The Bleeding Land

by Giles Kristian

  ‘Sir, I beg you!’ the man whimpered, falling to his knees, wringing his hands like some Hell-bound penitent. ‘Clemency, sir, I beseech you!’ the lad, who Mun guessed was younger than he, wailed, tears rolling down dirty, powder-scorched cheeks. Everywhere, men were shrieking and dying in the gore-flying havoc.

  O’Brien came up and, working the reins to steady his mount, drew a pistol from his saddle holster and trained it on the young man. ‘This is my friend’s home, you traitorous dog,’ he growled, then pulled the trigger and the rebel’s face exploded in a crimson burst, the body slumping to the mud.

  ‘I was going to spare him,’ Mun called.

  ‘Bastard wouldn’t have spared you,’ O’Brien said, wheeling off to find more prey. What Parliament men still lived were running but they wouldn’t get far. One of Hooker’s men yelled that a small troop of rebel cavalry had turned tail and were riding off south.

  ‘Let’s run them down!’ another trooper yelled, no doubt hungry for rich pickings.

  ‘Let them go,’ Hooker replied, wheeling his horse in a circle, taking a brief inventory as the killing ebbed and his men dismounted to wipe the blood from their blades and loot the dead.

  ‘Edmund! My son! Is that you?’ Mun turned Hector towards the house, leaving the all but headless boy to be scavenged by two of Hooker’s men. ‘God in Heaven, it is you!’

  ‘Mother?’ For a moment he watched her walking across the churned, blood-slick lawns towards him, wearing a pikeman’s helmet and an old back- and breastplate that Mun recognized as his own. Then he dismounted, feeling as though a saddle girth had been looped round his chest and yanked tight. Hector whinnied and snorted his own greeting, recognizing Lady Mary despite the man’s armour that obscured her femininity, as Mun strode towards her on legs still trembling with the mad flush of battle. They both took off their helmets, Lady Mary dropping hers on the ground and stopping to properly take in the sight of her son returned from war. But Mun denied her that luxury, sweeping her into his embrace with a rap of steel on steel.

  ‘My son. My boy,’ she said, then pulled away so she could look up into his face. ‘You came.’ She put a hand on his cheek, her green eyes flicking across his face as though they found it changed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother, I did not know.’

  ‘I wrote to your father,’ she said, those eyes scouring his own for answers as ardently as Hooker’s men pilfered the dead.

  ‘He never received the last letter. Did you send Coppe?’

  She nodded. ‘Then something must have happened to the poor man, for we have not seen him these last weeks.’

  Mun nodded. ‘The rebels had the letter,’ he said. ‘I came from Oxford the hour I read it.’ His mouth filled with the foul bitterness of words yet to come.

  ‘These are the King’s men? The Prince’s?’ she asked dubiously, taking in the scene. Nearby, one of Hooker’s troopers in a bloodstained buff-coat was on his knees plundering a dead rebel as vigorously as a dog trying to get the marrow from a bone.

  ‘They are mercenaries,’ Mun said. ‘The Prince could not spare his own men.’

  ‘Are they . . . safe?’

  Mun wasn’t sure he knew the answer to that. ‘They have done their work and will be gone soon. When I have paid them,’ he said, recognizing Peter Marten and Owen O’Neill in new armour and carrying matchlocks. ‘If I can pay them,’ he added, for it must have already cost a small fortune to arm Shear House’s garrison.

  ‘We are not ruined yet,’ his mother said, staring at him as though he had been gone for not one year but ten. An icy gust blew across the field of the slain and Lady Mary’s hair, more white in the red than Mun remembered, blew across her face. ‘Come, Edmund, let us get inside. I have a surprise for you.’

  Mun nodded and called to Clancy and when the big Irishman looked up, Lady Mary frowned. ‘Don’t worry, Mother, O’Brien’s not one of them. He is my friend.’

  ‘Then you must introduce us properly, Mun,’ she said with a mother’s chastening look as the Irishman walked over.

  ‘It is an honour to make your acquaintance, Lady Rivers,’ O’Brien said, removing his helmet and bowing, a great grin splitting his beard, his wild, sweat-soaked hair steaming in the freezing day.

  Mun looked for Hooker but he was busy seeing to his men, three of whom had been shot, though from what Mun could see only one was dead. So far.

  ‘My lady,’ O’Brien said, offering her his forearm. She gave a sober nod and put her arm in his, the dignified scene incongruous amidst the dead and those looting them. And they walked towards the house across mud and grass wet with melted frost, towards the men and women who were coming out to witness the carnage and enjoy their freedom now that the siege was over.

  And when Mun saw Bess standing by the ruins against the front door, a linen-swathed bundle in her arms, a lump rose in his throat to half choke him and hot tears rolled down his cheeks.

  In the midst of death, Shear House burst into life. Lady Mary tasked Major Radcliffe with seeing to Hooker and his troopers, whilst the men of the garrison set about preparing to haul the rebels’ demi-cannon up to the house. Though the greatest prize of all was the enemy’s baggage train: four carts laden with weapons and, more importantly, food. There was cheese and cheat bread, salted and pickled meats and livestock too, as well as apples, pears and other candied fruits, and more than twenty barrels of small beer. The defenders had all but exhausted their own supply of meat and grain, and so had given a raucous rooks’ chorus when Lady Mary declared that no one would go to sleep that night on an empty belly.

  Of the carts themselves, two were immediately broken up for firewood and two put to use by men who were now free to forage for more fuel in the nearby woods, so that by late afternoon a great bonfire blazed on the lawn, casting Shear House in its copper glow and warming soldiers, old men, women and children alike, who celebrated the victory and mourned their dead in equal measure. Fires were set in the house too, in the parlours and the bedchambers, so that the chimneys spewed smoke that sweetened the crisp, cold air. The wounded were fed and made as comfortable as they could be and the dead were prepared for burial. They were washed, clad in clean shirts and wrapped with sprigs of rosemary in shrouds that for the most part had been household bed linens. Then each was laid out in the buttery so that friends and relatives could come to pay their respects and sit with the body if they wished to. A few days hence they would be taken to Parbold village and buried in the yard on the south side of Douglas Chapel. Those with no families to mourn them would be piled onto one of the carts and taken to Parbold or Lathom on the morrow. But the rebels who had driven the defenders from their own homes and then attacked Shear House were given no such respect, nor even consecrated ground.

  ‘The dogs stood shoulder to shoulder in their treason,’ Major Radcliffe had said, eyeing the Parliament men laid out by the trench those same men had dug some hundred paces from the boundary wall and gate, ‘so let them now lie shoulder to shoulder in the same worm-filled hole.’ And no one had spoken against the old veteran, so into the trench they went, some sixty men, including Captain Downing whose head had been found eight feet from his body. From her window, Bess had watched the tall, fierce-looking rider cut off Downing’s head, had been shocked and appalled by the savage quickness of it. One moment the handsome captain had been leading his men forward – bravely, it had to be said – and the next moment he was a headless corpse. She had been struck by a strange thought, that it was entirely possible that Captain Downing’s child was being born at the same moment its father was being killed. But then she had recognized a beautiful black stallion and the man, the killer, on its back viciously exacting vengeance on the transgressors. She had cast aside the musket that had bruised her shoulder and the match that had burned her fingers, scooped her baby from Winifred’s cradled arms, and hurried out to greet the conquering hero. Her brother.

  ‘What news from Emmanuel?’ she asked now, her patience worn through, cracked like the thin cru
st of ice on a shallow puddle. She, Mun and their mother had withdrawn to the parlour and had stood in awkward silence, watching Isaac set a fire, the swaddled baby sleeping soundly in Bess’s arms. Now the servant had gone and the flames cracked and popped as though joyful to be given life again after four cold, dark, damp weeks. ‘And Father, too,’ she added. ‘You must have so much to tell us, Mun. Are they in Oxford with the King?’ Mun took up the fire iron and prodded at the logs, raising a swarm of excited sparks, and Bess reflected that he seemed much changed. His jaw was grim-set, almost cruel-looking. His eyes were different too. Harder.

  He did not look at her but leant the poker back against the hearth and picked up the cup of hot hippocras MacColla had brought him. ‘We fought a battle near a village called Kineton,’ he said eventually, then closed his eyes and inhaled the spiced wine’s perfume. He is not yet used to the stench of death that fills the house, she thought, yet she herself hardly noticed it now.

  Then those steely eyes fastened on hers. ‘There have been other fights. Skirmishes. But this was . . .’ He shook his head. ‘This was a contest between two great armies. A deafening hell of pike-divisions and cavalry and regiments of musketeers.’ From the corner of her eye Bess saw her mother sit down and she felt in her own aching belly a sharper pain bloom, as though a length of icy rope was inside her, tying itself into a knot. She rocked the babe in her arms though it was fast asleep. ‘It went very hard for us in the heat of it,’ Mun said, ‘but His Majesty is fortunate to have such men of honour as would not quit the field and give the day to the traitors.’ There was a tremor in his voice.

  Please, God, no! she beseeched in the dark maelstrom of her mind. I beg you!

  Mun’s eyes glazed. ‘Men who would not yield even though they stared into the abyss,’ he said. ‘And we would have lost without such as they.’

  ‘They’re dead,’ her mother said flatly. Bess did not look at her, instead glaring at her brother, waiting for the words that would contradict Lady Mary. And yet she knew those words would never come, and Mun’s eyes suddenly thawed, so that she saw the pity in them and hated it.

  ‘No. No, it’s not true,’ Bess heard herself say. She stared at her baby, at his eyelashes that were dark against his white skin. ‘They are alive. They are coming home, aren’t they, Mun?’

  ‘They gave their lives fighting to protect the Royal Standard,’ Mun said. ‘They saw the colours were threatened and they rode into the hottest part of it to save the King’s honour.’ The words were encased in steel, ill-fitting armour that was coming loose. ‘I was nearby but could not get to them.’

  ‘If you had you would be dead too,’ their mother said. Still, Bess could not look at her, could not bear that weight as well as her own burden.

  ‘Bess, there was no braver man in England than Emmanuel,’ Mun said, the muscle in his jaw bouncing, his eyes tear-brimmed. ‘And I know he would have been so proud of you. He would have been proud of his son.’

  Bess swallowed hard, fighting back her own tears, fearing that if she let them come she might never stop them. Somewhere within, her soul shuddered, like a great door straining to hold against the onslaught of an inexorable foe. She clung to the bundle in her arms and looked upon the sleeping child’s face, so perfect and innocent and unknowing.

  And inside, she wept like a river in spate for all that would now never be.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  TOM WAS COLD. before he had set off from Kineton, margaret had given him a pair of breeches and two shirts that had belonged to her son David.

  ‘David is broad like you,’ she had said, holding up a shirt against his chest and giving a satisfied nod. ‘Strong as an ox is our David.’ Then she had given him an old moth-holed doublet of her husband’s and a pair of worn shoes that Edward had taken from a corpse before throwing their owner into the dead-crammed pit. Edward had given him flint and steel and tried to make Tom take his everyday cloak too, but Tom would not hear of it.

  ‘You have already given too much,’ he had said and they had known he was not simply talking about the clothes. For the King’s soldiers had ransacked the Dunnes’ house in their search for Parliament soldiers. They had taken their food too, accusing the folk of Kineton of being sympathetic to the rebels’ cause and claiming that the requisition of provender was the least they could expect if they did not mend their treacherous ways. They had even molested Anne, plucking at her hair and skirts and suggesting what she might do to put her family in His Majesty’s good graces, and in his dark hiding place Tom had listened helplessly. He had burned with fury and shame but he had not come down, had barely breathed, for his being caught there would have made things even worse for the Dunnes. Eventually, the soldiers had left and he had thanked the family for all their kindnesses and been on his way.

  But now he wished he’d taken the cloak. He was shivering uncontrollably and feared his teeth would rattle themselves out of his jaw. ‘I will repay you,’ he had promised them, and Edward had nodded as though he expected as much. Now, as he sat in the freezing dark beneath a shelter he had made from the boughs of a fir, Tom realized that his promise meant more to him than almost anything. Somehow, he would repay the Dunnes for bringing him back from the dead, for making him strong again and for the clothes on his back. And in doing so he would see Anne again, too. If he did not freeze to death.

  He poked the small fire he had made and it crackled and flared, promising more warmth than it yet gave, but without it Tom knew the raw night would tear into his flesh like a bear’s claws.

  Somewhere above him rooks haggled boisterously. A savage gust blew down from Parbold Hill, foraging through the trees, rattling bare branches and stirring creaks of complaint from larger boughs. Tom huffed hot breath into cold hands, rubbing them together then tucking them under his arms and squeezing his elbows into his sides, trying to make himself smaller, trying to hide from the callous dusk. The sweet smell of decay, of damp wood and rotting leaves, was the same as it ever was in the beech woods behind Shear House. It was a powerful, bewitching scent that sought to trick Tom into thinking he was a child again, squandering the short days away amongst the trees. And yet this place no longer felt safe as it had done when he was a child. It was the same, but different. It is I who have changed, he thought.

  Another bleak draught brought water to his eyes and carried the faint murmur of folk making merry, but the sound was as fleeting as a bat through the branches, so that Tom could not be certain he had heard it at all. This was his third night in the beech woods and he was freezing and starving and no longer trusted his own senses. He had walked north more than one hundred miles in a dead man’s shoes, sleeping under hedges and in hay barns, lighting fires when he thought it was safe, shivering through the night when it was not.

  ‘You are not strong enough yet,’ Anne had said when he had told her he was leaving. It had been a crisp, cold day and they had been walking along the north bank of the Dene. Tom had been fascinated by the way those errant strands of golden hair that escaped her linen coif seemed to turn to flame with the low winter sun behind her. Light to Martha’s shade. ‘Stay with us until your wounds are healed. The King’s soldiers have gone now. You will be safe here, Thomas.’

  ‘I am grateful for your kindness,’ he had said, ‘and indebted to you and your family. But I must go.’ He had told her that his conscience demanded he return to his regiment and take up the fight once more, and whilst this was true, what he did not say was that he would go north first. Ever since he had lain amongst the stiffening corpses, almost one of the dead himself on the plain below Edgehill, he had felt the pull of an invisible tide, an undertow drawing him home if not in body then in spirit.

  And yet now, with Shear House, his home, lying before him, Tom found himself lacking the courage to take the final step, to walk through the lion-guarded gates and face his family.

  That first morning, shocked to see the evidence of a siege and soldiers manning the boundary wall, he had skirted west, following hi
s and Mun’s old trails up towards the higher ground, keeping the house in sight where he could. At midday he had seen a troop of horse ride out of the gates and it had struck him that perhaps they were Parliament soldiers and that Shear House had fallen. But there was no way of knowing and so he had crossed Old Gore meadow and taken refuge in the beech wood north of the house and now he wondered if he would freeze to death before he could summon the mettle to go down there.

  At last the fire began to throw off some heat and so he moved the nearby pile of damp sticks closer to the flames to dry them. Somewhere an owl hooted and he looked up through the skeletal, wind-stirred branches at the darkening sky. It was a sombre, starless evening. But at least it was not raining.

  He climbed to his feet, stamping them, feeling the vibration through the thin leather soles of the dead man’s shoes but not feeling the feet themselves. Then he left the spitting fire and set off towards the bluff at the edge of the woods that overlooked the house in which he was born.

  Mun had been glad to see Osmyn Hooker and his men ride away. They had done their job, done it well, too, annihilating the besieging rebel force, all but smiting them from the face of the earth, like God’s avenging hand, as Hooker himself had put it. But Mun could rest easier knowing that the mercenaries were gone.

  ‘There is little to like about a man whose only allegiance is to silver,’ he had said to Bess as the two of them had watched Hooker’s column funnel out of the gate.

  ‘He did not have the look of a trustworthy man,’ she had said and suddenly Mun was struck by the notion that he had been duped. He had given Hooker silver plate amounting to some fifty pounds, which Lady Mary had brought out from what she called the last reserves – though Mun knew his mother well enough to suppose there were last reserves and last reserves. Hooker had cursed, growling that a parson’s salary was poor reward for giving a knight his estate back.