The Bleeding Land

by Giles Kristian

  ‘King Charles!’ roared another.

  Clods of mud and turf were flying past Mun and then he could see his enemies’ faces, see them raising their pistols. Instinctively he drew inwards, dipped his head, teeth clenched hard enough to crack his jaw bones, as a ragged volley of flame, smoke and flying lead thundered maliciously. And he rode into that storm.

  Smoke wreathed the rebels but Mun could see that they were panicking, some drawing blades, others desperately fumbling with spanners at their wheellocks, having yet to fire.

  ‘King Charles!’ Mun roared into the wind, filled with a feral elation because he had not been hit; no lead ball had ripped into his flesh and smashed his bones.

  ‘For England!’ someone beside him screamed. Then the men around Mun gave fire and so he drew and cocked one of his own pistols, pointed it at the enemy mass, the long barrel jolting, his aim wild, and pulled the trigger. Men on both sides fell back in their saddles or slumped sidewards, dropping their swords. Then before Mun could draw another weapon the two forces collided in a great crash like a wave thrown onto the shore, and men and horses screamed. Pistols spat flame and steel blades clattered off breastplates and helmets and chaos reigned. Something struck Mun’s helmet and he tried to haul Hector back around but there was no room and so he snatched his righthand pistol from its saddle holster and shoved its barrel into the side of a rebel who twisted and glared with terrified eyes as Mun pulled the trigger and a ball plunged into the man’s innards, erupting from his other side leaving a hole the size of a dining platter and spraying shards of rib and gobbets of gore over the buff-coat of the man beside him.

  Suddenly it was not a battle of hundreds against hundreds but of man against man, the wider conflict shrunken to personal fights, to brutal murder.

  Mun shoved his pistol home and pulled his sword free, raising the blade to his face like a shield as he twisted this way and that, more desperate to avoid death than kill.

  O’Brien swung his wicked poll-axe backhanded into a man’s face, chopping it in half so that the chin, gaping mouth and nose hung on a hinge of bloody meat for several heartbeats before the man fell from his horse.

  The Prince slashed left and right with his sword, his white mare gnashing her big teeth at other horses, biting and tearing ears and muzzles. A sudden spray of blood blinded Mun, burning his eyes and getting into his mouth. He panicked, dragging his left arm across his face and blinking through the gore. Then a blade swung at him and he only just got his rapier in the way. Kill him! his mind screamed. A dead man cannot kill you!

  But his enemy was strong and fierce, his pockmarked face a snarl of hatred, and Mun suddenly knew this man was going to kill him. The rebel struck again, this time locking swords and driving Mun’s down, and then Mun saw the pistol in the man’s other hand. The barrel came up and the rebel grinned triumphantly. Just as Nehemiah Boone put his own pistol to the man’s head and blew his brains out through a hole in his helmet. Then Boone twisted in the saddle and plunged his sword into a horse’s neck and pulled it free and the beast screamed and tried to rear but there was no room in the press and its master could only cling on as blood pumped out in great gouts, spattering others.

  ‘Easy, girl!’ the man yelled, but the beast lurched and his three-bar pot helmet fell off, vanishing beneath thrashing hooves, and Mun saw the man properly. Grey-haired and kindly-looking. His father’s age. ‘Easy!’ Grey Hair yelled. But the mare was screeching and her eyes were rolling and the man was helpless as Boone hacked into his exposed neck. And then again, all but severing his head so that the rebel slumped forward, the glistening gristle of his neck flooding gore across his mare’s brown coat as man and beast died together.

  Mun dug in his heels, willing Hector to surge deeper into the enemy mass, and the stallion responded, using his great strength to plough forward. Something struck Mun’s helmet and he threw himself flat against Hector’s neck but realized the sword blow had been the backswing of one of his own side. Then, above the clash of battle he heard galloping hooves.

  ‘They are running!’ someone roared. ‘Bastard scum are running!’

  Gaps were suddenly appearing amongst the maelstrom. The rebels were wheeling away, spurring back across the meadow south towards Powick Bridge.

  ‘Kill them!’ Boone screamed, his eyes wild and his face a warped grimace of hatred. Then he whipped his horse with the flat of his sword and chased after the retreating enemy. So Mun howled at the heavens, kicked with his heels and followed.

  Bess Rivers placed both hands on her belly and closed her eyes, dismissing all senses but touch. The baby inside her had not kicked for three days now and she could see it in her maids’ eyes that they thought her unborn child was dead. None of them had said as much, of course, but that was what they thought, and perhaps some of them were curious to know what Bess had done to cause the miscarriage. She knew all the stories, just as everyone did. If you looked at an image of John the Baptist at the moment of conception your child would be born covered in thick hair. Gazing at a hare could give the child a hare lip. Bess had heard these stories, knew her imagination could act on the unborn child and cause terrible deformities, and she had been afraid of that because her imagination had always had wings, so that she could never know where it might fly. Still, she was sure she had not harmed the baby growing inside her. She had been so careful.

  And yet the child had not stirred for days.

  Move, little one, she silently pleaded. Please move. Kick for your mama. Just once and together we shall thank the Lord God with all our heart. How we shall thank Him.

  Perhaps it was God that was punishing her, for she and Emmanuel should not have lain together out of wedlock. They should have waited. But he had been going off to war and that truth had cast a grim shadow which had eclipsed all else, including certain sins of the flesh.

  She opened her eyes and they fixed on the spot on the parlour floor where Tom had laid poor Martha Green after he and Mun had found her hanged. Bess could see again Martha’s bluish face and that swollen tongue. The unnatural twist of Martha’s broken neck. She closed her eyes again, desperate to dispel the image for surely nothing good could come of such black thoughts. Please move, my child, she willed.

  The parlour door opened and she snatched up the embroidery she had been working on, a sudden sense of guilt flooding her cheeks with heat.

  ‘They are coming, Elizabeth,’ Lady Mary said, her green eyes locking with Bess’s own, that gaze never falling to the swell of her belly. ‘I will not bring them into the house but will walk them through the gardens. Will you take the air with us? It is warm out.’

  ‘I should like that,’ Bess said, smiling as her mother nodded curtly and left to receive their visitors.

  Captain Miles Downing had written to Lady Mary expressing his wish to visit her at Shear House. Bess had since seen the letter herself, the hand confident yet neat. Restrained mostly, yet with little flourishes here and there, especially the signature. There were, Downing had written, pressing matters to be discussed in relation to Sir Francis and his siding against the legitimate Parliament and the God-fearing men and women of the kingdom.

  ‘The rebels want Shear House,’ Lady Mary had said, pressing the letter into her lap, her face stern and her teeth worrying her bottom lip. ‘They want our money for their unlawful war.’

  Bess had conjured an image of the King’s enemies plundering and looting Shear House to buy more guns to use against Emmanuel and her brother. Against her father.

  ‘Tell him you will not see him!’ she had said, horrified. But Lady Mary had shaken her head.

  ‘No, Bess. We will receive Captain Downing. Let him come here and declaim his treason. And let us prepare ourselves.’ And with that Lady Mary had sat down at her husband’s dark oak writing desk, picked up his quill and dipped it into his small, green-glazed inkwell, and had begun to write.

  Now the rebels were here. An officer and his escort of ten mounted soldiers had come, though it appeared only
the officer had been allowed through the gate into the grounds. The first thing that struck Bess when she saw Captain Downing talking with her mother in the rose garden was how handsome he was. For some reason, she realized now as she walked towards them, she had expected him to look somehow more . . . rebellious. His eyes would be full of malice. His whole posture would be one of belligerence and defiance, his lips gripped in sneering disapproval. Certainly he would not smile the way he was smiling now, this young man who swept his hat from his head and bowed neatly as she came up to them. He wore tall boots and a buff-coat criss-crossed with wide leather belts, one for his sword and the other for his firelock carbine which hung behind him, its butt above his right hip. His waist was bound by a sash of rich green silk.

  ‘My daughter Elizabeth,’ Lady Mary said, her own mouth taut as a knot.

  ‘I am honoured, mistress,’ Downing said, his dark eyes flicking down to her stomach then creasing slightly at the corners in empathy. ‘May I ask when the baby is due?’

  Bess did not want to answer him, did not want to share pleasantries with such as him, but those eyes told her that this man was recently a father. Or else his wife is also with child, she thought.

  ‘I have several weeks yet,’ Bess said, smiling in spite of herself.

  The captain nodded appreciatively. ‘May our Lord in heaven see you safely delivered of a healthy son. Or daughter,’ he added with a charming smile.

  Bess nodded in thanks.

  ‘Now we may consider the formalities over, Captain,’ Lady Mary said sternly, ‘and if it please you we shall know why you have come to Shear House.’

  The soldier’s face betrayed that Lady Mary’s frankness had thrown him, but he recovered in a heartbeat.

  ‘Very well, my lady,’ he said, dipping his head, his hat clutched against his chest. ‘Parliament regrets very sorely that your husband has joined His Majesty’s army.’

  ‘He does his duty to his king!’ Lady Mary riposted, the unspoken as should you left hanging in the air like musket smoke.

  Again the young man nodded but this time Bess saw a flash of flint in those brown eyes. ‘Sir Francis and your son Edmund have taken up arms and declared war on the rightful authority that is this nation’s Parliament. They do you and your daughter a disservice.’

  ‘They do what is right, Captain Downing, and I would not have them do differently,’ Lady Mary countered.

  ‘They are traitors, madam!’ Downing exclaimed, sweeping his hat through the air. ‘And stand against the laws of God, nature and reason!’ There was a silence then as Lady Mary examined the man before them. The captain glanced up at Shear House, then let his eyes range over the smooth green lawns, gravel paths and statues beyond the low circular wall of the rose garden.

  He is taking an inventory, Bess thought. He is appraising all that they may steal from us.

  ‘Perhaps you may yet take some small comfort, madam,’ he said, eyes narrowed now, probing, ‘that you have one son at least who serves his country. Master Thomas rides in Lord Feilding’s Regiment of Horse in the Earl of Essex’s Militia Ordinance. It is not common knowledge, certainly amonst his fellow troopers, but I have it on good authority, madam.’ Downing glanced up at the rear of the house again, letting his news sink in, as though instinct had told him it was indeed news. Then he looked back to Lady Mary. ‘I am confident that Thomas is a brave soldier and that he will impress his commander by his zeal for our righteous cause.’

  Bess felt as though she had been struck. Her mother’s face turned ashen behind the trembling hand pressed against her lips, and the young captain pushed his advantage. ‘My lady, by order of Colonel Egerton of Parliament’s army you must relinquish this house. You and your family and retainers will be given safe passage to wherever you choose, but you will not take your plate or any of your husband’s possessions, though you may pack your personal effects and such victuals as you necessarily require.’

  Bess looked to her mother, but Lady Mary’s unblinking eyes were riveted to the captain as though daring him to repeat the news about Tom, to tell her again that her son had joined the rebels.

  ‘You may leave now, Captain Downing,’ Bess said, her fingernails digging into her palms, ‘and you will not be welcome at Shear House again.’

  ‘Mistress Elizabeth,’ Downing said, turning square on to her, ‘I must warn you that if you disobey Parliament’s behest and shut your door against us we will return with men and arms. With cannon.’

  Now Bess could find no words, had no riposte to such a fearful cut.

  ‘Captain,’ Lady Mary said, lifting her head, straightening her spine and drawing a deep breath. ‘You must do what your conscience demands and we shall do the same.’ The young officer opened his mouth to speak again but Lady Mary raised a long finger warning him to hold his tongue. ‘Now go,’ she rasped, ‘before I have my men set the hounds on you. They have not been fed yet today,’ she lied.

  And with that Captain Downing’s face drained of colour and he glanced at Bess and then back to Lady Mary. Then he bowed again, turned and marched away.

  When he was out of sight, Lady Mary took Bess into her arms, and though Bess could not see her mother’s face, she could feel the sharp, uneven rise and fall of her chest. She could sense the rebel captain’s words eating into the reserves of her mother’s strength and spirit, like weevils blighting the crop.

  And inside herself she felt her baby kick.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  RAIN STRUCK MUN’S tent in intermittent volleys, like handfuls of gravel thrown against the canvas. The day had dawned bright and warm but as the sun rolled into the west the clouds had gathered, turning from white to the iron grey-brown of a breastplate, and with that had come rain. Again.

  Mun could not sleep, not for the sound of the rain or the usual hubbub of a camp at night, nor even because O’Brien, with whom he shared the tent along with Vincent Rowe, snored like a hog. Mun could not sleep because he felt sick in the pit of his stomach.

  Behind him someone stirred. He lifted the candle from the letter towards the two prostrate figures shrouded in their blankets and, once assured they were still asleep, he turned his back on them and read the letter again.

  A groom named Coppe, looking exhausted and half drowned, had appeared outside the tent an hour previously and handed Mun the letter that bore his father’s seal, though Coppe’s presence itself told Mun the letter was not from his father. Having sealed it with the ring Sir Francis had left her, Lady Mary had given the groom a blunderbuss for his own protection on the road and sent him to find her son with strict instructions not to return to Shear House until he had put the letter in Mun’s hands. He had ridden one hundred miles to bring the letter here, to Prince Rupert’s regiment camped in the Severn Valley ten miles south of Shrewsbury. Mun had asked Coppe how he had found him when it seemed the Earl of Essex even did not know their whereabouts. Coppe had shrugged his solid shoulders, pinched rainwater and snot from the end of his nose and replied that a deaf and blind man could have found the Prince’s army. And it was for Coppe’s simple honesty, Mun knew, that his mother had sent him, for the groom could be trusted implicitly not to read the letter’s contents but to discharge his duty scrupulously and with discretion. And now, as the rain lashed the tents within which the men of Prince Rupert’s Horse slept, Coppe was already riding back up the valley in the seething dark, north to Parbold and Shear House.

  It breaks my heart, Edmund, to have to bring you this news, though you may know it already, that your brother has taken up with the rebels against His Majesty the King.

  He heard his mother’s voice in his head as he read her words. Her hand was, as ever, legible and elegant, but Mun imagined her sitting alone at Sir Francis’s desk, her curls still red, though threaded here and there with white now, damp from tears shed for her younger son and for his betrayal.

  Elizabeth and I pray every day that your brother will come to his senses and remember his duty to his King and to his father whom I believ
e Tom blames for poor Martha’s death. We pray for you also, Mun, and for Emmanuel and Francis, that you may all come home to us in time for Christmas.

  Please tell Emmanuel that Bess is in good health and prays most ardently that he will return in time to see his child come into the world.

  As for your brother, I leave it to you to tell your father discreetly and when you think it best, of this most sad event, for I would not have such news distract him from his duties to His Royal Majesty the King.

  Be careful, my son.

  Your loving mother, Mary.

  Mun folded the letter and put it into a pouch tied to his belt, then draped his cloak over his shoulders and picked up his broad hat before stepping out into the rain. He turned to face south, looking down the Severn Valley in the direction of Worcester where Essex’s army was camped, the slanting rain striking his right cheek and running down his neck. All around him tents loomed in what dim starlight seeped through the clouds, some, not many, glowing softly from the lamps that burned within.

  ‘How could you turn against us?’ he whispered into the dark, wondering if Tom was even now standing in the rain looking north. ‘How could you betray us?’

  His thoughts turned to Lord Denton and his son Henry and what they had done to Tom. What Lord Denton had done to Martha. He did not blame his brother for seeking vengeance against the Dentons. But to turn against his own family? His king? Perhaps their father could have done more to save George Green from the hangman’s noose. Perhaps not. Yet, whatever might have been, Tom’s siding with the traitors was unforgivable. He had turned his back on them all. He had sullied their name.

  ‘Can’t sleep, Rivers?’ Mun turned to see Daniel Bard’s gaunt, rain-soaked face emerge from the shadows, coming from the direction of the latrine pit. The veteran was threading his belt through its buckle, a pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth and water dripping from his hat, which had recently been weatherproofed with lanolin by the looks.