Traitor's Field

by Robert Wilton

  ‘No. I’m going to meet him.’

  ‘What can you possibly gain? There’s too much risk in it.’

  ‘I don’t see that – unless you take me for an utter simpleton. I want to see this man. Besides, the Dutch wouldn’t like us disappearing a visiting diplomat.’

  ‘This is mere curiosity.’

  ‘He is the new England. I want to know what we face.’

  Thurloe had been kept more than an hour when a servant finally beckoned him out of the waiting room. It had been a cold room, unfurnished, and Thurloe catalogued it with his other observations of the house and what he had heard of the Royalists in this city. The fewest possible servants, and those badly dressed. The economies and the selling of jewels. No one invited to dine. The British royal cause in Holland was living a threadbare exile.

  The room into which he was shown was also spartan, but there was a fire burning at least, a single log in the grate. The door closed behind him.

  The room was empty. For a moment, he was uneasy. This was no longer a land in which he represented the prevailing authority. It was a borderland, a place of exchange, where he and his Royalist opponents met on equal terms. He looked around the room quickly, seeing windows and thinking of them as exits, feeling little flutters of doubt and foolishness. What would happen if—? He was no fighter. St John and the rest of his party would – but he had told no one where he was going or what he was doing.

  The latch clicked up, and Thurloe turned to face the door, bracing himself.

  A single man stepped in and closed the door behind him, a man about his own age.

  A man with bright red hair, and Thurloe saw his own surprise reflected in the other’s face.

  Pontefract, two years before. The man burning papers in the fire. The red hair, the strange smile, and the barrel of powder.

  Red hair caught his breath. ‘You,’ he said with emphasis, ‘I had not expected. My intrepid friend from Pontefract.’ A more attentive scrutiny. ‘You, then, are Thurloe. How do you? Did those papers mean so much to you that you’ve hunted me two years?’

  Thurloe tried a bit of bravado. ‘I had no need to hunt you, or your papers, Master Paulden.’ Thomas Paulden smiled, and the memory of that strange morning in Pontefract flared brighter with it. ‘I’m intrigued that you agreed to see me.’

  ‘I was intrigued that you asked.’

  Thurloe hesitated, tried to identify why he had wanted to come, thought again of his vulnerability.

  ‘Lost your nerve, Master Thurloe?’

  ‘Wondering about a conversation in which I assume you will lie consistently.’

  ‘That’s hardly civil, Thurloe, but I take your point. And yet a man may learn from a lie, don’t you find?’

  ‘What were you so desperate to destroy at Pontefract?’

  Paulden smiled. ‘A love letter. I’d been composing it for days; couldn’t get it right.’

  ‘It seemed rather bulky for a love letter.’

  ‘That was the problem. One tries to get the precise word, and I was rambling.’

  ‘But what I don’t understand is why this outburst of. . . extreme discretion only came to you at the last possible moment – with someone like me at the door. You must have known – for hours, probably days – that the castle was going to surrender.’

  ‘I’d had it on my person for two days – one didn’t want to risk losing it in a sudden sortie or collapse. Had I found a chance to escape unsearched, I would have kept it with me. Once it was clear that that was impossible, I had to wait to find a few minutes’ privacy with a fire and powder – which wasn’t easy in the chaos of that day.’

  ‘All that for love. You thought there was so much chance of escape?’

  ‘There were ways in and out. There are always ways.’

  ‘For messages too, I think.’

  Paulden smiled. ‘You have your spies in our camps, Master Thurloe. Allow us ours in yours.’

  ‘You have a network, surely. Across the country. Ready to pass a message or give practical help.’

  Still the smile. ‘There are loyal Englishmen still, Thurloe, and more than you’d choose to acknowledge. You’ll forgive me if I take your protest as frustration.’

  ‘Loyalties shift damn’ fast, Paulden, as you’ve found to your cost. And networks may be broken or turned.’ Paulden held the smile on his lips, but his eyes were hard now. ‘The currents and connections of affinity are known. The Astbury family – George Astbury in particular. His sister-in-law’s family. Lady Constance Blythe. General Langdale.’

  The smile had weakened on Paulden’s face, and now spread again. ‘Why, these are relics of thirty years past, Thurloe. I think most of those are dead, aren’t they? Though you must, of course, hunt phantoms if it please you.’ The tone was different, and the clear dismissal unusual, and Thurloe marked it. ‘I’m pleased to reassure you that our cause is in fresher hands.’

  ‘Old hands or new, they’re hardly competent. The battle of Dunbar was a disaster for you, the stillborn offspring of your. . . cankered cause and your rotten, corrupted structures.’ Careful. In provoking him I must not overbalance myself. ‘What faith can you have in your networks now, if they’re so easily abused?’

  ‘And still you come scurrying to the Continent for support. Still Scotland waits to descend on England. You take us seriously enough, I think.’

  ‘While we win the battles, and you are confined to mere spiteful schoolboy pettinesses, we’ll tolerate you cheerfully enough.’ Thurloe wondered an instant at his own bravado. ‘The assassination of Ascham at Madrid. If backstair tuppenny cut-throats are your heroes, we may pity rather than fear you. The assassination of Rainsborough, too. Had you a hand in that?’

  Paulden’s smile was stretched thin. ‘We heard that loss burned fierce. Bit uncomfortable for you, surely. The Army’s darling, and Cromwell couldn’t trust him. My brother’s idea, since you ask. And yes, I rode in the party. Perhaps you owe us for doing you a favour.’

  ‘Your idea of an alliance between Royalists and Levellers is fantasy.’ Is it fantasy?

  ‘You will learn in time.’

  ‘Neither your scheming nor your raid gained you anything in Doncaster.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But there are other Doncasters, Thurloe, where men you think yours have not forgotten where their true interest and loyalty are.’

  ‘There was something else behind the raid, wasn’t there? It was too elaborate, too risky, to be mere impetuousness.’

  Paulden was suddenly back against his chair, watchful, and then forward as quickly with the old grin. It was the same wild face Thurloe had seen hovering over the powder barrel in defeated Pontefract. ‘Wouldn’t want you to have any false confidence, Thurloe. Wouldn’t want you to go away without learning something.’

  Thurloe held his expression; held his breath.

  ‘Among the many friends we have in every town in England, among the men we have infesting your administration, there was. . . at least one, in Doncaster. Unhappy to find that the ideals you’d used to fire all those years of war had turned out to be deceits and vanities. A man who passed us, as so many do, useful information; in his case, time by time, the plans and tactics for the siege. My brother devised a plan to meet him. A plan to give himself the run of Doncaster and let the man reveal himself. The attempt to kidnap Rainsborough was an entertaining cover for all that.’

  ‘Kidnap? Rainsborough was killed.’

  A shrug.

  ‘And if your aim was to contact your informant, you didn’t succeed.’

  Paulden sat back again. ‘Perhaps we did not, Thurloe. Perhaps we did.’

  ‘You did not. I have re-watched that morning as if from every window. You met no one. You gained nothing. Your source was just another ghost.’

  The smile was fixed, grim. ‘Perhaps, Thurloe. Perhaps you will learn otherwise.’

  The life had gone out of the conversation. Paulden roused himself to his former alert consideration of his visitor, but the momentum wa
s gone.

  Thurloe stood, and turned to leave. Paulden went to open the door for him, but instead his outstretched arm held it closed an instant, blocking Thurloe’s exit, the flare of red hair close to him.

  Once again, the voice had the strange whimsy of the confrontation in Pontefract. ‘Perhaps only my brother knows the truth. But he told me a little of his plan. And if ever a man should show a strange inclination to refer to the history of Doncaster, Thurloe, you will learn.’

  Sir Mortimer Shay in other men’s spring: a man slumped at the edge of a room, waiting; a man on a horse, crossing and re-crossing the endless moors of northern Britain.

  In the councils, oblivious to the debate and watching the divisions. Watching Leslie, the grey professional soldier; Hamilton, the fatalistic bulldog; and the young King, a beautiful youth among the dull stones and plaster, by turns bored and baffled. A young man after my own taste, I think; but this world of grim observances and earnest stratagems is not yours, is it, lad?

  Sport with his companions, watching the three lads and shooing away the grasps of nostalgia or regret. He and Teach would rehearse their sword and musket drill together, because even an old soldier must keep up to the mark, and because especially an old soldier likes to show off when he can. An occasional intimate conversation with Constance Blythe, allowing her to reminisce and telling himself it was for her benefit, feeling himself drifting into a comfortable unchangeable past. Meg’s death had left him notionally freer – as if that had ever worried him – but sexless, as if that activity felt like a habit from a phase of life now closed.

  In the mornings or the dark hours, the silly traffic of intelligencing work: the papers read, the papers written; the solitary journeys; the private signs on trees and windows; faces in scarves, and faces in shadows – always the shadows. And the meetings – in stairways, doorways, stables and taverns – exchanging the little intimacies of indiscretion: a flask of wine; a hand on a shoulder; a pose of incredulity; gold. Where necessary he used his companions: Vyse or Manders for a front; dispassionate, early-worn Balfour for the more patient work; Teach when it mattered. They knew the game they were playing, though Shay kept his plans his own.

  In the afternoons, or the evenings, sitting with one or two others – Leslie, or ancient Leven, or Teach – and naming forgotten brutal German towns and eccentric European Princelings. Old soldiers’ tales: ritual, reused, soiled. Shay had always hated the habit; it used to be a pose, to cultivate men of that sort for his purposes. Now it felt like duty: his obligation to his age.

  Then he would haul himself up onto his horse again, and trot off into another dusk or another dawn, a half-glimpsed rider heavy-wrapped against the cold of the world.

  His boots were smeared with the mud of a dozen different counties across the north and east of England. In April he plunged south through the heart of the country, as far down as Warwickshire and the sad escarpment at Edgehill, and crossed into south Wales. Thirty different beds for those thirty nights: in a grand house in Cheshire, a stubborn grey Yorkshire manor, cottages, inns, barns, mossy tree-roots, a church porch. He was checking his arrangements – the places to sleep, the places to hide, the places to leave a message or dress a wound or find a horse, the places to get a drink or a musket or a ship. He was rekindling the embers of rebellion – reminding men of duties, of loyalties, of friendships, of better times, of the attraction of a purse of money. Among the bruised and grieving loyalists of Norfolk he commiserated for last November’s fiasco, and when like mewling puppies they produced noises of defiant determination, he would welcome and encourage them and wonder at his own weariness.

  Sometimes he was at Astbury, once more the stranger coming out of the night, taking some heat from the fire, retiring to the room that was kept for him, wondering at the secrets the house still hid from him, unable to return Rachel’s searching looks. Sometimes, even when in the district, he avoided the house, stuck to the tavern on the Ashbourne road.

  In a wayside inn in Lancashire, ten hours in the saddle behind him and food a distant memory before that, he tramped heavily up the stairs to a private room. He stood on the threshold, but it was empty – a fire burning well, a chair beside it – and. . . no, a figure in darkness the other side of the hearth. He closed the door behind him, and stepped in.

  He waited, but the figure was silent. After a moment, Shay said, ‘Have you travelled far, pilgrim?’

  The figure didn’t move: between the boots and the wide-brimmed hat there was a heavy cloak, swept up over the figure’s face and shoulder.

  Shay stepped closer. ‘Have you travelled far, pilgrim?’

  The cloak swooped away from the face, a heavy bird flapping towards the warmth of the fire.

  ‘Not worth mentioning, sir. No service too much.’ The figure leaned forward, and the firelight picked out a heavy nose and a moustache to match. The jaw came forward under the moustache, and the voice said with stolid earnestness: ‘God – save – the King.’

  There were protocols for this contingency; Shay had devised some of them himself.

  But he hesitated, shook his head, and sat down across the fire. ‘Is the food edible here?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t – It should – That is, if you think it advisable – Not to draw attention, you know?’

  Shay rubbed roughly at his face, seemed to feel its wind-stung crevasses. ‘I think I’ll manage a meal in an inn without rousing the county. Boy!’ The last word was yelled, hoarse, towards the door. ‘Sir Greville Marsh?’

  Sir Greville Marsh glanced towards the door. Quietly: ‘I am, sir, and I’m proud to meet you.’

  Shay looked at the face: a fat man hollowed out by sickness and hunger, a wine-blasted nose busy with hairs and spots, the moustache shot with grey. Shay held out his hand. ‘It is I who owe you honour, sir.’ Marsh shook hands warily, as if over-honoured. ‘Our cause depends on men like you, and those of us who live freer of Cromwell’s rule should be humble before you.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not all that bad, really.’ Marsh pulled at the chair and it scraped over the boards towards the fire. ‘One lives; one lives.’

  There was a clattering on the stairs and the boy stuck his head in. Shay commanded food and drink, and waited for the door to close again. ‘Now—’

  ‘What vexes me’ – Marsh was leaning forward, conspiratorial – ‘is the new men. Oh yes. Popping up all over the county. The new County Committee, now, take that. Very efficient it may be, and I’m not saying that a little improvement wasn’t needed, but it’s got everyone’s backs up.’

  ‘Of cou—’

  ‘I know what you’ll say! Be flexible, that’s what they all say. Accommodate oneself. I’m a stubborn soul, I know it. Bend with the wind a little, I should. I do sir, believe me. I do try, I’ve tried to get on good terms with the Committee. Responsibility, d’you see? But all the changes, they upset the mood of the common folk.’ He coughed, throat crackling. ‘Rot set in under – no disrespect, sir, ’pon my word – to be honest it was in the time of His late Majesty. The old customs, you know? Now, some of the new men, the rabble-rousers, they made their names complaining at the royal taxes, but the new taxes: worse, sir, worse!’ Another cough, and he swallowed uncomfortably. ‘It trickles down, that’s the trouble. Upset the administration at the county level, and it causes problems in the village: we’ve had some very nasty little problems with the election of the constable, and with the ale-conner. There’s a. . . a tension, in the village.’

  A stew came, miraculously thick and hot, and a flask of wine, and Shay ate absorbed in the tastes while Sir Greville Marsh described his land dispute with Mr Bailey of Crossgill – ‘if you could see how he treats his oaks, sir!’ – and the continued rancour arising from an opinion that he, Sir Greville, had been obliged to give – ‘and honesty, sir, that’s what a gentleman owes to the common folk, that’s what I say’ – in the case of Tetlow, the preacher, in 1641.

  Shay finished the stew and put the wooden bowl and spoon down by
the hearth with respectful care, and took a mouthful of wine, and gave a vast sigh of animal content, eyes closed and head slumped back.

  Sir Greville broke mid-sentence for a moment, with something like concern at Shay’s behaviour. Shay opened his eyes, and narrowed them and sat up. ‘You’re a good man, Marsh,’ he said, and he meant it. ‘If the young King could see you, it would give him heart.’ Marsh bridled in embarrassment – Strange, Shay thought, I reckoned him a mere inflated bladder, but I believe he truly cares for nothing more than the good of his little hamlet – and made to speak, and Shay hurried on. ‘But I must know – the crisis is coming – perhaps a couple of months, perhaps a little more – these discontents you speak of – will the country hereabouts rise?’

  Marsh sucked in a long breath. ‘It’s diff—’

  ‘Will – they – rise?’

  Marsh sat back, frowned unhappily, a little cowed.

  Shay managed a smile, trying to take the edge off his impatience. ‘You know them, sir, what do you think?’

  Marsh nodded, confidence warming once more, and leaned forwards. ‘They’re good simple souls in these parts, sir. Loyal. And with good men at their head, well. . .’ He sat back, apparently getting momentum, and then plunged forwards again. ‘Rivers, of Littledale, he has a scheme for a handful of us – just a handful, that’s the way, you see? – a handful of us to arrest the Mayor of Lancaster on market day – Toulnson – one of the new men, and not popular – he’s on the County Committee – arrest him, d’you see? for corruption, and put up Shuttleworth in his place, whom everyone respects, all sides – and the great thing is that Rivers’s cousin is Captain of the militia in the town, and though Toulnson when he was Commissioner put a lot of his own people into the militia, at the moment John Rivers says they’ll follow, there’s been that much sharp practice with commissions recently. . .’ He hesitated, as if hoping that Shay would reset the sentence for him. ‘There we all are then: our man as Mayor; the militia loyal, and able to control the gates; we suspend all new taxes levied since the beginning of last year, pending a proper review, and freeze bread prices in the market at a penny lower than they are today.’ The voice low and urgent: ‘The old ways, d’you see? Make folk feel comfortable again – with their local habits, the prices, the preaching – declare for the King then.’ He sat back, and nodded, satisfied, as if he’d just placed the crown on Charles Stuart’s head in Westminster Abbey.