt sorry for the women, men and children, all of them desperately hungry. Agnes Oats no longer sat close to me, but I could see her boy crying, begging for food. I watched as Agnes slapped his cheek, knocking him backwards.
“We’s all hungry. You least, cos you ate wot that tart give you yesterday.”
But the child was still skinny as a knife blade and would need a great deal of filling up. Then I thought of tape worms. Abruptly someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I knew Vespasian was back.
The soft voice in my ear murmured, “We will walk. I shall speak, but without being overheard. There is a good deal to say.”
No one else was interested since the roasting meat and the baking bread were far more exciting than anything else, so I scrambled up, slipped my arm through his, and walked with him away from the heat of the fire and the noise of the crowd.
Parts of the battle scene lay open, its destruction scattered across the fields and the high ridge, the grass, the mud and the rocky outcrops.
In the mud, some partially obscured by thorn bushes and the leafy scrub, the dead still lay. Their blood had dried and turned black as the roasting fawn, smothering arms, bellies and faces.
One corpse hung twisted within the thorn cradle of a bush. Leaves dripped blood but the once living man now lay without legs, his crotch a jagged mass of wounds and his head almost lost.
I heaved, and clutched at Vespasian. He turned away from the rise where there was no visible sign of the battle recently won and lost the previous day, although I could hear the hoarse chuckles of the victors as they ransacked the dead, taking money, weapons, rings and boots.
Vespasian said, “Eradicating a demon without killing the man it inhabits, is sometimes a challenge, and sometimes easy. But Cromwell, the hero of this battle, holds a crouching shadow inside and his guts are swelling with it. He rages with the misery of his youth and his hatred of the king he considers vile. His fostered desire for revenge is unknown to him. He considers it rightful and needful, and thanks his god for the chance to exercise it. His convictions and puritan values are so vital to him, he believes he should rule the world. And so the demon creeps in and fosters cruelty in the name of holy justice.”
“One of our demons?” I asked.
Vespasian’s eyes narrowed, but he laughed. “Ours? Perhaps we might call it that. The growing embryo of a creature seen within our grounds amongst the trees. One of the twelve.”
“And I’ve met Agnes Oaks,” I told him. “She doesn’t seem too bad, although I admit I don’t like her. So – can I destroy the demon as you did before?”
“There is one more, perhaps the worst,” Vespasian told me. “An unpleasant lord of the land who has fostered the demon of cruelty for many years. And if we destroy these three, that will leave our home safe, for my power exceeds that of any nine remaining. Although to be sure of the destruction, you will help me greatly, little one, but I must enforce the final annihilation.”
“So I can’t be the final killer.” I was relieved although I had wanted to try. “And I can’t help with Cromwell. But
the others?”
“You, although as yet I am open to circumstances, will be the one who makes it possible for me to destroy the others. You are, as always, invaluable.”
I was surprised when he kissed me, since I knew myself filthy and must have smelled horrible. I imagined the collected sweat and the ingrained mud, not to mention the ingrained grease from pork, venison and spills of ale. I doubted I had ever stunk worse, even as Tilda. Vespasian, on the other hand, was his usual elegant and delectable figure. Yet even he couldn’t have managed a hot bath over the last few days.
Then Vespasian left, returning to the final cluster of soldiers who had stayed to clean, killing off those still lying near death, and re-routing the barrows of weapons. He would join Cromwell’s side as they rode back to London, meanwhile I trudged back to the campsite.
It was easy enough to see Agnes munching on meat wrapped in a wedge of bread, juices slipping over her hands. She licked her fingers. The boy Thomas sat watching at her knee. I dumped myself beside them and looked at the boy. “Was the meat gorgeous? So you’re not hungry anymore?”
He started to cry yet again, gulping noisily as he swallowed back the sobs. Agnes glared at me. “He ate earlier. You gived it him, whereas I had naught.” The boy shook his head but said nothing. “He eats alright for his age,” Agnes said, mouth full.
In a time of hunger and bitter loss, a freeze that killed crops and a war that split the country, I found the woman’s greed and the deprivation of the boy more simply selfish than actually cruel. But I edged my way over to the fire, and approached the large man pulling at the remains of the venison carcass. I said, “Neither I nor that poor young boy have eaten yet, sir. Is there enough left for us to have?” I smiled, more piteous than seductive, and the man paused, deciding.
“’Tis the last o’ the cheat bread.” He handed me a small wedge grubby with baked mud. “And there be gristle here, and wot’s left on the bone. There ain’t no more.”
I took what he gave me and carried it back to Thomas.
He buried nose, teeth, tongue, chin and tears in the parcel, and ate like a piglet. Agnes scowled at me as always. “You give to the boy again. But naught to me.”
“You’ve eaten well already,” I pointed out. “And so have I. He hasn’t.”
Nor had I, but this was of no importance. I wasn’t hungry. Vespasian’s kiss would feed me for a week.
I lay down to sleep, curled against the bodies around me, human warmth generated, and the boy, lips still sticky with meat juices, laid his hand tentatively on my shoulder. When I woke, he was still grunting. But Vespasian’s voice stopped me shutting my eyes yet again.
We walked, and there were no longer corpses and the mangled remains of the dead lying at our feet as we followed the higher ground and then into the shallow valley and the trickles of a stream.
Plodding, back sore and feet in blisters, I passed the hours remembering – scenery – bedtimes with Vespasian – and finally what he had told me earlier.
“The older man is Arthur, Lord Harrington. Avoid him. The demon he carries is already rich in cruelty. The man was already vile. He and the demon attracted each to the other.”
“I haven’t met him yet.”
“You will. What is meant will come to one of us. But I know nothing of him, of his home, his family, or his status.”
I had mumbled, “If you see him, remember to point him out to me.”
“And in reverse,” he’d added, “although I believe recognition will be easy since I’ll see the demon within before I see the man.”
It was easy to agree to that. “And Cromwell?” I asked him.
He told me.
Cromwell was dark with a permanent expression of dislike for the world of men, but he spoke with charity and care, his pronunciation was of the upper-middle-classes, and he paraded his education.
“While under my command,” he told his men, “you’ll not steal nor quarrel with your companions, misuse the women you meet, nor kill the livestock in another man’s fields. I have supplies enough to keep you well fed, and you’ll battle fairly in the Lord God’s name.”
Vespasian had undoubtedly raised an eyebrow. “I believe the pork roasting now has been stolen from some villager’s shed. Otherwise the supplies you provide are insufficient for either army or followers,” he told the other man.
“I’ll judge,” Cromwell snapped, “not you, sir. And you’ll not speak again unless I command you.” But it was not much later when Cromwell turned, for Vespasian walked close at his side. “I should tell you, Master Fairweather, that it’s the troopers who need food, since they fight voluntarily, and need strength to wield the pike and sword.”
And immediately Vespasian asked him, “Every army since the Romans ruled Britain, has stolen their food as they trek to the battle sight. But you lead with greater charity. What reason then? Because the Lord God tells you to fight in His name only if you preach the good fight? Or because you need your men to think it?”
Without the smile of recognition, Cromwell had told him, “It’s the good church that speaks through me, and I am neither fool nor sinner. The men will steal food whenever they can, and I know it. But I cannot preach it. They must respect me as the Lord’s agent.”
“And the dead fly off to heaven and are welcomed for their heroism and good deeds?”
Cromwell had raised both hands to the darkening sky. “Naturally. But there are yet many misunderstandings to be ironed in the new church, behaviour to be modified, and I’ll not fight for a church which fails to lead in every one of the Lord’s commands.”
“I had imagined that you fought against the king rather than for the church,” Vespasian said.
“It is the same thing,” Cromwell had answered.
“Even though the king also believes fervently in the Lord God?”
Cromwell stamped his large armoured foot and snarled. “The wrong God. A virtually Catholic God which cries out for wickedness, singing, dancing, liberal behaviour in the bedchamber, and flattering language from priest and lord with the hypocrisy that follows, being forgiveness only once the coin is passed.”
So Vespasian had prompted, “You’d pay no priest? Nor the woman who cooks for him?”
Spluttering as though the thought was a stone in his throat, Cromwell, narrow-eyed, glared at Vespasian. “I thought you a man of knowledge. You should know that coin is sinful, and that every woman must keep to her proper place. She cannot preach, nor can she criticise her husband, nor speak out of turn. I love my wife and daughter, but they know to hold their silence and obey their husband’s and their church’s commands.”
In one blinding thrust, Vespasian watched as the inner demon stared from the man’s eyes, the gleam of fire as bright as the campfire flashed between the lashes, and another face twisted, and then sank.
Vespasian’s own eyes answered the demon’s. The demon slouched back, yet remained in its reflected shadow. Softly, Vespasian said, “You’d build a church where you could pray in silence? I see the virtue of that. But would you applaud misery as you deny happiness, joy and entertainment to all men?”
Sweeping around and as fierce as a fighting man, Cromwell spat, “You’ll not question me, my man. Nor ever doubt my knowledge of God’s will.” and he turned the second time and marched ahead, disappearing into the gloaming.
It was Vespasian who smiled. He now knew which demon inhabited the man, he knew how to destroy it, and he knew when it should be done.
Satisfied, he had told me, he knew exactly what should come next. Vespasian had then strode back along the grassy bank of the stream. A rising sliver of moon floated on the water’s surface, and the tiny silver fish leapt within it, snapping at the last midges flying in the dusk. The sudden trill of a blackbird’s song faded into cloud. The sound was musical, and Vespasian remembered the absolute magic he had felt when introduced to the music of the great composers he had discovered in the modern world, and the bliss of the electrical systems by which he could eas
ily hear whatever he wished. It was Dvorak’s Noonday Witch he had last played before transmuting into the years of the civil war in England, and he still remembered the notes which had so delighted him. Now there was a leader who believed in witches and wanted them destroyed, seeing them in the heart of every woman, and who wished to condemn music, and call it the work of the devil instead of the beauty of God.
Then, absurdly, Cromwell had said, “There are demons around us, which hide within the wicked.”
Thinking on this, Vespasian had wandered the hillock back to the campsite where he knew to find me.
Yet something else had occurred as he walked the grassy crest. Striding over the rise, he had met a woman he knew, although she puzzled him in an instant before he’d understood. She was well dressed, unlike myself, and wore deep red silk and a red velvet cloak lined in soft rabbit fur.
Understanding was a bleak twist of the heartbeat as Vespasian now told me.
“You, my little one,” he explained. One thumb beneath my chin, he lifted my face to his and lightly kissed the tip of my nose, then my forehead and finally my mouth, hard and repeated.
I had asked, “Me who? I don’t know what you mean.”
“My dearest beloved,” he said very softly, “it now seems that you are already living here within a past incarnation, and you are, perhaps, a spy for the royalists. I do not know your name. But you are as much Molly as Tilda was. This is a complication I will find difficult, since if either one of you faces some great danger, I will be needed to protect and rescue.”
“I don’t have a – demon?”
He grinned. “My sweet child, you are as demonic as I dream of you within my arms and the warmth of my bed. And at heart, as angelic as you love to be.”
“But,” I thought about it for a moment, “it sounds as if both of me are on opposite sides. Does that make sense?”
“You and I,” Vespasian had grinned, “are on no side at all. But the incarnation you leave behind you in this life is clearly a supporter of the royalists. I have respect for all humanity, and that includes Cromwell, and his ideals are in some manner both understandable and sympathetic. But his housing of the demon is voluntary, the path inwards opened by hatred, bitter memories and the unwillingness to forgive.”
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