The Bleeding Land

by Giles Kristian

  Mun came two days later. The storm had passed and the night was crisp and dry, so that the scarred man and his troopers had known someone was coming long before they had seen him. Mun came on Achilles, armed as though riding into battle and stiff with tension.

  ‘He’s an evil bastard,’ Mun said, nodding towards Achilles and patting the stallion’s neck as Tom took the bridle and put his face against Achilles’s muzzle, whispering in greeting. The others were a little distance away, sharing a fire whose crack and pop echoed off the trees in the still night.

  ‘You blew up a powder magazine?’ Tom asked, still looking at Achilles, stroking his poll.

  ‘Hooker needed a distraction,’ Mun said with a shrug, taking a thong-tied leather bundle from under the cantle of Achilles’s saddle. Tom glanced over at the mercenary, putting the name to the man.

  ‘They’ll hang you, brother,’ Tom said.

  ‘They’ll hang you first, Thomas. Unless you come to your senses and come over to us.’ Mun’s jaw firmed and he gave a slight shake of his head. ‘How can you ride with these men? They are rebels and traitors.’

  Tom looked into his brother’s face upon which the fire’s light fought with shadow, revealing then concealing his eyes. ‘You should get back before you are missed,’ he said.

  Mun’s eyes flared in the orange glow.

  ‘I did not do all this so that you could continue down this road to ruin. It’s madness, Tom. You are a Rivers! We are the King’s men.’

  ‘I am not,’ Tom said. Mun shook his head and glanced over to the other rebels who were sitting rubbing their hands near the flames and coughing as the smoke wreathed each of them in turn. ‘It is not they who have bewitched me, brother,’ Tom said, reading Mun’s face, ‘but it is through their cause that I will find what I seek. It is through such as they that I will make it right.’

  When Mun’s gaze swung back to Tom his eyes were heavy with sadness. ‘You cannot bring her back, Thomas,’ he said, reaching out and gripping Tom’s shoulder, making him flinch.

  ‘I loved her,’ he said, his throat constricting.

  Mun nodded slowly. ‘I know you did, brother.’ For a moment Tom held Mun’s eye, but then he looked down at the muddy ground. ‘But vengeance is not the way,’ Mun said. ‘In vengeance there is only pain. More pain, even, than you feel now. Listen to me, Tom.’ The grip on Tom’s shoulder tightened. ‘Father was trying to protect you. He was trying to protect us all. Minister Green was a secret Catholic.’ Tom shrugged off Mun’s hand, stepping back. ‘I am almost certain of it,’ Mun said. ‘They found certain effects. Things in the minister’s house that proved it.’

  ‘And you believe them?’ Tom challenged. ‘That whoreson Denton staged that whole play. I’d wager Achilles on it.’

  ‘Why would he?’ Mun asked, turning his palms up.

  ‘Because the people were baying for blood and Denton thought if he gave them George they would be appeased. They would go back to their work and his rents would keep coming in.’ Tom swept an arm through the air. ‘Or because he knew war was coming and he thought that throwing his weight around would remind folk that he was Lord Denton. They’d see what happened to anyone not in his favour. Anyone not on his side when the shooting started. Or because he is an evil-minded, poisonous bastard.’ Tom felt his hands ball into tight knots by his sides. ‘He raped her, Mun,’ he said, the pain welling in his chest, so that he felt each beat of his heart and feared it would burst.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Mun said, the muscle in his cheek bouncing, his eyes brimming with tears. ‘But you are wrong to blame Father. Think of Bess. Think of Mother. You will ruin us all.’

  ‘Think of Martha!’ Tom spat, the empty pain of longing flaring into anger, like black powder in the priming pan when the serpent snaps down. ‘Martha lies in the grave!’ His mind summoned a picture of his love, of her chalk-skinned face being eaten by maggots, the larvae writhing and twisting in the jelly of her green eyes. ‘Father could have stopped it all,’ he said. ‘He could have tried.’

  ‘And so you betray him?’

  ‘He betrayed me!’ Tom said.

  ‘And your king?’ Mun challenged. ‘Is he to blame for your troubles, too?’

  ‘Go, brother,’ Tom heard himself say. ‘Go back and hope they do not discover what you have done.’

  But Mun shook his head and stood still, his eyes driving on, though he knew his words had fallen short.

  ‘Come back with me, Tom. We’ll deny whatever they accuse us of. They never discovered your name, did they?’

  Tom shook his head and hope flared in his brother’s eyes.

  ‘You can enlist with Prince Rupert’s Horse,’ Mun said. ‘We’ll ride together.’

  ‘I will not go with you,’ Tom said. ‘I cannot.’

  ‘The rebels cannot win this war,’ Mun said. ‘They cannot hope to defeat His Majesty’s army.’

  ‘Then I will die in battle and I will be with Martha,’ Tom said. He felt a tear spill down into his beard. ‘Tell your king he will find us at Kineton.’

  Mun stood there for a little longer, brother looking at brother.

  ‘Then God be with you, Thomas,’ Mun said, his jaw clenching as soon as the words were out. He looked down at the leather bundle in his hand, hesitated for a heartbeat, then handed it over. Then he turned and went to Achilles, fetching a bag of coin which he took over to Osmyn Hooker.

  Tom did not need to unroll the leather parcel to know what was inside. He knew by its weight that it held his father’s long firelock pistols and he wondered what risks his brother had taken to get them back.

  ‘You do not need to count it, Hooker,’ Mun said, ‘you have my word it is all there.’

  ‘Am I to trust the word of a man who kills his own comrades?’ Hooker asked theatrically, cocking his head like a bird of prey, examining Mun.

  ‘For my brother I would kill you where you stand,’ Mun said, glaring at him.

  Hooker grinned. ‘What shall I do with the others?’

  ‘Let them go,’ Mun said. Hooker shrugged as though it mattered to him not at all. Then Mun mounted one of the horses which had carried the rebels to freedom, turned it round and walked it away from the old house in the trees and he did not look back.

  And Tom watched him go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE BOOM WAS low and guttural, like god’s wrath as it pummelled the still October dawn, and the iron ball slammed into the brick wall, spraying shards across the muddied ground. Bess knew that if not for the earth that had been hastily dug and thrown up against the wall – Edward Radcliffe’s idea – that ball would likely have punched straight through and continued in its flight. But the piled earth absorbed some of the blow, albeit this rampart did not reach the top of the wall or even extend the full length of it.

  ‘And so the guns begin to play,’ Radcliffe said with a nod that was almost approving. The other men of Shear House’s garrison glanced around nervously but the Major of the House barked at them to keep their eyes on the rebels. Those rebels were strung out in a thin cordon three hundred yards beyond the boundary wall and were still busy throwing up earthworks and sorting themselves into troops, though the gunners had announced that they at least were ready.

  ‘A demi-cannon, milady,’ Radcliffe said, knuckles sweeping some dried mud off the lace-trimmed falling band lying over his ancient and oft-mended buff-coat. ‘Fires a twenty-seven-pound ball a distance of sixteen hundred feet. With the right charge,’ he added, extending the nub that was all that remained of the index finger on his right hand. War had exacted a heavy price from the veteran and yet he was unbowed, for which Bess admired him.

  ‘A formidable weapon then,’ she said, trying to keep her voice measured and even despite the gun’s furious roar which she would have sworn yet rolled across the Lancashire hills like a decaying thunderclap.

  ‘Bess, go to the house,’ Lady Mary said, then turned back to Radcliffe who had assumed that stance of a man long used to the music of war, feet plan
ted shoulder width, hands clasped behind his back.

  ‘Formidable indeed, Miss Elizabeth,’ Radcliffe said, rewarding her observation with a nod and half smile that made Bess feel entirely justified in ignoring her mother’s command. ‘In the right hands such a gun can spit ten balls every hour.’

  ‘And is it in the right hands, Major?’ Lady Mary asked, shooting a disapproving glance at Bess, which Bess affected not to notice. Lady Mary was dressed in her riding gear: felt tunic and breeches tucked inside tall boots, and had strapped on the ornate back- and breastplate that had been made for Mun when he had turned fifteen. Her hair, red threaded with white, was tied back from her regal face and, looking at her mother, Bess imagined Lady Mary to resemble Boudicca, warrior queen of the ancient Britons.

  ‘Ask me again in one hour, milady,’ Radcliffe answered in all seriousness. ‘What I can tell you is that the rebels are amassing quite a horde out there. The demi-cannon alone requires a team of at least ten horses or sixty men to move it from here to there. Nine men to fire it.’

  One of the men up on the makeshift rampart against the boundary wall called for the major’s permission to fire his musket as his match was almost burnt out. But Radcliffe shook his head.

  ‘No point wasting powder and shot!’ he called. ‘At that range you’d only tickle the traitorous curs.’ Men laughed at that and Bess gave silent thanks that they had Radcliffe on their side, for the defenders on the platforms and those peering through the loopholes cut in the boundary wall took confidence from the old veteran and Bess had the idea that confidence was worth a lot in war, perhaps as much as a demi-cannon that spat iron balls.

  Lady Mary stepped up to the wall and a young farm hand dipped his head and stepped aside to allow her the vantage of his spy hole upon the enemy. Bess shivered at the sight of the young man’s weapon – a bill with its long cutting edge and rear and top spikes – because it seemed barbarous that such a crude agricultural tool might now be turned against other men. Might now hack at flesh rather than lopping the limbs from trees.

  ‘I wish we had such a gun,’ Lady Mary said, peering through the loophole.

  ‘Il fait plus de peur que du mal,’ Radcliffe said.

  ‘It frightens more than it hurts?’ Bess said, working out the major’s poorly accented French.

  ‘Like raising children, eh, milady?’ Radcliffe said, turning his one eye on her. Lady Mary turned her head and raised an eyebrow and Radcliffe winked at Bess and gave that half smile of his that somehow changed his whole face, taking twenty years off him, and hard years too. Bess blushed in spite of herself because she had the sense that the old veteran was flirting with her. Then, suddenly aware of her greatly increased size, her cheeks burned all the more fiercely because she knew her father’s old friend was merely being kind.

  ‘I appreciate your wanting to comfort us, Major,’ Lady Mary said, turning to face him properly now, ‘but I am not a child to be spared the cold realities of war. I will have the truth if you please.’

  Radcliffe seemed taken aback and Bess felt embarrassed for him, but he recovered almost instantly.

  ‘Yes, of course, milady,’ he said with a curt nod.

  ‘Look abeawt!’ someone yelled and Bess turned, hunching, her arms across the great swell of her belly as another boom kicked dawn’s guts, followed by a crash and more flying shards of brick. She turned back to see the last tremble of the boundary wall and dust blooming in the crisp morning air.

  The only one who had not flinched or cowered was Radcliffe. Instead he seemed to be judging the distance along the brick wall between the first strike and this last.

  ‘They are reasonably fast,’ he said with grudging admiration, ‘but their aim is poor and they only have the one gun.’

  ‘So we are safe for now?’ Bess asked, wondering if the terrible roar of the demi-cannon frightened the child inside her.

  Radcliffe glanced at Lady Mary and then back to Bess, weighing his response carefully. ‘I would feel much happier if you would return to the house, Miss Elizabeth,’ he said sternly. ‘This wall cannot be defended.’ He looked at Lady Mary, who nodded as though she appreciated the truth of it, no matter how disagreeable it was. ‘Without that gun they would sit out there until Christmastide. With it they need never come in range of our muskets. Providing they have enough shot, they will batter us, milady. Sooner or later this wall will come down and there is nothing we can do about that.’ Bess saw despair darken her mother’s face like a sudden storm cloud across the sun.

  ‘Yet the curs will not have it as easy as all that,’ Radcliffe went on, sweeping an arm back towards the house. He saw the look on Mother’s face, too, Bess thought. ‘We still have the inner defences, milady, and they are more easily defensible,’ he reassured, ‘for we can concentrate our fire, you see.’ He pointed to the section of wall from which the mortar had been blasted, leaving the structure hopelessly vulnerable. ‘They will have to move that gun, all six thousand pounds of it,’ he said, ‘and when they do they will be vulnerable.’ Lady Mary studied her husband’s friend for a moment, then seemed satisfied that he was telling her the truth of it for she nodded curtly and came over to Bess, taking her hand and turning her away from the failing defensive wall.

  ‘I will take my disobedient daughter back to the house and when I come back we will discuss how we can make life unpleasant for our unwelcome guests.’ With that she led Bess up the gentle slope towards the long drive that disappeared into the birch and sweet chestnut wood on its way to Shear House.

  ‘And I will buy us time, Lady Mary!’ Radcliffe called after them. ‘I will bleed those rebel dogs and I will buy us time. You may rest assured about that.’ Then the old veteran strode up to the wall and, hands clasped in the small of his back, thumbs circling each other, he peered through a hole at the enemy.

  Because the rebels were at the gates of his lady’s house and it was up to him to stop them.

  Bess had made a crescent of several bed pillows and it was in this nest that she lay night after night, craving sleep that never came. The nest relieved some of the discomfort caused by her distended stomach and the weight of the child growing in it, but not all of it, and even when her eyes grew heavy and sleep lured her into its forgetful embrace it was fleeting, vanquished by a little fist or kicking foot inside her. For if the baby had once frightened her with its stillness, these days, it seemed, it rarely if ever stopped wriggling. But at least she had a bed, and Bess knew she ought to be thankful for that. Shear House was full. It had become a refuge and a garrison. It was a bastion loyal to His Majesty King Charles; a rock around which chaos in the form of rebellion flowed. Families bedded down wherever they could, many lying on fine old tapestries which Lady Mary had given them against the autumn chill, for much of the seasoned wood was stacked in piles reserved for cookfires and not to be wasted as fuel for warmth.

  Her own breath pluming in the cold of her bedchamber, Bess shifted position and, lying on her side, pulled a bolster deeper beneath the weight of her unborn child. She scrunched her toes and rubbed her legs which had gone numb, though that, she was sure, had more to do with being with child than it did with these unseasonably cold October nights.

  She placed a palm on her belly, above a probing hand or foot. Be glad you are cosy and warm, little one, she thought. For many are not.

  Most of the men were out there in the dark defending the perimeter wall. Bess pictured them talking in low voices, shivering in their cloaks a mere five hundred paces from other men, their enemies, who were doing just the same.

  A sense of guilt coupled with the need to feel her legs again made her throw off her blankets and she waddled to the window, leaning back to counterbalance her precious burden. Damn the rebels for starting this war. They would see the world turned upside down.

  She focused her hatred on the one face she could summon without even trying. Captain Downing had called again on Lady Mary but this time she had not let him set foot inside the grounds and Bess no longer thought
he was in the least bit handsome. The young Parliamentarian officer had stood beneath the imperious gaze of the gatepost lions and matched their pride with a new arrogance of his own: a haughtiness which he wore thick as his buff-coat, a defence against her mother, Bess guessed, who the upstart had learned was a formidable opponent.

  ‘You must yield up Shear House and all the persons, goods, and arms within it, into my hands, to receive the mercy of Parliament,’ he had said, this time not even deigning to look at Bess, much less ask after her health. ‘And I shall have your final answer by two o’clock tomorrow.’

  ‘You shall have it in the morning, at eight, Captain Downing,’ Lady Mary had replied. ‘Good day to you.’ And with that she had ordered the gates shut, and the captain had mounted and turned his horse around before the great beam was dropped into its stanchions.

  ‘Why did you not give him our answer now, Mother?’ Bess had asked, for she had wanted to see this man’s conceit pierced by a woman’s pride, had burned to see the grey flint flash in those brown eyes.

  ‘I have my reasons, Bess. Be patient,’ Lady Mary had said.

  Now Bess stood alone in the gloom of her bedchamber, looking out across the grounds, her breath turning to cold water on the window glass. By the bone-light of the moon she could see men stationed behind barricades, gabions which Major Radcliffe had had them construct in strategic positions on the lawns in front of the house. These, along with the rose garden wall at the rear, would act as a secondary redoubt should the boundary wall be breached. When it was breached. The last defence, if it ever came to it, would be the house itself, but the thought of the rebels turning that hateful, thundering gun on Shear House’s walls did not bear thinking about.

  A shiver of apprehension scuttled up Bess’s spine as she returned to her bed, because today was the day that Captain Downing would receive his answer from the mistress of the house.

  Daylight woke her, and Bess realized she had slept for two hours, perhaps even longer, for which she was grateful. She would need all of her strength to support her mother and play her part. With Sir Francis, her brothers and Emmanuel gone, it fell to them, the Rivers women, to uphold the family’s honour and do their duty to their king. Come what may.