Traitor's Field

by Robert Wilton

  ‘Good soil is it, Jacob?’

  Jacob made a noise which Shay took for agreement.

  ‘A few generations of Astburys adding to the mix, eh?’

  Jacob liked this. ‘Aye, sir. ’Tween them and the dung he’s nice and rich.’ A watchful smile. ‘Family are mostly up at the church. But there’s a dozen or more dogs hereabouts; couple of servants maybe. And, uh. . .’ He scratched his nose.

  ‘That soldier. Came to see George last autumn and died.’

  Jacob looked at him again. ‘Aye, sir. ’Sright. Out in the orchard.’

  ‘We’ll all get there, eh Jacob?’ The agreement noise. ‘Jacob, you helped George burn some papers. Just before he left for the war – that last time.’

  Nothing from Jacob.

  ‘Was there a book among them? Large book – like a ledger?’

  The old eyes were pale and sharp, and they watched Shay a moment. Not remembering, but deciding. ‘No, sir. Th’weren’t.’

  Shay grunted, indifferent. ‘Well. I’ll go and pick out a plot for myself, eh?’ But Jacob was off, his latest protégé cradled carefully in his hand.

  Jacob the phlegmatic. Jacob the lettered. Shay turned and watched him go. Jacob ruling the garden, collecting rare deliveries from across Europe.

  Next to the Jug Inn in Stoke, where Astbury received his correspondence: an apothecary’s shop.

  Jacob the gardener: another glimpse of how George Astbury had run his affairs?

  Sir, the [assume crowns, from context] of the Kings of England having previously been found inside the Palace of [assume Westminster, from context], and taken privily and securely to the Tower, [presumably Oliver Cromwell] now begins to think that they should be destroyed utterly, that they offer henceforth no temptation nor possibility of a re-crowning of any King in England. [Presumably Cromwell] is also jealous of the money that may be gained for his cause by the mere value of the gold. The timing of this destruction may not be long hence, although [presumably Cromwell] will seek to have his view endorsed by his confederates, such is its magnitude.

  [SS C/S/49/56 (LATER DECYPHERING)]

  At this time, the Widow Carroll kept a house in St Mary’s Gate, in Derby, with her nieces. St Mary’s Gate was one of the unmarked borders of the town, between the affluent centre and the slums beyond. It was a street of trade, of bustle, of the ebb and flow of rich and poor, fine clothes brightening the mud and every kind of accent to be heard haggling; so the Widow Carroll and her nieces lived unremarked, although the nieces might fetch a second glance in their regular visits to church.

  Derby neither knew nor cared whether there had ever been a Mr Carroll, or the exact link between widow and nieces. A set of women living alone must find some convenient tale or other and, after all, the establishment was intended precisely for the temporary escape from family bonds. At the Widow’s, reached by any of a number of alleys and then a discreet side door, a man might find exultation, inspiration or obliteration, a memory or a forgetting, or just a few minutes of warmth in the night-time of the world.

  Michael Manders was an occasional guest. In visits to the Widow’s he had passed from ill-disguised ignorance to a confident pose of bravado, and he would tell select acquaintances that it allowed him to pursue his more appropriate romances without unseemly urges complicating them. The Widow’s had been one of his first destinations on his return from the dream-like rescue of the two strange old men at Nottingham Castle, a chance to recapture his certainty and his poise, and several months later it had more than done its work.

  Coming downstairs into the under-lit parlour, groin aching cosily and the last of a goblet of wine in his hand, he found the Widow waiting for him as always. As always the suggestion of a curtsey, and then she was passing him his cloak. After the cloak, the hat, and as he took it Manders noticed a fragment of paper protruding from under the ribbon that circled the crown.

  A little stab of confusion; an innocuous paper snake in this paradise.

  His eyes shifted up to the small impassive face of the Widow, but hers were down. Why would she—? Who would know—? Instinctively he started to speak, but she had turned away, and what would he have said anyway?

  Manders was suddenly uneasy in the place, a flush of innocence or piety lurching in him, and he hurried out and away. He got well clear, the hat still clutched in his two hands, before he pulled the paper from under the ribbon and held it up under a lantern.

  A small square of paper, folded once. On it a single word: ‘Shenley’, with the number 1 below it.

  The arcane message made the discomfort worse. Manders stared at the mad puzzle a moment longer, then crumpled and thrust it into a pocket and hurried from the alleys into the more familiar part of town.

  A life: John Blakiston was born in Sedgefield, in County Durham, and baptized in Durham Cathedral, where his father held a post. But from that bewildering splash onwards, Blakiston and his father would only move apart on matters of faith. Blakiston senior’s resistance to the newer religious teachings put him in harmony with his King, but in growing disagreement with his son. John Blakiston’s success as a young man of business – in textiles and then in coal – made him increasingly impatient with the conservatism and hierarchism of his father and the other men of influence in the locality. Puritanism started as a practical and psychological comfort to Blakiston, and became a growing conviction. The influence of his relationship with his father on this trend is only speculation, as is the influence of his wife, an older widow who brought into the relationship a merchant’s fortune and a strong reforming belief.

  Increasingly influential in his region, and opposed to the tendencies of the King, Blakiston was a Member of Parliament in the early 1640s and then Mayor of Newcastle in 1645: a man of wealth, a man of prominence, and a man in accord with the times. It was a surprise to no one when he was one of the first to sign the King’s death warrant.

  By June of 1649 he was in his mid-forties, a man of stately reputation but still fit and active. It was accordingly more of a surprise when, having eaten his usual hearty midday meal and set out for his usual walk afterwards, John Blakiston was found under a tree, his face locked in a torment, dead.

  His death was ascribed variously to a heart attack, to shock, and to the work of demons peculiarly active in the north-east that summer. Such are the times.

  The times are also of rumour, and suspicion, and such a chatter of papers as no human society has known before. Thomas Scot held a paper in each hand, and he presented the first to Thurloe and Tarrant.

  A crumpled page – read, crushed in anger, and then re-smoothed.

  Those who followed Blakiston’s pen into infamy, shall follow his soul into damnation.

  [SS C/T/49/22]

  ‘The surgeon said it was natural.’ Tarrant didn’t offer it as contradiction, merely the only related fact he could find.

  ‘Cut off a man’s head, he dies,’ Scot said sharply; ‘that’s natural. Cut his throat and he bleeds to death, naturally. Poison him and he dies, and that’s natural too.’

  He handed over the second paper.

  To all Gentle-men who have shared BLAKISTONE’s deeds and dreams: this levelling is not that for which we fought a war, nor is it that for which we killed a King. More shall fall as he. Signed, Mark Anthony.

  [SS C/T/49/23]

  ‘This one hardly makes sense,’ Thurloe said.

  ‘Royalist assassins make sense,’ Scot snapped back. ‘We have trifled with these traitors for too long.’

  Tarrant produced a noise from his throat, of agreement.

  ‘One of these can’t be true,’ Thurloe said quietly. ‘And since it’s unlikely that they’d be circulating at the same time by accident, I’m somehow less convinced by both. Perhaps Tarrant’s surgeon was right after all.’

  Scot’s head dropped closer, the nose and jaw jutting forward. ‘You do concede that Blakiston is dead, do you, Thurloe? You do concede that there is someone out there circulating these threats?’ He stood agai
n, as if suddenly repulsed. ‘And you know what effect these will be having around the town.’ He turned and stalked away, Thurloe nodding thoughtfully and watching him go.

  ‘Old man’s unhappy.’ Tarrant said it with a strange pride of knowledge, and an expression that made it then an accusation. He leaned closer. ‘Because he doesn’t like these conspiracies.’

  ‘Mm.’ Thurloe was deliberately avoiding Tarrant’s face, and comparing the two papers. ‘Also, presumably, because he too signed the King’s death warrant.’

  Thomas Balfour at dice: a compact and silent rock at the table, hands moving minimally and mechanically, eyes flicking around the faces of the others, then down to the dice. Ivory eyes that jump and then settle, the pupils hard and fixed: aces.

  He felt the stiffness in his neck, and the first drifts of wine-fog at the edge of his brain. He’d been here long enough, now. Not too much longer. He was up, but hard-fought and barely, and soon he’d get reckless.

  Patter and rattle and click across the table. Good to be a dicing man: a game of mental stamina, an experience of intensity, a world for serious men only. A fellowship of lonely concentrating men. Vyse, he knew, was scared by the dark disreputability, and the cheerless focus made Manders uneasy; they would never accompany him here.

  Patter and rattle and click across the table, his eyes jumped after the dice, and he reached for his wine. Some unnatural catch in the movement, an extra touch of confusion on the margin of his brain – enough; he set down the goblet without drinking – and then felt, distinctly, the pull of a hand reaching into his pocket.

  Eyes momentarily wide and hard, and then calculation: How well do I know this place? How well do I know these men?

  He sat back; resisted the urge to reach for the violated pocket. The wall was close behind him – unwindowed; he could visualize it – and the only two spectators were across the room. The dice chattered again, but he was oblivious. The only movement in his widened vision was a servant, leaving with a tray.

  Patter and rattle and click across the table, and he stood, gave an empty gesture of reassurance to the few eyes that had watched him, and followed the man out. The door gave onto a muddy yard, the servant trudging across it towards an outhouse with the tray ill-balanced. Come at him from the side? More chance of being seen. How to follow? Balfour set off across the yard after his man, trying to match the timing of the paces but making his own longer. At the outhouse, at the door, with that tray, he’ll be more distracted. Across the yard, a fierce clutch at a shoulder and the servant wrenched round and the tray slewing against the wall and clattering and squelching into the mud and Balfour’s forearm slamming the man back against the wall and a knife-point at his throat.

  ‘I’m a charitable man,’ he hissed, ‘but at my own choosing. I’ll take it back or I’ll take your tongue.’

  A high choke: ‘What— I took – I took nothing!’ The blade-point pricking the skin, and a yelp: ‘Before God! Check – check!’

  What had been in the pocket, after all?

  ‘A stranger – paid me a shilling – if I put a paper in your pocket!’

  Balfour switched hands on the knife, felt for the pocket, felt the paper inside. Eased back half a pace, and pulled it out. The man took his chance and bolted, stumbling and sliding across the yard and away into the darkness.

  Back on the edge of the dice room, unwatched, Balfour unfolded the paper next to a lantern. A single word: ‘Cross’, with the number 3 written below it.

  He collected his cloak and his meagre winnings, and left, confusion and then half a smile.

  Henry Vyse was early for his customary rendezvous with Manders and Balfour, and he was pacing and impatient in the church porch when they arrived one after the other.

  ‘You’re late!’

  ‘I was exact to time.’ Balfour. ‘You were hasty, Hal. What sport today, gentlemen?’

  ‘Wait!’ Vyse again. ‘I have to tell you – the strangest incident. . .’ The others turned back to the porch, studying the pale excited face in its gloom. ‘Yesterday evening, I went to St John’s folly, for – well—’

  Balfour: ‘For a liaison. We know.’

  Manders, face full and hearty: ‘Ah, sweet Charlotte! It is still sweet Charlotte, is it not? The fairy princess of Rounceby Hall?’

  ‘Well, I don’t—’

  ‘Charlotte Adair. We know.’

  ‘Great Gods, Vyse, if I’d been at her this long I’d have—’

  Vyse lurching forward, hot and hand on dagger: ‘If you even think that thought Manders, I’ll cut your throat.’

  ‘Steady, old fellow. A thousand pardons if I’ve sullied the dream.’

  ‘She didn’t come, anyway.’

  ‘Ah. Sorry for you there, old lad. Her sister, now—’

  ‘Listen, damn you! Time by time she is unable to come, and she – well, she leaves a small note – in a place known only to us.’ A jovial Manders opening to speak, then Balfour’s hand on his arm. ‘There was a note. And a damned sweet one it was too. But inside it – slipped inside it – there was another paper.’

  Balfour, colder now: ‘For an old sovereign, Hal: a single word, and a number.’

  Manders suddenly on edge: ‘You too?’

  Vyse was wide-eyed. ‘You both had notes?’ Two nods, and Vyse took a breath. ‘But I’ll take your sovereign, Tom. Mine has two words.’

  Balfour nodded once. ‘Very well then, gentlemen.’ He shrugged. ‘We match notes, I propose.’ A glance at each. ‘I give you “Cross 3”.’

  ‘“Dusk July”.’

  Finally Manders, with one cautious lick of the lips. ‘“Shenley 1”.’

  ‘But it makes no sense!’ Vyse was disappointed.

  Balfour shook his head. ‘Neither singly nor together.’

  Manders held up a ponderous hand. ‘Seems likely enough.’ The hand was still poised, as if to sanctify the moment. ‘The month presupposes a day, and the numbers give it to us; dusk reinforces the idea of rendezvous. You’re sure this isn’t from the Adair sisters, Hal? The date would be the 13th or the 31st.’

  ‘We’d need a place. And Shenley Cross is more likely than Cross Shenley.’

  Vyse: ‘Had your notes torn edges? One, at least?’

  Three crumpled scraps, smoothed and held neatly together.

  ‘There it is, then.’

  ‘Pretty enough.’

  Balfour looked up. ‘I think we know from whom this comes, gentlemen, do we not? A message would come to us, and we’d not know how or from whom.’ A glance at each again. ‘But we’re obliged not to hesitate.’

  Thurloe found Thomas Scot in his cubicle, gaunt and angular and surrounded by the shelves of papers and books that were his world, a desiccated insect tapping around a dead trunk. As usual the large ledger was open in front of him, among the papers on the desk.

  ‘Master Scot.’ Scot looked up, high eyebrows sharpening the expression. ‘Master Scot, I’m trying to understand our enemies.’

  Scot sat back in the chair, and nodded. ‘Very good, Master Thurloe. Quite right.’ For a moment he looked rather forlorn, and then the energy flashed back into his face. ‘Do not underestimate them; do not weaken for a moment. We must – we must – eradicate them.’

  He nodded, agreeing with himself. More softly again: ‘Understand them. Yes, that’s good, Thurloe.’ The old face screwed up. ‘But – my counsel to you – do not try to understand too much.’ His eyes dropped away. ‘Too much understanding creates. . .’ – he waved a brittle hand vaguely near his head – ‘an overburdening. . .’

  Thurloe waited. Eventually he said, ‘Who are they? How do they work? At Nottingham I saw recklessness turned into brilliance, a man who could make a whole garrison conform to his design. At Pontefract I saw a man prepared to die for a paper.’

  ‘They have their networks. They have their mercenaries – debased men prepared to sell the ruthlessness they learned in the European wars.’

  It was a crude simplification, and they both knew i
t. Thurloe just looked at Scot, almost sadly. Scot pursed his lips, and glanced down at his ledger.

  Thurloe pressed on. ‘And the man whom we chased from Doncaster? The man who escaped?’

  ‘A courier.’ Thurloe breathed out silently. I am becoming a little adept at these lures. ‘A sprat. Of no consequence, but he might have told us a thing or two.’

  ‘Part of a chain of communication between the Pontefract garrison and the outside.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I would like to read our reports on Pontefract, please.’

  Scot’s face pulled back over his teeth, and on an instinct his two spread hands covered the pages in front of him. ‘I understand, Thurloe. I do. But too much information. . . in too many hands. . . it creates misunderstandings. Tensions. I would not want any mistaken assumptions, which you might make in all innocence, to further trouble my relationship with Master Cromwell, who has my fullest support, as a favoured instrument of the Creator himself.’

  Thurloe watched him, and looked again at the double page under the fingers. Columns: short references to the left, text to the right. A summary of reports?

  ‘You will have to rely, Master Thurloe’ – Scot was sharp again, in eye and tone – ‘on your own considerable talents, won’t you? You will bring us something fresh, perhaps.’

  Thurloe nodded. ‘I’ll try, Master Scot.’

  Shenley Cross, dusk on the 13th of July, three shadows sheltering under a tree, hunched in cloaks and silent. An insidious apprehension – of wrongdoing, of unworthiness, of the cold.