The Bleeding Land

by Giles Kristian

  ‘Take my word for it,’ Margaret had said, gently wiping dried blood from his cheek, ‘there is nothing you’ve got that I haven’t seen before.’

  With the wound clean they had seen that Edward had been right and there was no ball stuck in the meat. It had gouged a piece of flesh and a sliver of bone from Tom’s shoulder and gone on its way.

  ‘So long as we keep it clean, you ought to recover well enough,’ Edward had said, satisfied they had washed all the filth and any fibres from Tom’s clothes from the wound. Margaret had made a poultice of honey and oats and because Anne had the steadiest hand and the best eyes, so said her father, the task was given to her of smearing the salve into the raw furrow. Now that he was warm the pain had been appalling, but Tom had clamped his jaw shut on the curses that clamoured to be loosed upon the agony, and only afterwards had it occurred to him the real reason why Edward had given the job to Anne. The girl was a beauty. No older than seventeen by Tom’s guessing, she was golden-haired, blue-eyed and clear-skinned, but the most potent weapon in her arsenal was the slight upward curl of her lips that hinted at a mischief at odds with the rest of her. If anything could bolster a man’s courage against pain and stop him filling a godly house with ungodly curses, Tom mused after the job was done, it was the nearness of a beautiful woman. As for the third finger on his right hand, that stub smarted like the devil, too, and he was glad when Margaret had bound it so that he no longer had to look at it.

  ‘You were lucky the night was clear and cold,’ Edward had said, noting the grimace that Tom realized had been on his face for some while, ‘for it was the cold that saved you, I’d wager a half sovereign on it.’ Tom doubted Edward Dunne had a half sovereign to his name but thought the man was probably right about why he was alive. ‘The cold stopped the bleeding or else you’d have bled out like a hog.’

  ‘Perhaps I was dead,’ Tom had said, staring into the flames. ‘Perhaps I was dead but not even Hell wanted me.’

  ‘Hush your mouth, young Thomas,’ Margaret had chided from the kitchen, ‘I’ll not have that sort of talk in my house!’ And then she had bustled in with a steaming bowl of pork stew and half a loaf of cheat bread and Edward had gone back out to continue his work of burying the dead, for which one of the Earl of Essex’s captains had promised to pay him and several other men a shilling each.

  Tom had wolfed the meal, helping it down with a great wash of weak ale; and afterwards he slept as he had never slept before: a dreamless slumber half as deep as death.

  And the next day the King’s men came to Kineton.

  It was midday and Tom had not been long awake when Margaret threw open the parlour door, a frozen, wild-eyed stare announcing her terror before she opened her mouth. Then he heard the commotion outside: two voices, boys’, cawing that the Cavaliers were coming. Their voices faded away as they ran on along Warwick Road and Tom gingerly stood and began to dress in worn breeches and an old shirt that belonged to one of the Dunne boys, as Margaret gathered up his bedding and hurried away with it.

  The front door banged and he froze, then exhaled as Anne came into the room. ‘You must hide,’ she said, her cheeks flushing because she had caught him half dressed.

  Tom shook his head. ‘I won’t put your family at risk,’ he said, tucking the shirt in, cursing under his breath because he did not have his tall boots and his father’s pistols. ‘I’ll go north. I can walk well enough,’ he lied. In truth he did not think he would get far, for his body was pain-racked and bone-weary.

  ‘They will be mounted,’ Anne said, ‘and if they find you trying to flee they will know what you are.’

  ‘As they will if they find me here, cowering in the house of a man in Parliament’s employ.’

  Then Margaret swept back into the room. ‘You’ve got a lot to say for a man just back from the dead, young Thomas,’ she said, grabbing his hand, hauling him to the stairs at the back of the parlour. ‘Up you go. I won’t tell you again. You know as well as I that the King’s men will have sent riders north and west to trap any Parliament men bolting from the village.’

  Tom knew she was right and furthermore admired the clear thinking that seemed so contrary to her obvious fear. So gingerly he climbed the stairs, his heart thumping now because he could hear horses and men outside. There were three beds in Anne’s room: hers and her brothers’, upon which piles of blankets sat neatly folded. But there was nowhere obvious for him to hide and he said as much.

  ‘If you don’t know it’s there then let us hope they do not, either,’ Margaret said, falling to her knees by the fireplace and pulling the heavy grate out onto the boards. ‘Now up you go. Quick as you can.’

  Tom crouched and peered up the shaft, amazed to see iron rungs fixed into the stone, ascending into the dark. There was no sign of light or sky.

  ‘It is not a flue,’ he said, his head spinning, legs trembling from climbing just those few stairs.

  Margaret arched a brow. ‘A Catholic lived here before,’ she replied, as though that explained everything, and Tom imagined a frightened family hiding their priest up there in the cramped dark whilst pursuivants searched the house. ‘Go all the way up and you’ll see.’

  ‘But be as still as you can,’ Anne warned, going over to the window and looking down. ‘I have heard mice scurrying about up there, so we shall hear you like thunder if you fidget.’

  ‘No fidgeting,’ Tom acceded with a half smile.

  Anne turned back suddenly. ‘Quick now, they’re coming!’

  Tom locked eyes with Margaret. ‘If they find me—’

  But she cut him off with a wave of her hand. ‘Stay still and stay quiet. And don’t come down until we say it’s safe.’

  He turned and squeezed up into the narrow space, able to bend only his right leg, just enough to step up the rungs, both feet onto each before moving to the next, his shoulders scraping the wall, knocking bits of mortar from it that rattled down onto the grate which Margaret had put back.

  At the top he clambered over a lip into the roof space, his eyes adjusting to the gloom until he could make out a clutter of ancient beams and the roof’s sloping eaves. He could feel sweat bursting from his skin, soaking his clothes and making his scalp itch. A wave of nausea threatened to swamp him but he sharpened his mind and fought it off, knowing it was some effect of the blows his head had taken.

  Taking a deep breath he tried to slow his racing heart. The smell of dry wood and bird droppings was cut with the almost sweet tang of mouse urine. He shuffled up against a roof beam and stilled his breath so that he might become one with that dark place.

  A mouse scurried across the boards. Something rustled above his head, a creature nesting in the thatch perhaps. And then he could hear the King’s soldiers, shouting to each other, thumping on doors. Demanding to know if the folk of Kineton harboured any rebels and if they did to give them up or face their king’s punishment for they were vile traitors. So he put his head back against an old timber, the wound in his shoulder a savage bloom of pain, and waited in the dark.

  ‘We’ve got one, Captain!’ a big trooper yelled, appearing at the door of a modest house and dragging a man out into the street where more Royalist soldiers waited with the horses. ‘Found the cack handler hiding under a bed like a whipped bloody cur.’ He swung his victim round, sending him sprawling across the muddy horse tracks where he lay helpless, begging for mercy.

  ‘Poor bastard looks half dead,’ Rowe said to Mun as they watched the scene, their swords drawn. O’Brien was pounding a big fist against the door of another house on Warwick Road. It would be only the fourth house the three of them had searched but O’Brien was already tired of the task. Mun was, too, if he was honest. It was dragoons’ work. Besides which, he was exhausted. Soul-weary. And his mind kept conjuring images of his father and Emmanuel, two corpses in the cold mud.

  ‘I hope they hang him,’ he said as two soldiers hauled the rebel from the filth and bound his hands behind his back. ‘Damned traitor.’

 
‘Here we go,’ O’Brien gnarred as the door opened and a small, nearly toothless man stood trembling at the threshold, hooded eyes flickering over the soldiers and blades before him. To replace his broken rapier Mun had chosen an Irish hilt from the munitions captured after the battle. A real bone-breaker and heavy too, its broad blade was balanced by the basket hilt of wide bars and large spherical pommel, and though not a fine weapon it was a fearful one.

  ‘We must search your house, old man,’ O’Brien said, ‘in case any rebels sneaked in while you were dozing by the fire.’

  ‘There are no rebels here,’ the man lisped, waving O’Brien away with a skeletal, liver-spotted hand. ‘I am old not blind.’

  ‘I wouldn’t trust those rusty peepers to see your piss hit the pot,’ O’Brien replied, pushing past him, and Mun and Rowe followed into the small kitchen, their blades held before them in case of ambush. A cat hissed at Mun, its back arched, and Mun stamped near it but it held its ground as he moved through to the small parlour and Rowe stomped up the stairs.

  ‘Have you seen any Parliament men since Kineton Fight?’ Mun asked, eyeing the old man for signs that he was lying to them. He shook his head and Mun looked around him. A small iron pot hung above the fire, its bubbling contents filling the humble house with the smell of onions and parsnips. Food for one.

  It seemed the man had little else, nor a wife by the looks.

  ‘I want no part in the quarrel, sir,’ the old man said, wringing his hands, his head wobbling on his scrawny neck. ‘I just want to live out my days in peace. Don’t want trouble.’

  ‘Nothing up here!’ Rowe called, clomping back down to join the others. O’Brien had found a spoon and was busy dipping, blowing and slurping, bushy brows bridging slitted eyes.

  ‘Yet the quarrel has found you, old man,’ Mun said, ‘as it has found us all. It is left to you to choose the side. For your king or against him.’

  ‘Remember, though, if you lie down with dogs, you rise up with fleas,’ O’Brien put in, then cocked his head. ‘Spearmint,’ he said. ‘Just a sprig or two, mind, but it would improve it. And perhaps some parsley?’

  ‘Leave the old man’s food alone,’ Rowe said, grinning. ‘He doesn’t want your Irish drool tainting it.’

  O’Brien shrugged and turned his palms innocently. ‘A good word never broke a tooth, young Vincent,’ he said, ‘I’m simply imparting my wisdom, for I know food. God bless her but my ma could have fed the King’s army with five fishes and two loaves, so she could.’

  There was another commotion outside and Mun nodded to the others that it was time to go. O’Brien sighed, handing the spoon to the old man as he followed Mun and Rowe back outside. ‘O’Brien, you barnacle-brained numbskull!’ the Irishman berated himself, halting at the threshold and turning back, startling the old man, who had followed them to the door. ‘Crushed coriander seeds,’ he announced, pressing finger to thumb as he stepped out onto the road, ‘just a pinch. But then it’ll be worth eating.’

  ‘I want no trouble,’ the old man mumbled, shaking his head, then shut the door and was gone.

  ‘You see if I’m wrong!’ O’Brien clamoured at the closed door.

  ‘You should have seen her, Mun!’ Mun looked across to see Richard Downes standing in the road, staring up at the first-floor window of the house next door. ‘She’s a beauty, a real beauty,’ Downes said. ‘Hair like spun gold.’ He put on his three-bar pot, leaving the chin strap hanging, and cupped his hands against his chest. ‘Tits you could hang your helmet on! And those lips . . .’ He grinned. ‘I told Walton I’d let him have the mother, and we’d keep the whole thing to ourselves, but the old fart wouldn’t hear of it so we had to make do with relieving them of their dinner.’ He kicked the sack by his feet. ‘Smelt good, too.’

  Humphrey Walton shook his head at Mun as though cursing his luck for having been partnered with Downes, but Mun ignored them both, his gaze drawn across the road and the men leaving the church hefting an iron-bound chest between them. Corporal Bard was with them, barking orders at a trooper named Ellis to deliver a message to Captain Boone.

  ‘What have they got there, then?’ O’Brien said, following Mun’s lead and tucking his powder flask inside his thick buff-coat for it had started to rain: thin veils of drizzle that did not feel like much but would soak a man and his powder in no time, making the one miserable and the other useless. ‘A bit small for the Earl of Essex’s coffin,’ the Irishman added through a grin.

  ‘And not heavy enough to be coin, by the looks,’ Mun said, crossing the road so he could see better.

  ‘Dead men’s effects,’ Bard explained in answer to the questioning glances from the men gathering around, drawn like Mun to the chest for the glorious possibilities of what it might contain. ‘The men of Kineton have been burying the dead yonder.’ The sergeant threw a hand eastward. ‘By an older church that’s nought but ruins now. The things they find with the corpses, the things they don’t have a use for,’ he added, cocking an eyebrow knowingly, ‘letters and the like, they give to the minister for safekeeping.’

  ‘Because the hedgeborn apple Johns can’t read,’ Downes mumbled in Mun’s ear.

  At Bard’s signal the two men set the chest down and the corporal opened the lid, stirring a groan of disappointment from the men. ‘I told you, you suspicious bastards,’ he said, ‘there’s nought here that should keep you from your work. Anything of worth will be hidden under boards, in dank cellars and stuffed up skirts,’ he said, nodding back towards the long row of thatched houses that continued on Southam Street, ‘so get back to it, you tosspots.’

  Men murmured grumblingly and when Mun turned back towards the task in hand he caught a glimpse of a pale face and golden hair at a first-floor window. A heartbeat later it was gone, but he recalled what Downes had said and was surprised to consider that the man had perhaps not exaggerated how beautiful the girl was who lived in that house.

  Then he drew his sword again and followed O’Brien back across the road. To search for rebels.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE MAN JERKED like a fish on a hook and the onlookers jeered. His legs wrenched this way and that, the sheer violence of it at odds with his slight frame and genteel looks. Not that he looked particularly genteel at this moment with his eyes swelling furiously and his tongue bulging grotesquely, forcing his lips apart. Then a dark stain bloomed at his crotch and within half a choke the piss was dribbling from his right foot and the crowd gave a great cheer at the sight of it.

  ‘I’d still rather hang than be crucified,’ O’Brien said thoughtfully, through the clamour, eyes fixed on the dying man and holding out his wrists. ‘It’s the nails I can’t bear the thought of. Do you think you still piss yourself hung up on a cross?’

  ‘I think I’d rather not think about it, Clancy,’ Mun said as another cheer went up, this one accompanied by wafting hands and fingers pinching noses. The man’s bowels had opened and the liquid streaming from his breeches’ leg now was brown, foul and stinking.

  ‘Death to traitors!’ someone yelled.

  A seething, gurgling sound was escaping the man’s strangled throat.

  ‘I think Mister Blake is trying to tell us something,’ a soldier yelled.

  ‘That he’s sorry and he won’t do it again,’ his friend hollered back, rousing a chorus of laughter that made Mun think of the rooks back home in Parbold.

  They had found more than rebel soldiers at Kineton. On the village outskirts, at the foot of Pittern Hill by the remains of the ancient earthworks known to local folk as King John’s Castle, they had found several carts loaded with muskets and pikes, and all sorts of ammunition. Guarded by a small troop of dragoons, some of whom were wounded, this train would have followed Essex’s army on its march towards Warwick. If it had got away in time. But it had not, and now it belonged to the King.

  But they had also found letters. Most of them were from family members to their loved ones: men who were now the plundered dead and food for worms. But s
ome of those letters were for the living, for the Earl of Essex himself no less, from the pen of a man called Blake, who was Prince Rupert’s personal secretary. And in them Blake had given details of Royalist manoeuvres, had even requested richer rewards for his betrayal. Which was why he was now dancing a jig at the end of a rope.

  ‘The bastard’s taking his sweet time about dying,’ Downes said, his handsome face made a twist of grimace by the stink of faeces.

  Mun’s memory conjured Martha Green hanging from the old bridge across the Tawd, her face, beautiful in life, abhorrent in death. And that soul-wound flowed back to Shear House, to his mother and Bess who had lost everything and yet did not know it. He tried to picture their faces, tried to imagine their grief when they eventually learned what had become of Sir Francis and Emmanuel, for if he could envisage their desolation and sorrow perhaps he could somehow steel himself for the act of breaking the news.

  I should have told them already, he thought, the heavy, choking truth of it flooding in on him. I should be with them now. But he could not tell them because the King still needed his army. They had marched south to threaten Banbury, but the cannon they had trained on that town had not needed to roar for the Earl of Peterborough and the six hundred of his regiment to come out, lay down their arms and ask His Majesty’s pardon. And now, two days later, they were in Oxford watching a traitor hang.