The Bleeding Land

by Giles Kristian

  ‘Silver plate,’ Boone announced. ‘Bring me what you have and I will speak favourably for . . .’ he looked around at the abandoned stalls, ‘this nest of vipers.’

  ‘You are here to pillage God’s House?’ The minister was incredulous, his brows knitted together, mouth hanging open.

  ‘The King’s army needs arms. Powder and shot,’ Boone said tiredly, as though he’d had to explain this numerous times before. ‘Loyal men need food in their bellies to fight the rebels. Horses need fodder. Who should pay for the defence of the realm if not the people it protects? You who prosper in the munificent shadow of your sovereign lord.’

  Through the gaps that opened and closed as these riders controlled their mounts Mun could see the rest of Boone’s men. They had dismounted, some holding the horses whilst others scavenged amongst the deserted stalls, stuffing all manner of goods into sacks. It was an odd sight to Mun’s eyes, these gaily plumed gentlemen rapaciously plundering vegetables and grain, linen, leather and iron work; buckles, strap ends and spring clips.

  Their curiosity having to some extent overcome their fears, the folk of Hucknall Torkard had been drawn back to the fray and now watched helplessly from the edges of the market.

  ‘You are common thieves!’ the minister said, trembling with rage now, his hat clutched over his chest. ‘You shall not enter my church, Nehemiah Boone. For you are a disgrace to your master. You are a coward, sir!’

  In the shadow of his broad hat Boone’s eyes bulged and his lips pulled back from a predator’s teeth.

  ‘Hold your tongue, traitor!’ one of Boone’s men yelled, drawing his sword and spurring his mount forward. The minister shrieked and raised his arms across his face just as Mun stepped in front of him and grabbed the beast’s bridle, twisting it down and to the right. The horse screamed and sidestepped and came crashing to the ground, trapping its horrified master. He was screaming now, his leg likely broken, and some of the other riders dismounted to help their friend whilst Boone hauled his belt-hung carbine up from his right side and pointed it at Mun.

  ‘Holster your carbine, sir!’ someone ordered. It was Emmanuel, who stood behind Boone pointing both of his wheellocks at the captain.

  ‘No, Emmanuel!’ Mun yelled, too late, as another of Boone’s men came up behind Emmanuel and smashed a sword hilt into the back of his head. Emmanuel staggered and fell to the ground, one of the pistols discharging harmlessly.

  ‘On your knees, dog!’ a massive corporal with a bright yellow feathered plume yelled beside Mun. The Hucknall folk had seen enough and were scurrying off, like rats from a kicked nest. Then a grey-haired, raw-boned soldier stepped in and rammed the butt of his carbine into Mun’s stomach, doubling him over. Desperately Mun tried to suck air into his screaming lungs, then Yellow Plume cracked a fist against his temple and all of a sudden blows were raining down on him and it was all he could do to keep his feet as he clasped his fingers at the back of his head, his forearms taking some of the blows aimed at his face. But then hands gripped his arms, hauling them wide, and instinctively he dropped his chin to his chest as a fist hammered against his forehead and he heard finger bones snap. The next fist slammed into his mouth, bursting his lower lip in a spray of blood.

  ‘This is a fine horse, Captain,’ a soldier said, taking hold of Hector’s bridle and patting his thick neck.

  ‘Take your hands off him,’ Mun snarled, blood flying from his mouth.

  ‘Shut your mouth!’ Yellow Plume said, ramming a fist into Mun’s tortured guts.

  ‘Teach the cur what we do to enemies of the King!’ someone hollered.

  ‘In the name of God, stop!’ the minister yelled despite the wicked point of a rapier that was wavering an inch from his throat. ‘Show some mercy, you devils!’

  Something struck Mun behind his knees and his legs buckled but he did not hit the ground because someone still gripped him by the shoulders.

  ‘Don’t go down,’ a big man growled into his ear, ‘they’ll kick you to death.’ Yet, he was too weak to try to stand again and so sagged pathetically against this soldier’s huge chest, dazed and bleeding and beaten. He was hazily aware of Nehemiah Boone dismounting and striding towards him, removing his riding gloves, which he clasped in his left hand whilst balling his right.

  ‘Turn him round, O’Brien,’ Boone commanded, at which Mun was brought face to face with the man.

  Boone stood before him and glared for several heartbeats, then grinned savagely, drew back his arm across his chest and released it, cracking the back of his open hand across Mun’s right cheek. No breaking of knuckles for Captain Nehemiah Boone.

  A flash of white-hot light filled Mun’s world, then scalding pain that made his head spin.

  ‘You’re a bloody fool, Captain,’ he spat, ‘if you think this is the way to bring men to the King’s army.’ Behind Boone two of his men hauled Emmanuel to his feet and restrained him, though he looked barely conscious.

  ‘And what would you know, sir?’ Boone sneered, raising his hand to strike again.

  ‘Knock the cur’s head off, Captain,’ the big corporal growled, gripping a shortened but wicked-looking halberd.

  ‘Hold, Captain!’ someone yelled from the back of an enormous mare that was white as fresh snow and trotting neatly up the market square towards the church. A large hunting poodle, as white as the mare, ran alongside yapping orders of his own. ‘Stand off, Captain Boone!’

  Boone spat on the ground by Mun’s feet, then stepped away, gesturing for the men holding Mun to do the same. They did and Mun fell to his knees; his head sagged so that phlegmy blood dangled in strings from his nose and mouth to his chest. He wanted to curl up on the ground, to cradle his pain-racked body and address each hurt, giving each the attention it craved, but his pride would not let him. And so he grimaced and climbed to his feet, expecting another blow.

  ‘Who are you?’ the newcomer asked, gesturing at Mun to lift his chin so that he might see his face better. For some reason he did not understand, Mun obeyed and lifted his head, locking eyes with this handsome rider whose curls and feathers mirrored his horse’s elaborately luxuriant mane. And then, despite the pain and humiliation and the hunger for revenge, Mun laughed, at which Boone and his men looked to each other with confused frowns and shrugs.

  ‘You find something amusing, sir?’ the man on the white horse asked, a half smile playing at his own lips.

  ‘I am sorry, Your Highness,’ Mun said, ‘it’s just that I had not thought I would meet you quite like this.’ He dragged a sleeve through the wet gore on his face, his tongue probing for broken or loose teeth.

  ‘You know me?’ the handsome man asked, cocking his head to one side.

  ‘Your Highness, yes I know you,’ Mun said, relieved that he had lost no teeth. ‘You are Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland and General of His Majesty’s Horse.’

  Prince Rupert smiled. ‘My family call me Robert le Diable. Rupert the Devil,’ he said, his accent German in the main but cut with other flavours too, ‘which is altogether much less of a mouthful. A soldier’s name. For a soldier.’

  ‘Your Highness’s men have acted most dishonourably,’ the minister announced, ‘no better than common brigands. They are thieves and scoundrels.’

  Prince Rupert waved the accusation away with a gauntleted hand. ‘Save your hyperbole for the pulpit, sir. We are at war,’ he said, glancing at the unhorsed man who had been dragged off to the side and was being plied with wine to numb his pain. ‘What should be of more concern to you is my uncle’s disappointment that so few of your townsmen have come to help him put down this vile rebellion. If you are slow to do your duty, we who obey our king must take matters into our own hands.’

  ‘Your Highness!’ the minister blurted, but was silenced by the Prince’s raised hand.

  ‘Well, sir,’ Prince Rupert said, turning back to Mun, a note of intrigue playing across his lean, long face. Mun guessed the Prince was but a year or two older than he. ‘Who are you and why di
d you attack one of my men?’ Those lips that seemed to be fixed in a knowing smile twitched again. ‘I dare say it was you that unhorsed that poor fellow. Or was it your friend with the wheellocks?’ He thumbed back towards Emmanuel, who was bleeding from his head. ‘I will not believe the good minister here put a King’s man on his arse.’

  This day has not gone as planned, Mun thought, beginning to wish he had forgone his prayers for a few pints of cool ale in the Dancing Bear.

  ‘My name is Edmund Rivers, Your Highness,’ he said, ‘and my father is Sir Francis Rivers, a friend of His Majesty the King your uncle, and recently made a Colonel of Horse. He serves in the King’s Lifeguard.’ The Prince’s keen, intelligent eyes widened then, but in his peripheral vision Mun saw Captain Nehemiah Boone scowl.

  ‘My uncle’s show troop,’ the Prince said. ‘Fine-looking soldiers.’

  Mun ignored the barely veiled insult. He had had enough trouble for one day.

  ‘MacCarthy’s leg is broken, sir,’ Boone said. ‘This . . . gentleman took hold of his bridle and pulled his horse down upon him.’

  Prince Rupert’s dark eyebrows arched. ‘Did he indeed?’

  ‘That man was about to strike me down,’ the minister put in, pointing at the trooper with the broken leg whose pain-racked face was sheened in sweat. ‘This young man, Edmund Rivers, saved my life.’

  ‘He broke MacCarthy’s leg!’ Boone protested. ‘Could have killed him.’

  ‘Nevertheless, Captain, a neat trick to bring down a horse of that size. But then my uncle has spoken of Sir Francis Rivers’s mastery of manège,’ he said, looking back to Mun. ‘It would appear the son has inherited the father’s gift with horses.’

  ‘It takes but little skill to lie a horse down,’ Mun replied, thinking how unlikely it was, though not impossible, that word of his father’s love of manège should have reached the Prince’s ear. ‘I am sure Your Highness knows horses as well as any man,’ he said, tasting blood but not wanting to spit in the Prince’s presence.

  ‘It is true I have inherited my mother’s affinity for animals,’ the Prince said, glancing at his white dog, which was sitting obediently, looking up at its master. ‘Did you know, Edmund Rivers, that I have domesticated a hare and taught it to follow me at heel?’

  ‘If only your men showed such dutifulness,’ Mun dared, glaring at Captain Boone.

  ‘Insolent dog,’ Boone snarled.

  The corner of the Prince’s mouth twitched, his brown eyes fixed on Mun.

  ‘Perhaps you could demonstrate whatever skill you do possess, Master Rivers,’ he said, gesturing over to Hector who was still in the custody of one of Boone’s men.

  ‘Your Highness?’ Mun said, wincing at the pain in his side that sharpened with each breath. He would have put money on it that that damned carbine butt had cracked a rib.

  ‘You have robbed me of a good man, Rivers,’ the Prince said. ‘If you prove yourself as good as or better than MacCarthy, I will take you into my troop as recompense. You will serve under Captain Boone. I shall arrange it with your father.’

  ‘I don’t want him, sir!’ Boone blurted.

  Again that flap of the royal hand. ‘Well, Rivers? Will you show us some rare horsemanship? Or have Captain Boone’s . . . attentions left you too sore to ride?’

  Mun could no more ignore that challenge than he could demand the King’s General of Horse have his men return to the folk of Hucknall Torkard all that they had stuffed into their bulging sacks. And so he stood taller, gritting his teeth against the many pains.

  ‘With Your Highness’s leave,’ he said, bowing neatly.

  Prince Rupert smiled and nodded and Captain Nehemiah Boone curled his lip in disgust. Released by a royal nod, Emmanuel winced and rubbed the back of his head and watched. MacCarthy cursed and moaned and drank to numb the pain whilst the other soldiers continued procuring assistance from the traders and merchants and good townsfolk against the Earl of Essex’s rebels. The minister protested boldly, if carefully, but was ignored by all except the Prince’s white poodle, Boy, who yapped at him tirelessly.

  And Mun Rivers whispered in Hector’s ear, mounted with practised ease, and prepared to ride.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘THEY SAY HE is impotent,’ Matthew Penn said, ‘as likely to get it up as Trencher here is to be made the next Marquis of Argyll.’ Will Trencher’s mother was Scottish, which accounted for Trencher’s self-professed ability to put any man down with just one punch, for the Scots were proper fighters, born warriors, or so he was fond of reminding them. Penn took one hand off the reins and turned it palm up as though weighing something invisible in it. ‘Must have balls the size of crab apples and twice as sour,’ he went on, grinning devilishly.

  ‘Which explains why the bastard always looks so bloody miserable,’ Trencher said from the saddle of a heavy, plodding mare, chosen, he claimed, for her big heart and great strength, but really, Tom suspected, because she’d come cheap. But Trencher had a point about Essex. Now that Tom thought about it, he had never seen the general smile. He had heard the story of how the earl’s marriage to the flighty Frances Howard, daughter of the Earl of Sussex, had been annulled on the grounds of non-consummation. Essex’s second wife, Frances Powlett, had turned out to be no more faithful and some whispered that she’d ridden further than her soldier husband, though not on any horse. But whilst his women had been cavorting, Robert Devereux Earl of Essex had been fighting, in the Netherlands and at Cadiz, and John Pym’s Parliament valued his military experience, needed his vast personal fortune even more, perhaps. Which was why the earl had marched out of London at the head of an army called into existence by Parliament’s Committee for Defence, and why Tom Rivers found himself riding north with men such as Penn and Trencher and, some said, ten thousand others.

  No, Tom had never seen Essex smile, but it was entirely possible, Tom thought, that the men he now rode with said the same thing about him. Penn had taken to calling him Black Tom on account, he had said, of the ill-humoured scowl he believed must have been carved into Tom’s face as an infant. ‘You call yourself a Scotsman, Will,’ Penn had said, ‘but young Tom here could out-misery you six days out of seven.’

  Not that Tom cared what men thought of him. Essex’s sergeants had ploughed through the inns and alehouses, the churches, guilds and offices of Southwark, recruiting men to fight for the safety of the King’s person and the defence of both Houses of Parliament. Together they would defeat His Majesty’s feckless advisors, his Cavaliers and the papist forces that sought to subvert him. They would free the people from tyranny. As for these things Tom cared little and yet he had joined up with Penn and Trencher and their friends and they had asked but few questions of him other than could he ride and shoot and preferably do both together, to which Tom had answered that he doubted any man could do so better, though he had thought of his brother at that moment.

  For what Tom needed was vengeance. Vengeance for Martha. For himself. He craved and thirsted and only the blood of his enemies would satiate him.

  And now he found himself in a rag-tag army marching north. To give battle.

  ‘We are a rabble, I’ll not deny it. But by God, we are a frightening sight!’ Penn said, twisting round in the saddle to take in the massive column of horse and foot regiments, the artillery and baggage trains hauled ever northwards by oxen, horse and mule. A smart troop of horse had joined them in Northampton. Good riders all and well kitted-out with firelocks, breastplates and helmets, they had been raised in Cambridge, Tom had heard, by an officer called Cromwell. There were hundreds of soldiers of fortune too, men who had taken Parliament’s shilling and whose knowledge of war would be invaluable and inspiring, so said Penn, when the shooting started. But as yet they were a loose collection of regiments whose parts were more impressive than the whole. In Tom’s mind Essex’s army was like a stallion that would need to be broken before you could be certain it would jump the ditch and not halt on the edge and throw you off.

  Tr
encher, it seemed, agreed. ‘Too many pressed men,’ he said in his gruff voice, dragging his shirt’s sleeve across the sweat-soaked slab that was his face. ‘I’d wager we’ll lose fifty or more every night,’ he added, then raised a thick finger. ‘If I was given to the sin of gambling. Which I ain’t. They’ll bugger off at the first opportunity.’ His hat hung from his saddle and sweat was running in rivulets down his bald head, wetting his stained collar. ‘But we have God on our side, boys, and God is a Scotsman. Which is why we shall scatter our enemies like chaff in the wind.’

  ‘Well said, William,’ Penn announced cheerily, raking a hand through his shorn hair and raising it into spiky tufts so that what little breeze there was might cool his scalp. ‘Let those with the stomach for the fight march on with faith in their hearts. Let those with pale livers go back to their meaningless lives for we need them not. Besides,’ he added, winking at Trencher but nodding towards Tom, ‘we have Black Tom and his fine, fearsome pistols.’ But Tom did not take the bait. He swayed gently in the saddle, hardly touching the reins, letting Achilles choose his own way along the well-worn road that was pitted with dips and holes. The loose fit of his shirt and doublet was a constant reminder that he had become thin and drawn, but he had not let Achilles starve and the beast was as strong as ever, his black coat lustrous, his mane thick and healthy. Tom had seen men look enviously at Achilles. Knew they wondered how an ill-dressed wretch could own such a horse. He cared not what they thought.

  After a few moments of silence Penn sighed. ‘Truly I cannot see what Ruth Gell saw in you, Tom. A cheery wench like that. There are rocks with more mirth than you. I’ve laughed more at Shakespeare’s tragedy of King Lear than I do in your company.’

  ‘Leave the lad alone, Matthew,’ Trencher said, taking a long draught from an ale skin before leaning out of his saddle and passing the skin to Tom. ‘So long as he fights, he need not be a bloody jester too. We’ve all got our reasons for taking the shilling, the lad here just like the rest of us.’