Porthcurn risked a sideways glance at the chaplain. Telling? By God hadn’t Telling been involved in the piggeries back in Cornwall?
Hugo Telling, officer in Rupert’s lifeguard. This rogue didn’t look much like him. God-damn the lot of them, what were they plotting?
“We have come here under Parliament’s warrant. Have you not received word of our coming?” the brother inquired.
Porthcurn cooled, studied the overstuffed crow in the tightly-buttoned suit.
“We received your letter,” the colonel sneered. “Full of flowery nonsense you people set so much store by. But I hadn’t realised we’d be dealing with the likes of him,” Porthcurn jerked his chin at the Roundhead ringleader. “Is this the best your mob could come up with, a set of back-stabbing blackguards?”
“Blackguards?” Sparrow fumed. “We were choirboys compared to Cruickshank’s crew. His own son did for him you know, his own son!” Sparrow crowed, strings of spit hanging from his stubble.
Telling stepped between the street brawlers.
“Gentlemen please. The letter was sent in all faith, sir. We had not anticipated the governor’s representative would be known to us, or that you may have crossed swords with Captain Sparrow here,” Telling insisted. “In the past.”
“In the past? D’you imagine we’ve forgiven and forgotten? It’s not past, not past at all sir. Cornwall remembers your coming sir.”
Sparrow jerked his thumb towards the waiting carriage.
“Take your God-damned coffins and piss off out of it then,” Sparrow challenged, stung beyond endurance by the memories of that damned place. Penmethock.
He still had nightmares, woke in a fever imagining he was back there.
Damn him and everybody connected to the filthy piss-hole.
Telling held out his arms, tried to keep them apart.
“Take a moment, sir, I beseech you, to examine the coffins on this coach. There is no trickery here sir.”
Sparrow glanced at the chaplain, surprised at the unexpectedly commanding tone.
Perhaps he had under-estimated him after all.
“The letter was addressed to the governor of Bristol, Lord Hopton,” Telling continued.
“His Highness Prince Rupert is governor now,” Porthcurn retorted. “He has sent me to examine the truth of the matter. If indeed there are any here who have any conception of the meaning of the word,” he added threateningly.
Telling refused to rise to the challenge, held his peace.
“Then can I suggest we take our discussions into the inn rather than stand here bawling at one another like drunks outside an alehouse. As I said, our letter was delivered in good faith, to enable us to arrange the return of the bodies of your officers. And to see Mistress Telling, my dead brother’s wife, reunited with her father.”
Porthcurn paused at that, glancing from the magisterial minister to the truculent Roundhead and back again.
“I have a squadron of horse at the end of the street,” Porthcurn warned, indicating the waiting patrol with his gloves.
“As have we,” Sparrow lied in turn.
“We have half a dozen dragoons drawing a bead on you and yours as we speak,” Telling countered. “Now we can either stand here and slaughter one another or we can go inside the inn and discuss the matter in hand,“ he grated. “What will it be? Think carefully sir, or we will water the street with our blood.”
Sparrow’s head thumped - just like it had that winter when this Cocksure Cavalier had damn near killed him.
Porthcurn thought about it.
“Aye, right enough. But any more damn trickery and somebody’s going to pay, on my honour, somebody is going to pay,” Porthcurn vowed.
*************************
Bella settled herself beside the fire, accepting a plate of bread and peas from the bustling goodwife who seemed to have taken the wretched girl under her wing.
Sparrow had taken a seat opposite the swaggering newcomer, Edward and Blunt drawing up chairs between them.
Porthcurn’s ensign accepted a mug of small beer, leaned his flag against the wall. Wasn’t going to be much use in this hornet’s mess.
Muffet cradled his firelock by the door. Butcher had lowered the butt of his fowling piece to the floor and was finishing off the cider Sparrow hadn’t managed to drink the night before.
“This is Mistress Telling, wife of my brother Hugo, lately slain at Naseby field.”
Porthcurn noticed the pale woman wince. Bruising and bloodshot, she looked beautiful and bewildered. A hank of badly shorn blonde hair protruding from the oversized bonnet.
Damn these Puritans. What manner of man would deliberately ruin his woman’s appearance like that?
The bandage around her head made her look like a novice, but the sudden sharp glances suggested otherwise.
“Ma’am. I served with your husband, in Cornwall,” he said awkwardly.
Served? Well that was one word for it. Sparrow could have thought of a hundred more appropriate epithets.
Telling turned to him. “Kindly present the Colonel our credentials,” he said, growing in to his role every second.
Sparrow frowned, fished inside his doublet to produce the pass Eagleton had given him. He rolled the stained scrap flat and pushed it over the table toward the Cavalier with all the distaste he dared.
The bastard looked capable of multiple murder, even under cover of this fragile truce. Porthcurn gave the note the briefest examination.
“Our credentials, signed by the Lord General himself. Addressed to the Lord Hopton, who was, until recently, Governor of Bristol. Seeking permission and passage to cross the lines and deliver said remains to their families in Bristol. And my sister in law,” Telling indicated the girl, “to her father Sir Gilbert…”
“Morrison, aye,” Porthcurn nodded savagely, “We have already met.”
What was this serpent’s parlour had he been drawn in to? He was surrounded by pantomime players, villains and maidens concealing dark secrets of their own.
Traitors and killers and pirates everywhere he looked. Why would the rebels have sent such low dogs on a mission like this? Unless there was more to it than met the eye…
Bella looked up, caught the pirate’s suspicious glance.
Porthcurn held her eye.
“A very persuasive fellow,” he said levelly.
Porthcurn squinted at the spidery handwriting, digested the scrawled postscripts crawling up and down the margins.
He looked up, chin raised, and jabbed his finger towards Sparrow.
“And according to this you sir, are to marry the serving girl you dishonoured two years ago!” he exclaimed. Sparrow bristled.
“So you’re a damned fornicator as well as a marauding bloody bandit!” he sat back in his seat, well pleased with the point he had scored. He rolled his eyes, glaring and daring the captain to do his worst.
“Steady Will,” Muffet advised.
“Yeah, have a care Will, wouldn’t do to drill this Cornish cunny-hound a new eyeball,” Butcher leered, whipping the discarded fowling piece to his shoulder and drawing a bead before the startled ensign could move a muscle.
Muffet grabbed the barrel, turned it away from the paralysed tableau.
“Hold your water Billy. The gentleman meant nothing by it,” he advised. “He’s just letting off steam, is all.”
Sparrow bridled, unsure where the bad tempered truce was going. The bastard cavalier didn’t seem to register fear. One of the few men Butcher had drawn a bead on and yet lived to tell the tale. A fighter, to his very bones.
“William is come back to Bristol, to put matters right,” Bella volunteered on her old sweetheart’s behalf. Porthcurn raised his eyebrows.
Bella turned to him, held the bulldog stare a moment.
“A duty I hope you would perform, should you ever find yourself in a similar circumstance.”
Porthcurn thought about that. Said nothing.
“Bella, Mistress Telling, my dear,�
�� Telling warned, not so sure of himself when dealing with the piteously scarred widow.
“I’ll fight my own battles, Bella,” Sparrow told her. Porthcurn chuckled.
“Aye, against women and children,” he leered.
“Bastard!” Sparrow exploded out of his seat, swung a brutal, anger-packed haymaker. The blow caught the Cavalier on his arrogantly jutting jaw and knocked him backwards out of his chair.
“Sparrow!”
The big man pounced, just as Porthcurn rolled on his belly and kicked out, boot heel catching the Roundhead’s left knee. Sparrow yelled and collapsed over the settle.
Blunt threw himself over the stricken captain as Porthcurn scrambled to his feet. He froze, the barrel of Butcher’s fowling piece an inch from his right eye.
“I won’t miss you a second time, you tin-scraping turd,” he said from the side of his mouth, willing him to make a move so he atone for his previous error.
Butcher didn’t miss many - not at that range.
Porthcurn eyed him along the barrel.
The ensign was holding his hands up, Muffet’s firelock tucked under his chin.
“I reckon it’s time you stowed that clatter,” Muffet advised. “You’re here under a letter of truce. As are we. I reckon we ought to save all the rest of it for the battlefield, we’ve plenty of time to settle old scores.”
“If that be so you’ll step outside and we can settle this like men,” Porthcurn challenged, pushing his chair back and climbing to his feet, Butcher’s fowling piece following every blink.
Telling held up his hands.
“For God’s sake, let that be enough. We are here under cover of these warrants. Can we presume you have brought word from the governor, as to the arrangements we have suggested?”
Porthcurn drew a deep breath.
“I am instructed by his highness Prince Rupert to admit your approach, guarantee your safety and oversee the transaction as you have suggested,” Porthcurn said woodenly, staring down the barrel.
“We will accept the bodies of our officers. And Mistress Telling here,” he nodded at the girl, “Is to be returned to her father’s care forthwith. I have this from his highness Prince Rupert himself.” Porthcurn lifted his jaw left and right.
Give the rogue his due, the Roundhead packed a decent punch.
“There now,” Sparrow leered, prising himself upright on the back of a chair. “That wasn’t too bad was it?”
“We are in your debt, sir,” Telling announced.
Porthcurn grunted. “When you’re ready Reverend. We’re to escort you to the Governor’s residence in Bath. We should be there this afternoon.”
*************************
William Sparrow collected his gear and strode out in search of his command.
The villagers had turned out in numbers to see the show, although they didn’t look half as hard as they had the day before.
Sparrow was convinced they sided with Porthcurn’s mob, no matter what they proclaimed to the contrary. Butcher Blunt had dressed himself and kept his sons to hand although they had left their hoes and forks back in their gardens.
He was making himself busy, but made sure he didn’t stray into the no-man’s-land between the warring parties.
Porthcurn and his men up front, Telling perched on the coach’s running board, Sparrow and his riders bringing up the rear.
Please God it would stay that way.
Bella had been bundled inside the coach despite her protests.
“I’ll sit beside you Edward, I can’t breathe inside there,” she declared. Telling was having none of it.
“You were caught up between the opposing parties at Naseby field, my dear, and well remember the calamities which befell you. I would be grateful if you remained within, where you will not be exposed to any stray bullet or blow.”
It was the longest speech he had ever made, to her face at least, she thought.
Slowly assuming control of her destiny, as if he was a puppy to be brought to heel.
The thought ran along her back like a snail, feeling its way over the stepping stones of her spine.
Bella bridled but did as she was told, resuming her place, hazel eyes flashing.
“March on!” Porthcurn called from the front of the ill-matched column. He cast a dark eye back toward the coach, its black suited guardian and Sparrow’s leering escort.
Dogs, the lot of ‘em.
Porthcurn noticed the girl lean out of the coach window the other side of the stiff-backed minister. She was furiously fanning herself with her discarded bonnet. He wondered at the broad bandage wrapped around her forehead.
She’d gotten off lightly, by all accounts. The Roundheads had butchered hundreds more of their camp followers after the battle.
What was it with these psalm-singing bastards? He couldn’t begin to understand the mentality of an army which would rather beat a woman senseless than fuck her stupid.
Intriguing. Maybe the girl had more spirit than he had first thought.
*************************
It wasn’t more than a dozen miles to Bath, but much of it up hill and down dale. Bradford. A narrow bridge over the broadening Avon. Stiff reeds forming an honour guard around the shallows.
Then the steep climb up though the overhanging High Street.
The team sweated and slipped on the hard-baked road, the driver’s mate tugging at their bridles and encouraging them with frequent applications of his stick.
“Get on there, get on there Crouch, get on Dicken,” the driver called, villagers and children leaning over windows to see what the commotion was about.
Porthcurn turned his horse, watched the struggling team draw level.
Bella was peering out of the window again, suddenly spotted him lurking in an alley where the road switch-backed to the right.
“Miss Telling,“ he bowed his head, lifting his hat from a mass of lank black hair.
Bella held his gaze.
“Mr Porthcurn,” she simpered. The Cornishman smiled to himself. Aye, she had some spirit. Maybe that’s why her husband had looked so thoroughly fagged out all the time he had known him.
And they’d done for him at Naseby, he thought glumly. Maybe he would have shared the same fate - had he been there.
“Top of this hill and we’ll take the high road into Bath,” he told her.
“I know the road sir. We were brought up around here,” Bella replied. “Father had dealings with the candle maker.”
Porthcurn wasn’t surprised. He’d heard all about merchant Morrison now. The old turncoat had made himself useful in Bristol though. According to the garrison clerk most of the goods being issued to the newly-raised troops bore Morrison’s stamp.
Just as the serpent-shanked rogue had maintained.
“What is it now,” Sparrow called, bringing the sorrel alongside the other side of the coach. Telling peered down at him. Bella shifted her seat, looked out at her one time sweetheart.
“I’m being boiled in here Will. Couldn’t I sit up top?”
“On the coffins?” Sparrow inquired.
“I need some air!”
“You’re fine where you are my dear,” Telling warned, leaning over the coach’s running board.
Bella sat down with a snort. She cast an angry glance at the grinning Cavalier. What was that brute laughing at now?
She showed her teeth, then drew the leather curtain to.
*************************
They rested at the inn at the top of the hill, the rival parties muttering and gesturing at one another. Telling had insisted they went on, before they fell out any further.
On over the down, skirting the woods around Farleigh. Sparrow remembered the place. Waller had set an ambush for Prince Maurice’s troops two summers before. The clumsy ambuscade had backfired, raw recruits legging it down to the river or off down the high road to Bath.
Their flight left the hillside open for the Cornish attack on the ford below. Where Sparrow and
his untried militiamen were waiting behind a hastily-dug earthwork.
Ham meadow at Claverton. Sparrow’s first battle. If the five minute skirmish could be counted such. By Christ, he hadn’t been much more than a child back then.
The party picked up speed in the late afternoon sunlight, hurrying past Waller’s abandoned post and freewheeling down the long slope to the outlying villages about Bath.
And the long anticipated reunion with Sir Gilbert.
With Mary Keziah.
And the son he had never even seen. He rode on in silence, imagining the moment he had thought about, every morning every night, for two years.
By Widcombe, Bath, July 5, 1645
The remainder of the journey passed in a blur of green fields, neat enclosures and tightly coppiced woodlands as Porthcurn hurried them on toward Bath. He wanted to be there before dark, not trusting the nervy watchmen to hold their fire as they approached under cover of darkness.
He had already heard whispers about the garrison and the strongly Puritan populace. Councillors and tradesmen had been solidly behind Parliament until the King’s Western army had swallowed them up two summers before.
Rumour had it they had plotted to sell the place back to their old darling Waller.
Mind you, every hut, hovel and pisspot between here and Cornwall had been widely rumoured to be about to sell itself out to one side or the other.
The ill-matched convoy followed the London road to the crossroads, crossed the bridge at Bathford and came within sight of the city’s spires at last.
Porthcurn wasn’t the only rider to breathe a sigh of relief.
Sparrow, several lengths behind to the right of the dust-shrouded coach, was virtually exhausted. Nerves frayed by the dangers and insinuations back at Holt, backside aching from the long ride across country. And the flagon of cider hadn’t helped.
Black Tom's Red Army Page 30