‘He stinks,’ Tom gnarred. ‘Or is it you who have fouled yourself?’
The axe blade at Tom’s throat twitched and Tom threw his right forearm up, knocking the blade clear, then stepped in and hammered a fist into the corporal’s mouth. The big man staggered and then Tom was on him, but the corporal tripped over his friend’s corpse and grabbed Tom’s tunic in one strong hand, pulling him down after him. The man had let go of his halberd and slammed a fist into Tom’s temple, exploding white light in Tom’s skull, but Tom’s hatred was stronger than pain and his fists were flying, slamming into the corporal’s face again and again, and he was vaguely aware that men were standing around them yelling, like a crowd round the bear pit. Somehow the corporal squirmed out and managed to twist his torso, throwing out his right hand and gripping Tom’s neck. The pressure was enormous and blackness began to flood Tom’s vision. He drove a fist into the corporal’s elbow joint and the arm collapsed and in the same instant Tom slammed his forehead into the big man’s face, breaking the corporal’s nose with a splintering crack. He wrenched his neck back and smashed his head down again. And again into the hot, blood-drenched mess.
‘That’ll do, rebel,’ someone said, swinging a leg over Tom’s back and wrapping two strong arms around his neck, all but suffocating him. ‘That’ll do or I’ll gut you, lad,’ the man threatened in his ear, slowly standing back up so that Tom must either stand with him or have his throat crushed.
‘Do what the man says, Tom,’ Captain Preston said. ‘They’ll murder you otherwise.’ But Tom had no choice in the matter and his vision began to blur as he struggled to drag breath into his lungs.
‘Don’t kill the lad, Bard,’ a Cavalier said, ‘the captain will want to question him.’
‘Easy, Tom,’ Matthew Penn said, ‘easy, lad.’
Tom could not breathe. He glared at the faces around him and they glared back, as though he were some wild animal caught in a snare. And then their faces blurred and he felt his limbs go slack. His knees buckled and the trooper called Bard lowered him onto the muddy ground. It was over.
And they had lost.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘WHAT WERE THIS lot doing here?’ O’Brien asked, squatting to wipe his bloody sword on a dead man’s breeches.
‘Same as us, I’d wager,’ Mun said, putting his firelock to a big mare’s head. ‘Looking for billets.’ The horse was whining with each breath, its belly inflating and collapsing unnaturally as its organs clung to life even as its blood pumped from the cut artery in its neck. Mun pulled the trigger and the horse went still as the concussion roared in the dark. Cheers issued from the gloom further along the track towards the village and Mun guessed that one of the prisoners was enjoying a rare beating, probably at the hands of Corporal Scrope, if Mun had to wager.
‘Don’t waste your powder, Rivers, you fool,’ Boone said, ‘that horse would have died soon enough.’ Then the captain turned to Daniel Bard who was ferreting through a dead rebel’s clothes with nimble, well-practised ease. ‘Go and sort them out, Dan,’ he said, gesturing up the track, ‘I need the bastards able to talk.’
‘Sir,’ Bard said, stalking off, shoving some coins inside his tunic.
‘What shall I do with this one, Captain?’ Vincent Rowe asked, kneeling by a rebel who was choking on his own blood. A musket ball had pierced his breastplate and he lay there looking up at the stars, his beard and moustaches frothy with dark liquid.
‘You just heard what I said to Rivers, lad,’ Boone replied, ramming his sword back into its scabbard having cleaned the gore from it. ‘Don’t waste your ammunition.’ With that Rowe stood and stared at the dying man for a few more moments, then raised his slender sword and hacked down into the rebel’s neck. But the man writhed madly and so Rowe hacked down again and a third time before the body went still, the head all but severed. Then Rowe dragged a sleeve across his sweat-slick brow and stared at Mun with round eyes.
‘You see, Rivers,’ Boone said, nodding towards Rowe whose handsome, fine-boned face was spattered with blood, ‘that’s how it is done.’ Then the captain turned to his lieutenant, Samuel Begg, who was guarding a narrow-faced rebel who reminded Mun of a rat. Or a weasel, maybe.
‘Tie them well and get them mounted,’ Boone said. ‘We ride for Meriden.’
‘Yes, sir!’ Begg replied, slamming the hilt of his sword between the man’s shoulder blades to get him moving.
Mun walked amongst the dead, turning bodies over to look at their white, moon-washed faces, now and then putting his ear to a mouth to check there was no breath.
‘He’s a fine beast if I’m any judge of horseflesh,’ O’Brien said, walking over and patting a horse’s neck, and when Mun looked up, his chest tightened and his breath snagged in his throat. It was a great black stallion, its glossy coat shining in the dark.
‘Achilles,’ he said under his breath and the stallion tossed his head, his black mane flying. Then Mun spun round and looked to where the rebel prisoners were gathered and though he could not see their faces he knew one of them by his silhouette, by the line of his shoulders and by his stance. It was his brother. It was Tom.
He stopped himself calling out, fought every instinct which clamoured at him to shout his brother’s name. He did not even approach, instead hanging back in the shadows because he feared Tom would see him, and whatever sense was overpowering his natural instinct to greet his brother told him also that no good could come of doing so. Yet there he was. Tom! His mind reeled at the sight of his brother standing amongst the rebels. His brother with the enemy, one of Parliament’s traitors. And yet alive, his inner self screamed. My brother!
And there were plenty of men that weren’t alive after the brief fight. More than twenty of his brother’s confederates lay dead, gashed and shot and never to see another dawn. Never again to embrace a loved one.
‘Mount up!’ Captain Boone yelled. Somewhere a dog was barking but the villagers of Wormleighton stayed in their houses, though Mun had seen some faces at windows.
‘That tall lad gave you a battering, Corporal,’ Richard Downes remarked, shaking out his lavish but flattened curls before pushing his bar pot down, the single nasal-bar bisecting his grin.
‘Whoreson tripped me,’ Corporal Scrope replied, his voice muffled by the massive hand cupped over his smashed nose. Blood was seeping between his fingers. ‘I’ll pay the bugger back though, I promise you that.’
‘Maybe,’ Downes said, putting his foot in the stirrup and hauling himself into the saddle, ‘if Captain Boone doesn’t do for him first. They’re to be questioned and if I know the captain he’ll be the one asking the questions. Can’t see the Prince getting his hands dirty. Doesn’t look good . . .’ he pushed a wheellock into its holster, ‘a foreigner beating confessions out of Englishmen. Even if they are rebel scum. Better to let another Englishman do that.’
‘So long as the cur is alive when I get my hands on him,’ Scrope said, mounting his own horse, wiping his bloody hand on the mare’s mane.
Their hands bound behind their backs, the surviving rebels were mounted on spare horses and placed in the middle of the column, as Captain Boone’s troop rode out of Wormleighton across the ploughed, night-shrouded fields north-east towards Meriden. Mun rode behind the prisoners, his jaw clamped shut, his head low, and whenever the clouds broke, allowing pale moonlight to illuminate the column, he watched the young prisoner who sat a brown mare, smouldering like match. And he whispered thanks to God that he and his brother were still alive after that night’s killing. He whispered thanks to MacCarthy, too, whose leg he had broken and whose armour he now wore, because that rusty steel had stopped a sword slash that would have carved him open.
It was the middle of the night when they arrived at the camp, a mass of tents, horse pickets, provender, ordnance and other stores sprawled over eight square miles of open fields. The prisoners were taken to Prince Rupert’s quarters which comprised a two-storeyed timber-framed red brick farmhouse and outbuildings all o
f which were surrounded by a moat which stank because the soldiers used it as a latrine pit. An old plough shed next to the barn became a gaol and Captain Boone ordered two men armed with firelocks to guard its only door, giving them orders to kill any rebel who tried to escape.
The smell of blood and death still in his nose, Mun gave Hector to one of the grooms, who led the stallion off to be rubbed down, fed and watered, then he found his tent and ducked inside. It was empty. O’Brien and Vincent Rowe were off with the rest of the troop, likely celebrating their victory by drinking themselves into a stupor. They had lost five men in the fight but that was a small price to pay for the deaths of nearly five times the number of rebels and the information they would prise from the captives. He undid the straps of his back- and breastplate, noticing that his hands still trembled from the fight, then he left the armour at the foot of his bedroll along with his helmet. He lifted the jug off the stool and filled his cup with ale, drinking deeply, then stepped back out into the night and looked north across the camp. Somewhere amidst those countless small fires which palled the night sky orange, were the tents of the King’s Lifeguard of Horse. And amongst them his father’s tent.
‘I’ve killed men this night, Father,’ he whispered. Now, with the violence and the chaos passed, the thought that he had butchered other men made him nauseous. Made him feel ashamed, too. But no good could come from dragging one’s feet through that foul mire, he knew, when he ought instead to thank God or the fates or blind luck that he had survived. And now all he had to do was cross the camp and tell his father that Tom was here. For perhaps Sir Francis could have him freed. He had the ear of the King, after all.
Yet it would not be as easy as that.
‘What should I do?’ Mun whispered, looking up at the heavy, moon-silvered cloud. ‘What should I do, Bess?’ he asked, wishing his sister were there. Then he shivered, as though the ale in his stomach had frozen suddenly, and turned his back on the far field in which his father slept unknowing that his sons had done murder that night and that his lost boy was found. Not yet, something warned. Now is not the time to bring Father that news.
So Mun swallowed the sour taste that filled his mouth, left the dead to the dead, and, fixing his thoughts on his brother who yet lived though he was in great danger, he walked towards the sound of drunken men.
‘What happened to you?’ O’Brien asked, beckoning Mun over with a wave of his wineskin. If there was another benefit of riding in Prince Rupert’s Horse, Mun knew, it was that there always seemed to be plenty to drink. And wine helped a man forget the shame of being terrified, of feeling no better than a beast when the blood was flying. When men were butchering and being butchered.
‘I had to see to Hector,’ Mun lied, forcing a smile. ‘He took a head cut. A lot of blood. But I washed it and it’s not bad.’
‘Head cuts bleed like a stuck pig,’ O’Brien said, ‘but it’s usually all show.’ He grinned, digging an elbow into Vincent Rowe’s ribs. ‘Like this dainty bit,’ he said.
‘Bugger off, you Irish sheep-fucker,’ Rowe growled.
‘Begging your pardon, missy,’ O’Brien said, winking at Richard Downes. ‘Pretty girls make me twitchy.’
‘Tosspot,’ Rowe snarled, snatching the wineskin from his friend. The troop was split around three fires and it looked to Mun as though many had resigned themselves to sleeping where they now lay. For Mun was coming to understand that there was comfort in company, in the clamour of companions and even in mockery. Anything was preferable to silence. He shared a jibe with O’Brien, this time at Downes’s expense, then walked up to Corporal Scrope and squatted behind him, tapping one solid shoulder.
‘Corporal, a word if I may?’
‘What do you want, Rivers?’ Scrope growled. ‘You can see I’m busy.’ He lifted his mug and did not turn round. Mun knew that Scrope disliked him, had done since the very beginning at Hucknall Torkard, when Mun had stood up to Captain Boone and spilled MacCarthy from his saddle.
‘It’s about that rebel. The one that improved your looks,’ Mun dared.
‘Watch your mouth, Rivers,’ Scrope rumbled, but he twisted round this time and Mun knew he had the big man nibbling the bait.
‘He’s the same wretch that cut Hector in the fight,’ Mun said.
Scrope’s eyebrows arched. ‘You love that horse, don’t you, lad?’ The grin was insinuating. The nose was a mass of crusting blood, and the swollen, blackening skin beneath both eyes beaded with tiny drops of sweat.
‘Better than I love most people,’ Mun admitted, thinking it was not entirely untrue. ‘I want to teach that scum a lesson he’ll remember us by.’
The corporal’s lip curled and he flapped a hammy hand. ‘There’ll be plenty of time for that,’ he said, turning back round. ‘Piss off.’
‘Not if he’s moved,’ Mun pressed, ‘which he will be. They all will. I’ve heard that the King himself wants to see them. His Majesty has it in his mind to know what a traitor looks like up close. Then they’ll be hanged likely as not.’
The corporal turned back to face him, then shook his head. ‘The captain wants to talk to the toad’s arse. Wants to question all of ’em. The King’ll have to wait his turn.’
‘If there are questions to be asked, the King’s own men will be doing the asking,’ Mun said, ‘my father for one. You think they’d let Captain Boone beat the villains to death before they’ve been . . .’ he put his fists side by side and rotated them in opposite directions, ‘wrung out for information?’ Mun felt other men’s eyes on them but kept his own riveted on Scrope’s.
‘What’s going on, Corporal?’ someone called from the other side of the fire. Mun glanced up. Short and belligerent-looking, Purefoy was the kind of man who smelt scheming on the air, which was surprising, Mun thought, what with one nostril currently stuffed with finger.
‘Never you mind, Purefoy,’ Scrope gnarred, scratching his bushy, blood-encrusted beard. Purefoy shrugged as though he cared not, then turned to the man beside him, snatching a taper off him to light his pipe. One eye though at least, Mun felt, remained fixed on them.
Scrope pitched to one side and let out a long rumbling fart, earning some complaints from the men either side, then leant back, so that Mun could smell the sour wine on his breath. ‘What have you got in mind, Rivers?’ he asked in a low voice.
Sweat rose on the skin between his shoulder blades and in his scalp, making it itch as they walked towards the Prince’s quarters and the plough-shed gaol. Convincing Corporal Scrope that they should pay the tall, fair-haired rebel a visit that very night while it was yet dark had been the easy part. Now Mun’s heart was hammering in his chest and his mind was in disarray – because he had not thought this plan through, knew he had failed to discern the road’s end before giving spur to the idea. But there was no going back now.
There had been no talk of killing – just of repaying the rebel prisoner in kind – violence for violence, a drop of blood perhaps. And yet now, as they made their way through the flame-licked gloom, he saw that Scrope’s hand rested on the two-lobed guard of the ancient ballock dagger thrust in his belt. What if Scrope simply walked up to Tom and gutted him where he stood? Cold-blooded murder was not, Mun suspected, beyond Corporal Scrope. Which meant that Mun might now be making things even worse for Tom than they already stood. From the pan to the fire.
He had doubted there would be opportunity to free his brother, not once he’d roped in Scrope, which he must to get access to the prisoners. But he had thought that maybe he could hand Tom a knife, possibly even a pistol, to keep secreted away until the opportunity arose. At the very least his presence might give Tom hope, show him that he was not alone and that something might be done. Now, though, Mun feared he was bringing his brother a rare beating at best, a cold blade in the dark at worst. And yet perhaps, deep down, in that part of Mun which thrummed in the chaos of battle, like a ship’s rigging in a storm – in that part of him which had awakened to savagery, even revelled in it – he had
never intended letting Scrope, or anyone else, prevent him from securing his brother’s freedom. No matter what needed to be done to win it.
‘I always knew you were a hateful bastard, Rivers,’ Scrope said and Mun noted a tone verging on admiration in his voice. ‘But I get the first dance with him, do you hear me? You don’t touch a hair on the whoreson’s head until I say you can.’
‘Whatever you say, Corporal,’ Mun replied, forcing a wicked grin.
They crossed the duckboard bridge over the moat and passed between two livestock pens, then came to the old shed that stood in the shadow of a barn which was now used to stable the horses of the princes, Rupert and Maurice, and their immediate retinue. The two guards greeted their corporal but then one of them, a young lad with a mop of greasy black hair and a hare lip, frowned and shuffled his feet.
‘No one is to see the rebels, sir,’ he said, coughing nervously, ‘orders of Captain Boone.’
‘Shut your mouth, trooper Burke. I’m your bloody corporal!’ Scrope said, thumbing for the lad to step aside. ‘If you don’t get out of my way I’ll have you shovelling horse shit till Christmas!’ He glared at the other man who was already moving away from the door. ‘You ’n’ all, Massie.’
That was threat enough for Burke to fumble at his belt, turn round and thrust the key into the makeshift lock across the old shed door. He hauled the chain free and stood back.
‘Can I borrow that, Burke?’ Mun asked. The young trooper shrugged and handed the chain to Mun, and Corporal Scrope looked at the chain in Mun’s hand, his lips twitching with malice.
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