The Bleeding Land

by Giles Kristian

  ‘You two keep your mouths shut about this,’ Scrope warned the guards, pulling the creaking door open. They nodded and Massie shot Mun a conspiratorial grin which said give them one from me while you’re at it. ‘And no one comes in, understand?’ Scrope added. ‘Not unless it’s the Prince himself.’ Then he stepped inside and Mun followed, his heart pounding, a maelstrom of doubt threatening to burst his skull.

  ‘Get where I can see you, you traitorous dogs,’ Scrope growled into the dark space that smelt of lanolin, sweat and damp wool. Other than the six men the place was empty. ‘All of you over there,’ he said, pointing to the far corner. There was just enough moonlight spilling through the cracks between the split timber walls for Mun to make out the prisoners’ faces, and five of them were glaring at the big corporal, the whites of their eyes shining in the gloom. The other shadowy face was turned towards him. Tom.

  Sensing his brother’s nearness in that makeshift gaol both fed Mun’s courage and yet leeched it away because of what it meant he must do. If he could do it.

  ‘Not you, scum, you get back,’ Scrope growled at Tom, gesturing to the opposite corner, ‘over there. It is you I’ve come to see, you lucky lad.’ He hawked and spat a great globule of blood that splatted onto the shed wall and began a slow descent.

  ‘If you are looking for your nose, you ugly sow, it’s on your cheek. Just there,’ Tom said, nodding because his hands were tied behind his back.

  Some of the prisoners grinned but one, a short-haired, keen-eyed soldier, hissed at Tom to hold his tongue and Mun guessed that this rebel knew full well what the corporal had come for. Mun could almost smell the violence coming off Scrope.

  ‘You should listen to your friend,’ Scrope said, glowering at Tom, ‘not that it will do you any good now.’ He moved forward, a massive shape in that small place.

  ‘Let him alone, you pig-faced son of a whore,’ a solid, bald-headed rebel growled. ‘If it’s a fight you’ve come for, I’ll happily oblige. I’ll turn you inside out, you fensucked hag-rider.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, rebel,’ Mun said, glaring at this man whose glistening pate was crusted with blood. Mun’s pulse was like a drum in his ears. The three-foot-long length of chain felt cold in his hands. Felt heavy too. Then Scrope backhanded Tom across his face and he thumped against the wall, fury blazing in his eyes.

  ‘I’ll admit I envy you that snout of yours, rebel,’ Scrope said in that nasal voice, gingerly touching his shattered nose whose nostrils were sealed with dark scabs. ‘You see, mine’s full of snot and blood while yours is neat as the Queen’s petticoats.’ He grimaced. ‘“Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous. But who is able to stand before envy?”’ His eyes were on Tom but he half turned his face towards Mun. ‘That’s from the book of Proverbs,’ he said, arching one bushy brow. ‘I’ll wager your wet-nurse never whispered that drop of wisdom into your shells while you hung from her tit.’ He drew his dagger, the slender blade glinting wickedly in the murk. ‘Well, scum, I’m going to cut your sniffer clean off,’ he said, flicking the blade from left to right. ‘Then I’m going to cut you a nice smile. Right here, under your chin.’ With the index finger of his other hand he traced a U across his own throat. Tom’s teeth flashed in the darkness.

  ‘You’re not the ugliest bastard I’ve ever seen,’ the bald-headed rebel snarled at Scrope, ‘but you look just like him. Fight me, you ill-favoured turd.’

  Scrope ignored the insult and the challenge, instead stepping forward, slow and deliberate, the ballock dagger coming up.

  ‘I don’t think you should cut him, Corporal,’ Mun said, wrapping each end of the length of chain round a fist. Do it now! his mind screamed. Now! But his limbs were frozen, muscles clenched like fists. ‘Boone won’t like it. If the lad’s cut up.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, Rivers, or I’ll bloody cut you ’n’ all.’

  The world around Mun seemed to shrink, crushing him, veiling past and future and leaving only the moment.

  ‘Don’t be shy, lad,’ Scrope said, beckoning Tom with the dagger. ‘Come to old Scropey.’

  With two strides Mun threw his arms and the chain over Scrope’s head, yanking it around his neck, then hurled himself backwards with all his strength and Scrope came too, so that Mun’s back slammed onto the ground and the corporal’s huge bulk knocked the wind out of him, crushing him. But Mun arched his back, stuck out his chest and wrenched the chain, hauled on it with every fibre of his arms, his muscles screaming. His nose was full of the stink of Scrope’s greasy hair and part of him wanted to stop it all now before it was too late, but it was already too late and so he gritted his teeth and heaved on the chain and Scrope’s booted feet hammered and scuffed against the earthen floor and his big hands clawed at the chain round his neck, seeking a finger’s breadth between iron and flesh. A wet gurgling sound was escaping from Scrope’s throat and Mun was vaguely aware that the guards outside might hear it, or else hear the corporal’s boots striking the floor. Or, if they could not hear these things their suspicions might be aroused by the silence now that no one was talking. So he pulled that chain.

  But the corporal’s neck was like a young oak and the big man refused to die.

  Then there was a boot heel on Scrope’s throat and Mun was staring into Tom’s grimacing face as the younger man crushed the big corporal’s windpipe. And still Scrope would not die. His hands clawed at Tom’s boot and Mun could see Tom’s surprise at the man’s enormous strength. So Tom leant into his work, fighting to keep his balance because his hands were bound behind his back, and Scrope would not keep still. Then another prisoner was there, the bald, solid-looking rebel, and he stood so that Tom could lean against him and with this leverage Tom was able to increase the pressure.

  Three sharp raps shivered the gaol’s door. ‘Everything all right in there, Corporal?’ Massie hissed.

  Die, you damned stubborn ox! Mun’s mind clamoured. Before they come! He heard a crack. Felt something give, just a little. But he kept pulling. He was aware of Scrope’s right hand flapping against the earthen floor like a caught fish, but he knew it was done. Finished. This part of it, anyway. At last, the body on top of him was just so much dead meat and Mun rolled and bucked until he was able to squirm out from underneath and climb to his unsteady legs, sweat sheeting down his face, his arms trembling from their incredible efforts. And from the fear of what he had done.

  ‘Brother.’ The word was a hoarse whisper and Mun stepped forward so that the body on the ground was not in his line of sight. He felt sick.

  ‘I wondered when you would come,’ Tom replied. ‘I saw you in Wormleighton.’

  During the fight? Or afterwards? Mun wondered but did not ask. Questions could wait.

  ‘We haven’t much time,’ he said, looking back at the door beyond which the two guards, or perhaps the whole of the King’s army, waited, blades and firelocks ready. Suddenly, and with a dread that cut him to the marrow, he knew that Tom had no chance of escaping. Probably he never had. And now Mun’s fool’s enterprise had likely killed them both. ‘Father will get you out of here,’ he said, clutching at hope that was as substantial as musket smoke.

  Tom shook his head, smiling grimly. ‘If you believed that, you would not have just killed your corporal,’ he said, nodding down at the corpse. Mun thought he would vomit, but held his brother’s eye.

  ‘Corporal, shall we open the door?’ Massie called softly, his face pressed to the wood by the sound of it. Mun heard an edge of fear in his voice.

  ‘There must be a way,’ Mun hissed, still gasping for breath.

  Tom shook his head. ‘Say nothing to Father. The son of Sir Francis Rivers caught killing Cavaliers?’ Tom let that idea hang in the fusty air. ‘He rides with the King’s Lifeguard, I presume.’ Mun felt himself nod, sensed the other men’s shock at the revelation of who their father was. ‘They would hang me, brother, as an example. And Father would be ruined.’

  Mun knew the truth when he heard it, and it choked him as surely as a cha
in around his own neck.

  ‘Corporal Scrope!’ Massie hissed, knocking again.

  ‘Will you get us out before we see the end of a rope?’ one of the other prisoners asked. Mun recognized him as the rebel captain whose surrender had saved the others’ lives at Wormleighton. ‘Give me your word and I’ll see that you don’t hang for this,’ he said, nodding down at the dead bulk of Corporal Scrope.

  ‘I will not leave without them, Mun,’ Tom said in a low voice, steel glinting in his eyes.

  Mun could not breathe. His mind was reeling.

  ‘Your word, damn you!’ the captain snarled.

  Mun nodded.

  ‘Untie me,’ the captain said. ‘Quickly, man. We have but moments.’

  Before he knew what he was doing, Mun was working at the knot which bound the captain’s hands behind his back. When he was free the man rubbed his wrists and nodded resolutely.

  ‘Stand still,’ he murmured.

  ‘Boone’s coming,’ Massie growled against the gaol door.

  ‘Ready?’ the captain asked, and before Mun had time to reply a fist slammed into his mouth, knocking him to the ground.

  He tasted blood and spat a shard of tooth. ‘More,’ he said, standing up, and Preston cracked his knuckles against Mun’s temple and Mun staggered, putting a hand to the gash that was spilling blood down his cheek. Preston clenched his fist again, showing him the finger ring that had done the damage.

  ‘Untie me,’ Tom said, glaring at Mun. ‘You need another man untied.’

  Mun shook his head. ‘I want to get you out not get you hanged.’

  ‘Tom’s right,’ Captain Preston said, working at the knot behind Tom’s back, ‘it will be more believable with two of us.’

  ‘Aye, he was a big bastard,’ Will Trencher put in, kicking Scrope’s body. Mun’s head was ringing like a bell.

  ‘Untie the rest of us,’ Weasel hissed, ‘we’ll make a run for it.’

  ‘We’re in the middle of the King’s bloody camp, you turnip brain,’ Nayler said, rolling his eyes.

  ‘Do you want to strangle your brother, Tom, or shall I do it?’ Captain Preston asked.

  ‘You do it,’ Mun said to the captain, so Preston nodded and took up his position behind Mun, clamped his forearms round Mun’s neck and began to squeeze.

  He is going to kill me, Mun thought, then the man strangling him relaxed his vice-like grip for a moment. ‘Call for help,’ he said. So Mun called. Or at least tried to. He yelled Burke’s name and then was cut off and could no longer breathe.

  The door burst open and there was Burke and the other guard and more men besides. And Captain Nehemiah Boone was there too, Purefoy standing beside him with an expression like a dog that has brought its master a grouse.

  ‘Let him go or you’ll all hang before dawn!’ Boone yelled, pointing two pistols at Mun’s attacker. There were at least a dozen more firelocks pointing into that dark shed, the faces of the men holding them shocked and angry at seeing their corporal face down in the dirt.

  ‘I won’t tell you again, rebel,’ Boone said, the pistols steady, fingers on the triggers.

  The rebel captain released Mun and stepped back, hands raised, and Mun fell forward, choking. Really choking.

  ‘What in God’s name happened here, Rivers?’ Boone clamoured. But Mun could barely breathe let alone speak and he crawled forward on his hands and knees as though desperate to escape his tormentors.

  Burke was kneeling by Corporal Scrope, his ear down by the man’s mouth.

  ‘He’s dead, sir,’ he said, twisting back to Captain Boone. ‘Dead as a damned doornail.’

  ‘Bard, Downes, bring that treasonist rebel cur to me,’ Boone said, turning and striding back out into the night.

  ‘Lucky we stopped by, eh, Mun!’ O’Brien said. The Irishman was checking the knots on the prisoners’ bindings to make sure none of the others could wriggle free. ‘You should have said you were coming to pay your respects to these lads.’ He grinned. ‘I’d have joined you.’

  ‘Bastard cut Hector,’ Mun grumbled, rubbing the back of his neck and nodding towards Tom.

  ‘Looks like ’im or ’is mate finished the job on Corporal Scrope, too,’ O’Brien said, then leant in to Tom. ‘For which I thank you,’ he said under his breath with a wicked grin. ‘You’ve made our lives easier and no mistake.’ Tom glared straight ahead at the night beyond the open door and said nothing.

  Two soldiers got hold of Scrope’s feet and dragged him outside and Mun followed, avoiding his brother’s eye as he left him in that death-smelling dark space and stepped out into the moon-washed night.

  ‘Step away from the prisoner,’ Captain Boone said, and Bard and Downes did as they were told, leaving the rebel captain standing tall on his own in the midst of two dozen of Boone’s harquebusiers. ‘Did you happen to be amongst Colonel John Brown’s Parliamentarian Horse at Powick Bridge?’ Boone asked the man. ‘For they were a pitiful mob. Pissed themselves to a man as they died.’ But the captain had nothing to say to Nehemiah Boone, who shrugged as though it did not matter. ‘You, sir, are a traitor to your king and a murderer,’ he said, ‘but more importantly, you are an example to your men.’ And with that Boone lifted both pistols and pulled the triggers, their charges exploding simultaneously, and for two heartbeats Captain Preston looked down at the raw, gaping hole in what had been his chest, then his legs buckled and he collapsed as the rotten egg smell of burnt black powder wafted over Mun.

  ‘Lock the door, Burke,’ Captain Boone said, a haze of smoke still lingering around his fine pistols as some of his men called out to others in the camp that all was well and there was no alarm. He turned to Mun, cocking his head to one side. ‘If you ever go behind my back again, Rivers, I will put you on a charge and I do not care who your father is.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Mun heard himself say, as he stared at the dead captain. The expression on his boyish face was a mix of confusion and disappointment, a look Mun was coming to recognize on the recently killed. His thoughts raced in his aching skull, trying to catch up with all that had just happened. But one truth had broken from the pack and rode a full length ahead of everything else. It was the only thing that really mattered on that night, beneath that heavy sky and the half moon now and then breaking through the clouds.

  Tom was alive.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘WE HA GRAIN, my lady, and livestock. eleven heifers and thirteen beeves, all in fahne fettle,’ the man said, glancing up at one of the two stone lions on their plinths either side of the gate in the boundary wall that stretched around Shear House and its grounds. ‘Some pigs and sheep too,’ he added, ‘and a few daft hens and a cock who thinks he’s lord o’ the manor.’ He flushed at that, forcing a nervous grin. ‘If my ninny li’le lass has ney let ’em scarper,’ he said, thumbing over his shoulder. ‘Margery’s a li’le wibbet.’ Clearly hoping the animals would secure his family’s entrance to Shear House, the man, who had introduced himself as Mister Cawley, now launched the second stage of his offensive and stood aside to give Lady Mary and Bess a better view of his family. They were all, it seemed to Bess, trying their hardest to keep the livestock from wandering off, though not entirely succeeding. ‘We’ve come fro’ Heskin,’ Cawley said, ‘and it’s ta’en us all day to get here what with the cattle, but I thank God we came across no rebels abeawt for we should ha lost our animals if we had.’ He scratched his neck, making it red. ‘The traitors are devils. Them’ll tek what they want,’ he said, eyeing the six men armed with an assortment of matchlock muskets, swords and clubs who stood behind Bess and her mother just inside the gate.

  ‘Well you and your family are safe now,’ Lady Mary replied, trying to put the man at ease for he was clearly nervous, judging by the tremble of his hand and the sweat sheening his weathered brow.

  The monotonous thump of hammers on wood and chisels on stone underpinned barked commands and the occasional crackle of musket fire, composing a melody that was to Bess’s ears at odds with the st
ill autumn afternoon as she considered the new arrivals, the third family to come in that day. She could see Cawley’s wife, two boys aged around ten, a girl a little younger and another girl no older than five, who saw Bess and curtsied, flashing a smile that was more gaps than teeth.

  ‘You are welcome here, Mister Cawley,’ Lady Mary went on, ‘though I will tell you the same as I have told the others. In return for our protection you will be required to share the work and what victuals you have.’ She cocked her head, examining the stout, unkempt-looking fellow before her and making no pretence otherwise. ‘You can shoot, I presume?’

  ‘I have tried it once or twy, my lady, but I doesn’d own a piece,’ Cawley said.

  Lady Mary nodded. ‘Up at the house Isaac will show you to your quarters and then you, Cawley, will report to the Major of the House. Your wife will be given her instructions in due course.’

  With that Cawley dipped his head respectfully and Bess and her mother stepped aside to allow him, his family and their livestock train through the gate.

  They had come from all across the West Lancashire plain, whole families flocking to Shear House and other estates whose protection they sought against the armed rebels who rode across the country preaching their sedition, decrying their king, beating some who would not waver in their loyalty to His Majesty, and even, sometimes, stringing up those they suspected of papism.

  At first it had just been the tenant farmers, the copyholders and leaseholders, who had come through those lion-guarded gates: those whose livelihoods were tied to a lesser or greater extent to the fortunes of the Rivers family and their estate. But then others had come because word had spread that Lady Mary Rivers would turn none away who asked her protection. Now, Bess reckoned there were upwards of three hundred and fifty men, women and children living at Shear House, and of those some ninety-four men had been formed into a garrison of sorts by an ex-soldier and friend of her father named Edward Radcliffe. Radcliffe had fought on the continent and though his best days were clearly behind him, Lady Mary believed his experience would prove invaluable in the coming days and had employed him as Major of the House, tasking him with the procurement of arms and other necessaries.