‘And to think the dog almost slipped his lead,’ O’Brien yawped in Mun’s ear, hauling him from his mire of dark thoughts. ‘They found him packed up and about to make for Warwick to lie on the earl’s lap and get a rub behind the ears.’
‘I heard he was so afraid of what the Prince would do to him that his legs seized up and he couldn’t walk,’ Downes put in. ‘Hooker had to put the bastard over his shoulder and carry him to Rupert.’
‘Nothing wrong with his legs now,’ O’Brien remarked, for Blake was still thrashing.
‘Hooker?’ Mun said, surprised to hear that name.
‘Aye, that ugly bastard over there,’ Downes said, nodding to the press of men on their right. ‘The one with the scar where someone’s tried to open his head like a boiled egg.’
Osmyn Hooker must have sensed he was the object of scrutiny for he suddenly looked up, locking eyes with Mun and nodding in greeting, a half smile playing beneath his elaborately curled moustaches.
‘You know him?’ Downes asked.
‘No,’ Mun lied. ‘Might have seen him around camp.’ He felt his cheeks flush at the lie and his pulse quicken at the thought that his past association with Hooker might be discovered.
‘He’s a mercenary.’ O’Brien all but spat the word. ‘He’d run the King through for a fistful of silver.’
‘And you’d step over ten pretty whores to get to a pint of ale,’ Downes said with a grin. ‘We all have our faults.’
But O’Brien wasn’t amused. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘better fifty enemies outside the house than one inside it, if you ask me. You can’t trust a man like that.’
‘Then let us hope His Majesty’s friends in Oxford come up with the silver they’ve promised him,’ Mun said, ‘so that he can ever afford to buy the loyalty of such men. For we have missed our chance to take London and I fear this war is just beginning.’
O’Brien nodded soberly at that and even Downes had no quip on the end of his tongue, as Blake gave his last pathetic salvo of kicks and died. For the Prince had urged his uncle to agree to a bold plan which would see Rupert lead a flying column of cavalry, dragoons and mounted musketeers to London, there to seize the members of the Lords and Commons in Westminster and hold them at Whitehall until the King arrived with the rest of the army. Taking the capital could, Prince Rupert argued, win them the war. But the King’s advisers had no faith that the scheme could work, claiming the city’s ancient defences, the London Trained Bands, and a force raised by the Earl of Warwick would combine to thwart any such bold endeavour. Now the moment was lost and winter was here and the King was making himself comfortable at Oxford.
‘Rivers.’ Mun looked round and found Corporal Bard standing behind him as the crowd fragmented and men streamed past, the evening’s first entertainment over.
‘Corporal,’ Mun acknowledged with a nod, clapping gloved hands to get some warmth into them for it was turning bitter. The winter sun was setting in the west, splashing bloody streaks above the city’s silhouetted towers and spires, fading to orange and then grey in the dusk sky.
‘Make yourselves scarce, you two,’ Bard said to O’Brien and Downes, who nodded and slapped Mun’s shoulder in solidarity as they headed back to their billets.
‘Let me guess, the captain demands satisfaction?’ Mun said, half hoping it was true for he was in a bloody mood.
The veteran smiled. ‘I think Captain Boone would rather leave your disagreements in the past,’ he said, ‘what with you being Sir bloody Edmund Rivers nowadays. Chances are at this rate you’ll be given a commission and end up outranking us all, so we ought to be bloody nice to you, God save our black souls.’ Mun almost smiled at that. ‘No, Rivers, I’ve come about something else.’ Bard’s raw-boned face turned grim; grimmer than normal. ‘Has the captain given you anything of late?’ Mun felt the frown darken his own brow. ‘Since that day we found those rebels in Kineton village?’
‘What is this about, Corporal?’ he asked. ‘Why would Boone have something for me?’
Bard tilted his head to one side, avoiding Mun’s eyes and scratching his bristled cheek.
‘What does the captain have that’s to do with me?’ Mun said, left hand resting on the pommel of his Irish hilt.
Bard looked him in the eye now, his brown teeth worrying at his bottom lip as though trying to keep words in that wanted to be out. ‘Look, Rivers, you’re a brave lad. A good soldier. That day in Kineton we found all sorts, ten types of horse shit. Including letters. Lots of ’em.’
‘I know, Corporal, and so does he,’ Mun said, thumbing back to the dead man hanging from the creaking jib. Bard nodded, then looked around to make sure he was not overheard.
‘Amongst that lot we found in the church was a letter addressed to your father. A letter Sir Francis never laid eyes on.’ The mention of his father’s name was like a blow to the gut. ‘Now, lad, I’m not good with my letters, never had cause to learn ’em properly. But Captain Boone can read like a lawyer. Maybe you should ask him what was in that letter.’
Mun felt the sullen embers in his stomach suddenly spark. What was that bastard Boone keeping from him?
‘Why are you telling me this, Corporal?’
Bard shrugged. ‘As I said, you’re Sir Edmund Rivers,’ he replied, leaving Mun to draw the inference that a favour given is a favour owed. ‘Just leave me out of it,’ he warned, pointing a filth-stained finger. ‘However you found out about that letter it wasn’t from me. Understand?’
Mun nodded. ‘Where is Captain Boone?’ he asked, eyes ranging across the crowds leaving the hanging. Music fought to be heard amongst the murmur of drinking men and the lowing of cattle being herded into the great quadrangle of Christ Church college.
‘I’d wait till morning if I were you, lad,’ Bard said, ‘he’s with the Prince. We’re to push on down the valley to Windsor. Some fat city merchant has earned His Majesty’s wrath and holed up with fifteen hundred rebels in the castle. We’re to prise them from their shell.’ Somewhere, a lute was making merry and a viol was trying to keep up. A woman laughed wickedly and a knot of soldiers gave a bawdy cheer.
‘Where is he, Corporal?’ Mun asked again, eyes riveted to the older veteran’s.
Corporal Bard considered his answer for a moment, then nodded as if to say I’ve come this far . . .
‘They’re at the New College. Saint Mary on Holywell Street. Grand as grand, like this,’ he said, nodding at the impressive square tower beside them, ‘you can’t miss it. It’s now the main magazine.’ He gave a wry grin. ‘The clever young sods must be doing their learning in the alehouses these days,’ he said.
But Mun was already walking, his boots scuffing the cobbles of St Aldate’s, then on, pushing through the crowds on High Street, through the whores and hawkers, the food-sellers and the drunks and all the folk of Oxford who had flocked like gulls to sell the King’s army whatever they could. With each step his anger wound itself tighter, like the spring of a wheellock, and those men and women who saw his face gave him clear passage even if they had to offend another to do it. Turning onto Queen’s Lane he saw the grand buildings ahead of him, their arched, glass-filled windows blurry with warm yellow light.
He ploughed through his own billowing breath but was no longer aware of the cold by the time he came to St Mary, built beside the looming four-hundred-year-old city wall. Then through a dark passage in which a woman was on her knees and the soldier she was servicing grinned at Mun but he did not grin back, and finally into the cloistered courtyard, where he stopped to get his bearings, his breathing loud inside his helmet. It made for an impressive sight, a perfect and ordered quadrangle of stone buildings. Across from him in line along the north range was an enormous timber-roofed chapel, its stained glass glowing dimly, promising respite from the sin and revelries of the bustling night. Above the huge windows gargoyles leered in the gloom, ignored by all who passed below. Flowing on from the chapel, sharing roof and façade though its windows were smaller, was a great hall. In the
far corner of the east range stood a four-storeyed square tower above whose gateway three niches held statues of Virgin, Angel, and another figure who Mun supposed might be the college founder. Officers paced along the torch-lit colonnades, laughing and carrying on as though the war was as good as won, and Mun wondered how many of them had fought in the blood-drenched havoc at Kineton.
Then a dog barked and he looked to his left. At the western end of the quadrangle, by the gaping arch of a passage below the imposing apartments, stood a knot of men. Mun could not see their faces, but the dog, which was dashing between light and shadow having clearly caught the scent of a cat or some other creature, gave the party away. Far from the usual mangy, flea-ridden mongrels that accompanied the army this was a noble, lustrous-haired creature that Mun guessed ate better than most musketeers. It was the Prince’s white hunting poodle, Boy.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed the Prince, looking up as Mun approached. ‘Sir Edmund! The very man who wrested my uncle’s ensign from the enemy and spared us some considerable embarrassment.’
Mun grimaced at the introduction, but the others, except one, seemed impressed enough, shaking his hand and nodding and murmuring their appreciation. Boone made no efforts to hide his enmity, lip curled as though Mun had trodden in something of Boy’s.
‘I simply followed Captain Smith . . . Sir John,’ Mun explained, ‘and had little idea what he was getting me into.’
‘Now now, young man, there’s no need to be so modest here,’ a portly officer with a tuft of beard and a wisp of moustache said. ‘Save the coyness for the ladies.’ He laughed at his own wit. The other men smiled generously and Mun recognized one of them, a clean-shaven man with sloping shoulders, shrewd eyes and a hooked nose. But he could not place the man and so looked back to the Prince.
‘By your leave, Your Highness, I would speak with Captain Boone.’
The Prince frowned, indicating his associates. ‘But we are busy, Sir Edmund,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow we prepare to strike out for Windsor. There is a fox who must be dug out of his den. Colonel John Venn is one of the eleven that will never have my uncle’s pardon. But we shall have his head,’ he said with a grin, then nodded to a squat, richly dressed man wearing a small cloth skullcap. ‘That is, of course, if Mister Garland here can give the den a vigorous shake with his guns.’
The little artilleryman cocked an eyebrow and flicked his long hair, from whose dirt his expensive suit was protected by a heavily laced falling band. ‘I wouldn’t drag my guns forty miles if I did not have faith in them, Your Highness,’ he said, adjusting his embroidered baldrick. ‘I have more faith in my guns than I have in the Lord.’ The familiar-looking man with the hooked nose grinned at that.
‘You see, Sir Edmund,’ the portly officer said, ‘you won’t find Mister Humble around here.’
Again Mun ignored him. ‘Sir, I have reason to believe Captain Boone has in his possession something which is rightfully mine,’ he said, glaring at Boone who was glaring back.
The Prince’s brows arched as he regarded the two men. ‘Well then, Sir Edmund, be quick about it. And if I should ever misplace one of my own colours I shall expect you to see to its safe return,’ he said, waving a hand at Mun to get on with it.
‘What the hell do you want?’ Boone snarled.
‘Where is the letter, Captain?’ Mun asked.
‘What letter?’
‘You know very well the letter I refer to.’
Boone rolled his eyes. ‘You will have to remind me, Rivers, I am a busy man.’
‘Very well. Amongst the letters taken at Kineton village there was one addressed to my father. Sir Francis Rivers of His Majesty’s Lifeguard,’ he said, aware of the eyebrows around them hoisting at his father’s name.
‘Oh, yes,’ Boone said, frowning. ‘There was a letter. It must have fallen into rebel hands before it could be delivered to your father, God rest his soul.’ He twirled his moustaches around a ringed finger and gave Mun a flash of teeth. ‘Now then, where did I put it?’ Mun wanted nothing more than to punch those teeth through the back of his skull. ‘Ah, of course . . . I think I might have it here,’ Boone said, plunging a hand down the front of his buff-coat. ‘Corporal Bard did suggest I ought to give it to you some time ago, but . . . it must have slipped my mind.’ He pulled out the letter and handed it over to Mun. By now the Prince and the other men were engaged in conversation again. Mun turned his back on them all and began to read.
My dear and only love, I pray that this letter finds you and the boys well and in good spirits, your steadfastness ever bolstered by the certain knowledge that you perform honourable duty to your king and your God. And yet it is with a heavy heart and – I may say this to you alone, my love – not a little fear that I write this. For the rebels’ gun – a demi-cannon, Edward tells me – has breached the wall and we are fallen back to our trenches and gabions before the house. Let me assure you that I would no less do my duty than you would do yours and that we shall steel ourselves to the task. The upstarts will suffer for their unnatural infidelity. But, my dear, we cannot hold. I am blessed to have Bess here for she is as brave as Mun and Emmanuel and of great comfort. I will try to write again. If you can come home – if I could grasp even the slim hope that you were riding north even now, I would dare to believe we might prevail. My heart is with you, my love, and I know you believe it for my life is bound up with yours. Mary.
Mun turned, glimpsing the ghost of a smile on Boone’s lips before he slammed his fist into the captain’s face, hurling him against the wall from where he dropped to his knees, clutching his chin.
‘What the devil!’ exclaimed the fat man.
‘Rivers!’ Prince Rupert yelled. ‘How dare you?’
‘Your Highness,’ Mun rasped, glowering at Boone, ‘that rabid cur kept this from me because he’s a spiteful, damned villain!’ Boy was barking and snarling at Mun, big teeth flashing in the night.
‘Give it to me!’ the Prince demanded, extending a hand. Two amongst the party had drawn their swords as though to protect the Prince from this lunatic, their eyes flicking nervously from Mun to Rupert. Hook Nose simply took a step backwards into the shadows, but another man, a tall grey-haired officer, watched calmly as Mun handed Rupert the letter. Then Mun raised his palms to show he meant no harm to the Prince, who, though angry, did not seem in the least afraid for his safety.
‘Well, Captain,’ the Prince said when he had finished reading and was refolding the letter, ‘if you’d kept such a thing from me I would have spilled your guts.’ Boone was climbing to his feet, still holding his jaw, blinking as though he could not see properly. Other officers walking the grounds had stopped to watch.
‘He must hang for that, Your Highness,’ Boone slurred, the words deformed, then spat a wad of blood onto the ground. ‘I demand it.’
‘Hang a man whom the King has just knighted?’ the Prince asked, handing the letter to Garland, who began to read. ‘Don’t be absurd.’ He gestured to Mun. ‘Sir Edmund’s house and family are besieged. From the sounds of it they’re giving a good account of themselves. Or were,’ he added, glancing at Mun.
‘Your Highness, let me take some men north to break the siege,’ Mun said. ‘We shall rout them, send a message to the rebels in that part of the country that the King’s reach is long.’
‘Hold your tongue, Rivers!’ Boone said.
The Prince shook his head. ‘It’s out of the question.’ He frowned. ‘This letter is weeks old. The chances are Shear House has already fallen.’
‘If the rebels have a demi-cannon pointing at it,’ Garland put in, ‘then you can be assured it has, lad,’ he said in an artilleryman’s matter-of-fact way.
‘A small troop won’t be missed,’ Mun said, ignoring the gunner. His family’s peril eclipsed any regard for etiquette. ‘I’ll smash the rebels and ride straight for Windsor to join you there.’ He took a step towards the Prince and saw Boone flinch. ‘My mother and sister cannot be expected to do the King’s fighting for him. Be
ss is with child!’ His right arm trembled with the urge to haul his sword into the night and run Captain Boone through. ‘I will not stay here while they are alone. I will not abandon them. Neither would my father had he known.’
‘Let him go, Rupert,’ the tall man who had not yet spoken said. He was Scottish and had at his waist an Irish hilt like Mun’s only more elaborate. ‘What man would no kick the Devil’s bollocks to protect his mither? Let Sir Edmund loose on the rebel bastards. It’ll do us more good than bad.’
Rupert seemed to consider this for a moment, then he nodded. ‘You can go,’ he said.
‘This is absurd!’ Captain Boone exclaimed, but was silenced by the Prince’s hand.
‘But I can spare no soldiers. Go to your family before the captain here persuades me to string you up with that whoreson Blake. Be sure to return to us with news of the rebels’ movements in the north.’ He flicked a gloved hand nonchalantly. ‘Now leave us.’
Mun nodded, shot Boone a withering glare, then turned and strode into the freezing night, his blood simmering in his veins. But by the time he was back amongst the tents, makeshift shelters and fires strewn across Christ Church Meadow that made up the camp of Prince Rupert’s Horse, his anger was tainted by something else. Fear. What had become of his mother and Bess? How had they even managed to mount a defence? Had not his father written to his mother, telling her that she must not resist the rebels?
‘You should have given them the damned house, Mother,’ he gnarred into the night.
And then there was Boone. Had the captain had any intention of giving him that letter? Probably eventually. The bastard would have picked his moment. Knowing how Mun would react, Boone would have orchestrated the affair so that he could deliver immediate retribution under the warrant of his rank. Mun knew he owed Bard, for if not for the veteran he would yet know nothing of his family’s plight. I owe Boone too, he thought, feeling the hot serpent of violence writhing in his limbs, and that debt would be settled with blood.
But how had the letter fallen into rebel hands in the first place? He guessed it had been the groom Coppe who had brought his mother’s letter south, as he had done previously. Mun knew the man well enough to be sure that he would have protected that letter and his duty with his life. Which meant that Coppe was likely dead. And all Mun could do now was throw his saddle over brave Hector’s back and ride north.
The Bleeding Land Page 35