Traitor's Field

by Robert Wilton

  ‘Yes, sir. I was going to. But he’s. . . gone, sir.’

  Instinctive frustration, but then Thurloe smiled at the Captain.

  ‘Bad luck, Captain. Next time, eh?’ The Captain smiled back, uncertainly.

  I’m walking right beside you now.

  The Royalist network worked as he thought it did. Now the better he understood it, the better he would be at manipulating it.

  ‘Captain, would you come back in half an hour? I’ll have a longer list of names, and they must all be followed. You’d better find some assistants. I’ll have orders for every harbour along the south coast, and they’ll need to report back to me regularly. Those orders must go out tonight.’

  The dreams of the young Charles II:

  They say these stones were here at the time of Christ himself.

  I am tiny against them, and my life is tiny against theirs. I am a fieldmouse, hunted by scavenger birds, in the shadows of the history that these stones have seen.

  They say the heathens used them for magic; for sacrifices. A perfect circle of pillars and lintels, vast altars.

  Is that me? Another of their sacrifices?

  A week’s travelling, with its exhaustion and its muscle torture and its heart-battering encounters with the soldiers of his enemies, had brought him back to the house where it started. Two weeks there. Two weeks of rest, but longed-for rest became numbing boredom, and the steady pounding of his protectors’ failures to find a way out. Could I live the rest of my life like this? A fugitive, a non-person, an invisible being. The guilty conscience of my race, never seen but haunting them. A sudden memory of the surgeons coming to his mother, when baby Anne was sick. Optimism and then regret. Optimism and then regret. Optimism – and eventually baby Anne had died. His protectors had arranged a boat at Southampton. But it was commandeered by the navy. Portsmouth, perhaps, but they could find no contact. There was a man in Chichester who could help, but then it became clear that he could not. Bognor. Worthing. Other places he’d never heard of, and the same outcome. Unknown names floated before him and then proved insubstantial. Every afternoon a possibility, an enthusiasm; every morning a disappointment. Now another haven, and the same rhythms. At night, the cramped and stifling hiding hole, generations of fugitive priests teaching him their devotion. During the day, the heathen stone circle, safely away from the house.

  I wish I could become one with these stones.

  The stones towered over him, impervious to history, ageless. By afternoon the stone against his back was warm, and the grass seemed more comfortable than most places he’d slept in the previous month.

  I wish Juliana Coningsby were here.

  The face of Thomas Scot lowered itself into Thurloe’s vision, and watched him uncertainly. Thurloe finished the note he was writing, and looked up.

  Scot was perched on the edge of a chair. ‘You are ploughing your own furrow, Master Thurloe.’

  Thurloe shrugged. ‘As Tarrant pointed out’ – Tarrant shifted somewhere behind Scot – ‘the Council of State’s order overtook my little efforts. But I’ll keep trying to do what I can to help. I’ve been collating reports from the south coast.’

  ‘That’s good, of course.’ Scot’s whine was uneasy. ‘We all want to succeed.’ The beak leaned forward. ‘We all work together in this.’

  Thurloe looked at him, and at Tarrant, and back again. ‘Exactly as you have taught me, Master Scot.’ He glanced down at the papers. ‘I’ve identified some likely Royalist sympathizers – the ones they’d really trust – and—’

  ‘How?’

  ‘And I’ve had them watched. Tighter checks on ship movements, and I’ve got reports of attempts to charter ships. Nothing certain, of course.’ Tarrant was still looking for a chance to interrupt, but Thurloe kept on. ‘I think there may be a pattern. I think we chased them out of Dorset. There was a report of the King near Salisbury. I think they’re moving eastward along the coast. Southampton and Portsmouth too big, too military – too much risk for them. I think they tried in Emsworth’ – he touched a paper with one finger – ‘but failed, around the end of the first week in October.’ Another paper, another finger. ‘I think they’re into Sussex now. I think they failed again a day or two later, in Chichester.’

  ‘What does this give us?’ Tarrant. ‘You’re talking about miles of uninhabited coast. There must be dozens of coves; God knows how much empty beach. They’ll wait for darkness or fog, and—’

  ‘Brighton,’ Thurloe said. ‘Two or three men among hundreds, and one ship among many.’

  The George Inn in Brighton, freshly but badly whitewashed, and clean enough. The landlord was a young man already wearied by the struggle to survive. ‘But that’s—’ and a hand clamped over his mouth and drove him back against his shelves, and half a dozen mugs juddered and fell, and a dagger was pricking his throat. The attacker glanced anxiously over his shoulder as the door opened, relaxed as he saw who it was, and turned again to the panicked face close in front of his own.

  The new arrival saw the scene, saw the empty room, threw the bolt across the door and strode down the steps and across the room. ‘What have we?’

  ‘Our host thinks he’s recognized someone.’

  The landlord felt the heavy hand distorting his mouth, felt the sharp pain of the blade in his throat, and watched mesmerized as the new arrival came closer with eyes that stared at him and never blinked.

  The face thrust in, so that there were three of them intimate around the blade and the muffled mouth. The landlord’s eyes were wide and screaming.

  ‘A lucky evening for you, landlord.’ An old face, impossibly worn, with dark dark eyes that reached into him. ‘My friend is going to take his knife and his hand away, and as long as you stay utterly silent he’s not going to cut your throat. I’m not going to cut your throat either. Even if you breathe a word of who you think you’ve seen.’ A flicker of a frown as the words registered. The hand and the blade dropped, hovered near him. ‘You think you know your guest, don’t you?’ A panicked shake of the head. ‘You know him, and that might earn you a purse of gold. But you don’t know me, do you?’ Frowning, desperate for sense and desperate for escape. ‘You never will. I’m not the man who’ll kill you. But if you breathe a word of who you think you’ve seen, I’m the man who’ll hunt down every last member of your family, be they one or one hundred years, and gut them. I’m the man who’ll burn every building you try to take a minute’s rest in. I’m the man who’ll tear your clothes from you and leave you alone on the beach, more alone than any man has ever been, and wait for the seagulls to pick you to death. And you’ll never know who I was.’ He stooped suddenly, and the landlord felt his stomach heaving.

  The old man stood, with a mug in his hand, and replaced it on the shelf. ‘Take a glass of wine with my friend here, landlord, to celebrate your luck.’ He turned to the other: ‘My contact’s watched; this will have to do. I have final arrangements to make.’ Then he was gone, and the landlord’s knees began to buckle.

  The dreams of the young Charles II:

  Another bleary awakening, another hand across my mouth, another set of tired earnest eyes staring down into mine. I am so exhausted it will kill me, and that will be relief. The weariness crouches behind my eyes, the nausea; if they take me will this end?

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Yes Majesty. Quickly now.’

  ‘There’s a boat?’

  ‘Not here. We have horses ready.’

  ‘The King! They have him to earth!’ Scot and Lyle and Thurloe up and staring at the soldier hurrying in.

  Tarrant was shortly behind. ‘Where?’

  ‘In the town! At the Whale.’

  Pulling on coats and boots – reaching for weapons – Thurloe snatching at a list of ships due to leave Brighton – jostling out into the street – even Thomas Scot trying to run – and hurrying through the midnight mud with torches held high. ‘How was it reported?’

  ‘It’s everywhere!’ There were more shouts now, m
ore figures shifting in the gloom as they came near the Whale tavern.

  Thurloe’s blood was up, he could feel his heart drumming in him, wondered at seeing the King close up, wondered if somehow he might be the one to. . . and then something caught in his mind, and he slowed, dropped a pace behind the others. He felt the silliness of his excitement, and immediately afterwards there was doubt. He hurried after his companions, grabbed at the soldier’s arm. ‘How was it first reported?’

  ‘I – I don’t – it’s everywhere! I heard – someone had come in – they’d heard—’ and then an explosion and as the darkness roared they were stumbling backwards on instinct.

  Silence, and then movements and shouting again, men picking themselves up from the mud, clumsy black acrobats in the torch-pricked gloom, complaints and questions. Next to the Whale was a low wooden building, a barn or a storehouse, and smoke was belching through cracks and holes in its skin, hanging and glowing fierce in the orange light.

  It didn’t take long to batter in the door of the little building, already damaged and now assaulted by boots and musket butts. Tarrant and Lyle were pressing in, Scot staring anxiously, Thurloe hanging back, following more slowly.

  What is really happening here? What am I not seeing?

  The building was empty, except for a few last strands of straw burning themselves out, and the body of a soldier, blackened in the explosion but not so ruined as to disguise the savage cut in his throat.

  It silenced them, and as the news spread the men outside quietened too. Lyle stomped out, and began barking orders: a perimeter, a search. Then a shot from nearer the sea. An incoherent shout. Another shot.

  An urgent voice from someone: ‘The jetty!’ And Lyle and Tarrant were hurrying after the man.

  Thurloe followed, felt his heart kicking, and then caught himself again. What is really happening here? What am I not seeing?

  The jetty was a long spindly finger, sloping up out of the shingle and stretching out into the darkness, on ramshackle wooden legs. At the end of it, just beyond the end of it, the sail of a ship gradually filled with wind, ghostly in the night and edging away from them. ‘Stop them! Hold that ship!’ Tarrant and Lyle thundering up onto the jetty, Thurloe following with long grim strides; hesitation from the two men on the jetty, standing over another body, then they were racing along the jetty again with shouts and drawn pistols as the last rope dropped from the boat.

  Thurloe stumbled, an unexpected drop in the shingle, down on one knee and pushing himself up, but now there was a figure near him, a dark shape low on the beach, but not low because it was up and driving towards him. He recoiled, stumbled again and it saved his life. As he fell the outstretched blade stabbed through the last flutter of his coat and he was sprawled backwards on the stones. He gaped up, a large figure standing over him, a dextrous flick and the man had altered his grip on the knife and Thurloe waited for the plunge and knew he was dead.

  More shouts, boots on the shingle, and the man hesitated, looked up and around, and Thurloe’s focus shifted for an instant from the blade to the face above it.

  And knew it. The face in the portrait at Astbury. The man on the horse at Nottingham Castle.

  More men were crunching around on the shingle now, musketeers hurrying onto the jetty, a rowing boat being dragged down to the water. But the man had gone, and Thurloe lay flat on his back staring at the stars and trying to believe in the face.

  Invisible in the darkness, his horse’s head cradled against him to soothe it and muffle its breathing, Shay heard rather than saw a troop of horsemen clattering into the village of Shoreham, felt their dust billow around him.

  He feared that he knew the direction they were going, and he was right. They would not find his contact at home, but it was clear that his contact was known.

  Subtler movement near him. ‘Shay, I congratulate you.’ An earnest, exhausted face and a hand thrust into his. Shay felt his whole body sag and sigh. ‘The grandest thing. Honestly, I had never thought we would manage it.’

  Out at sea, the pale flicker of a sail showed in the dawn.

  Something kicked in Shay, some stubborn relic of duty.

  He would need support. But there was no one left now. The last relic of the old world. Except Teach – he would have to send for Miles Teach.

  He shook his head. So old; so weary. This is not done yet.

  Tarrant and Lyle had successfully stopped a French smuggler returning home with a cargo comprising a pair of runaway lovers. Before they had even started their interrogation of the Captain, Thurloe had troops of cavalry going east and west with named contacts to find and arrest. But the ship Surprise had already slipped out of Shoreham five miles to the west, and the completion of victory had disappeared with her.

  Thomas Scot was exhausted by an unaccustomed night of action, and grieving. ‘I cannot allow that a hotch-potch of peasants and rebels has defeated us.’

  ‘We’re hardly defeated, Master Scot.’ Thurloe’s voice was quiet, steady. He felt alive; he felt himself, despite the frustrations of the night, at last coming into a kind of synchronization with the world. ‘Charles Stuart’s run away, and he may be more convenient as an exile than a martyr. Your work will endure.’ Scot didn’t look as if he believed him. ‘But this was no accidental collection of rebels. It’s a network. Controlled by one man. One very extraordinary man, I think.’

  Tarrant was scrabbling for a place in the conversation. ‘What do—’

  ‘His predecessor was George Astbury, who died at Preston. Perhaps you knew him, Master Scot.’

  Scot was frowning. ‘Astbury – of Astbury House, yes? I knew him, but only for a – a genteel busybody, on the edge of the old King’s circle.’

  ‘I suspect he was a better man than that. But he was nothing compared to the man who took on the role – the role of Royalism’s chief intelligencer.’

  ‘You have a name, Thurloe?’ Tarrant, doubtful but interested.

  Thurloe nodded. ‘Shay. Mortimer Shay.’ Scot’s eyes went wide. ‘Kin to Astbury, but with a history and daring that few men in England could match.’

  ‘Shay!’ Scot was feverish. ‘But he’s dead, surely. These many years. He was a notorious rogue in the old days; practically an outlaw. He can’t be alive. He can’t be in England.’

  ‘I saw him in Nottingham in ’48. I saw him here not three hours ago. And I’ve felt his presence many times between. I rather think I’ve been exchanging letters with him.’

  ‘You’ve what?’ Scot and Tarrant echoing.

  ‘He had me as his dupe, right up to Dunbar.’ Thurloe looked down, and the others did not see the smile. ‘Since Dunbar, I fancy I’ve had his measure.’

  Scot was watching him with a kind of awe; Tarrant was still grappling. ‘But – surely that’s trea—’

  ‘Tarrant, we delivered the victory our masters wanted. But this war may not be done. Shay is still loose in England, and I doubt he’s done fighting.’

  ‘You have a way into this network, Thurloe?’

  Thurloe felt the papers inside his coat. These are mine. . . Then there was illumination on Tarrant’s face: ‘Well, there’s one definite link, isn’t there?’

  Thurloe’s stomach lurched.

  Shay had allowed himself three hours’ sleep, when clouds over the moon had made it too dark to ride with even barest safety, and when exhaustion threatened to pull him off his horse in any case. Three unconscious hours in a ditch, and then he was up with the dawn and away northward again.

  He’d got the King away; the Parliament men would be seeking vengeance. And the man Thurloe seemed to know something of the Comptrollerate-General now, seemed to know its systems.

  He hurried on, by villages and muddy tracks, the old paths of England. The country was alive with Parliament’s soldiers, those who’d been hunting the King and those still picking up fugitives from Worcester. Every town meant checkpoints and sentries, and after all that had happened even the slightest suspicion could kill him.

&n
bsp; That seemed to matter again.

  The network of the Comptrollerate-General was a passive thing; when not called or used, it disappeared back into the fabric of English life. Thurloe and his soldiers would have trouble finding any part of it, and could make little of it if they did.

  But there was Astbury. Thurloe had been there. Something had led him to the Comptrollerate-General, and George Astbury and Astbury House were the most likely. Astbury couldn’t disappear.

  Thurloe couldn’t get rid of Lyle and Tarrant, and their shadows cantering beside him through the evening felt oppressive. He’d had one attempt at blithe dismissal of the relevance of Astbury House, a passing attempt at suggesting alternative lines of activity, but he knew that to say more would only increase their suspicion of Astbury – and of him. They knew of the house, and Lyle had pointed out how close it was to Leek, where the courier they’d tracked from Doncaster three years back had disappeared. So now they hurried north as a three, and Thurloe felt like an escorted prisoner.

  And what am I?

  The thought of Rachel faced with Tarrant and Lyle, the bitter and the implacable, was nauseating. But the frustration of the young King’s escape still kicked at him. For all his cleverness with misleading letters and fake news-sheets, the network of the Comptrollerate-General still eluded him, hidden threads no doubt crossing his path even as he rode, watching him from behind these night hedges.

  Rachel had chosen that world, and she was somehow part of it. It was a world he had to destroy.

  The three shadows jogged onward under the moon.

  Shay came at Astbury across country, down out of the hills. His horse he left a mile away from Astbury lands, and he went the rest of the way with the dewy grass brushing at his knees and his eyes fixed on the first buildings of the estate.

  He trudged dull-headed, an instinct of mission moving him forward when consciousness could not. His thighs started to feel damp as the dew soaked through, and it wakened him a little.