The captain wore a simple montero-cap like those of his men and a cheap russet cloak tied at the neck over his buff-coat, so that on first appearances his rank would not be in the slightest bit obvious. But his religion came off him in waves and with it a cold authority that, if not beheld, was certainly felt.
‘I was wounded,’ Tom said. ‘But I am hale enough now.’
‘You spent that night on the field?’ Clement’s eyes were slits.
Tom nodded.
‘And looters took your finger for the ring on it.’
Tom was not aware he had even revealed his mutilated hand. ‘I was unconscious,’ he said, ashamed for what he had let be done to him. Clement’s face, half of it stained the deep burgundy of strong wine, was gripped by an almost zealous scrutiny.
‘Your friends saw you fall. They said you were shot. Will Trencher said you were beaten to death.’
‘I was shot, sir.’ Tom shrugged. ‘But the ball passed through the flesh. Achilles my horse was killed. In the morning they carted me off with the dead bound for a hole full of corpses. But that’s when I …’ he paused, holding Clement’s eye for a long cold moment, ‘came back.’
‘I remember that night well enough, Rivers,’ the captain said. ‘It was a cruel cold.’ He looked up to the smoke-filled night sky. ‘Colder than this. You spent the night with the dead. And yet you did not become one of them. I would know how you survived.’
‘God didn’t want me,’ Tom said. ‘Neither did the Devil.’
Clement’s lip curled at that. ‘Where have you been? Kineton Fight was last October.’
‘A family from the village took me in. Stitched my wounds and hid me from a troop of the King’s horse. Good people,’ he said, thinking of Anne Dunne, the pretty daughter of the couple who had hidden him in the priest hole concealed in their roof. But then his mind played a cruel trick, turning Anne’s golden hair raven black, her pink cheeks bone white, until this vision of his lost love Martha Green caused him to start.
‘You’re wild in a fight, Rivers,’ Clement said. ‘I remember you. I remember ordering you back. You disobeyed me.’
Tom could remember nothing of that. He recalled his friend Nayler being killed, his throat ripped out by a musket ball. He remembered seeing his enemy Lord Denton, a man for whom Tom’s hatred burnt as hot as Hell’s fire, and trying to get to him. Beyond mortal fear, beyond all senses other than the lust to kill the man whose vile machinations had forced Tom to take up arms against his king and side with Parliament against his own family, he had forged on until …
They had beaten him to the ground.
‘I don’t want men in my troop who can’t be controlled. I will have discipline. Order.’
‘I am a killer,’ Tom said. ‘I have a talent for it.’
Clement’s brows arched. ‘That’s as maybe, Thomas Rivers, but I do not want you in my troop.’
‘Told you it was him! Tom!’
Tom turned. There, their faces cast in shadow by the fire behind them, stood a knot of hard-faced men all shrouded and trussed against the cold night air.
‘I told you it was him, Penn, it’s Black Tom back from the dead!’ Despite the dark, Tom would have recognized Weasel by his narrow shoulders and quick hands alone.
‘As God is my witness,’ Matthew Penn said, ‘it really is you, Tom.’ Tom felt a grin tug at his lips as he took in the incredulous expressions of the men with whom he had ridden and fought. There were seven or eight of them who had left the fire to take a look at him. If they were not all friends, they were brothers-in-arms, drawn from their comfort by the miracle of a man risen from the dead.
Will Trencher’s bald head gleamed in the flame-glow, his cap clutched to his chest. His mouth hung open, so that he resembled more the awe-filled Catholic witnessing a statue of the Virgin Mother crying tears of blood than the stout Protestant he was.
‘Hello, Will,’ Tom said, then nodded to his other friends. ‘Matthew. Weasel.’
‘Forgive us, sir, we don’t mean to interrupt,’ Trencher said, pointing the cap towards Tom, ‘but we never thought to see this lad again. Reckoned him killed.’
‘Reckoned?’ Matthew Penn blurted. ‘Saw, more like. Saw poor Nayler get his throat shot out, then saw Tom murdered.’
Having gathered his courage, Trencher stepped forward and held out his hand, a smile softening his pugnacious face. Tom gripped the hand firmly as Matthew slapped his shoulder and Weasel and some of the other troopers stood grinning like fiends.
‘You can’t bloody kill Black Tom, eh, Rivers!’ a broad-shouldered, big-bearded man called Robert Dobson said, pressing his thumb against the side of his nose and shooting a wad of snot onto the ground.
‘Are you back with us then, Tom?’ Matthew asked, the whites of his wide eyes reflecting the fire’s glow.
‘I’ll not have him in my troop,’ Captain Clement said, turning his scrutiny on Penn and the others. The troop’s camp fire suddenly flared, illuminating the party and lending a savage aspect to Clement’s long face with the great red smear across it.
‘Come now, sir,’ Trencher entreated, ‘you don’t believe in the walking dead now do you? I’ve seen this lad cut down Cavaliers like he was scything bloody wheat. He’s a good soldier.’
‘Being a killer does not make a man a good soldier, Trencher,’ Clement said, ‘it makes him dangerous to his own side.’ He turned and eyeballed Tom again. ‘Rivers is a sword that does not fit its scabbard. He’ll not ride for me.’
‘But sir—’ Matthew began before he was cut off by Clement’s raised finger.
‘Hold your tongue, Penn,’ the captain warned, not taking his eyes off Tom’s. ‘I’ve been a soldier long enough to know that some men bring a troop bad luck. They perhaps don’t mean to but that’s the truth of it.’
‘Never saw you as a superstitious sort, Captain,’ Trencher said. ‘Thought we left all that to the papists.’
‘Aye, and the old women,’ Weasel murmured.
‘Where there is slaughter and carrion there are ravens, Trencher,’ the captain said. ‘If it’s true it’s not superstition. I know men. And this one is a raven.’
‘But what will he do?’ Penn asked, looking from Clement to Tom.
‘It’s all right, Matt,’ Tom said, rubbing his mare’s cheek and muzzle, ‘I’ll find another troop.’ He felt the twist of a grimace. ‘I kill Cavaliers. There’ll be a captain hereabouts who’ll find that of some use.’ He clicked his tongue and the mare started forward.
‘Rivers,’ Captain Clement said, ‘seek out a man by the name of Crafte. Captain James Crafte. He’s with the foot, on the earl’s staff. Tell him I sent you.’
‘I am a harquebusier, not a pikeman or a damned musketeer,’ Tom said, ‘and I’ll outride any man in this regiment, you included, Captain.’
Clement frowned. ‘Crafte doesn’t lead a troop. Truthfully, I have no idea what the man does besides attend Essex like a damned shadow.’ He rubbed a palm against his stained cheek. ‘But find him, Thomas Rivers, and you may get your chance to kill Cavaliers.’ Then Clement turned and walked off to join a knot of officers who were standing smoking pipes by a pollarded oak, and Tom’s friends swarmed in on him again, slapping his back and shoulders and bombarding him with questions.
‘This Captain Crafte can wait till tomorrow,’ Will Trencher said, taking the mare’s reins off Tom and handing them to a young trooper with a curt order to take the horse to the picket. He was grinning savagely, the smile at odds with the carved granite of his face. ‘It’s not every day a ghost joins our fire.’
‘I didn’t think you were superstitious, Will.’
‘And I thought you were dead, lad, so it looks like we were both wrong,’ Trencher said, and together they all walked back towards the flames around which the rest of the troop sat huddled.
‘Weasel,’ Trencher rumbled, ‘we’ve all of us heard General Balfour bemoaning the theft of his personal stash of brandywine. Now would be a good time to chance upon a drop.�
��
Weasel grinned and broke away, heading for his tent, and Tom went with the tide, enjoying the fire’s heat on his face and the company of men he had presumed he’d never see again.
And in the morning he found Captain James Crafte.
‘And this Captain Clement rides with Sir William Balfour’s Regiment of Horse?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Tom glanced over at the three men sitting behind tables, busily scratching away with their quills, only pausing to dip them into ink pots or scatter sand across the paper.
‘And yet I barely know the man, have perhaps been in his company twice – if as much as that. Certainly to my knowledge he owes me no favours.’
‘Perhaps he intends for you to owe him one,’ Tom suggested.
Captain Crafte was frowning, though Tom suspected that was as much down to poor eyesight as to curiosity. ‘Thomas, was it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Tom said.
Crafte’s eyebrows furrowed and then released. ‘Whatever the man’s motive, I must assume that he does not have need of you,’ he tilted his head to one side, ‘or indeed want you, in his own troop.’ His neat little nose wrinkled. ‘Forgive me for saying so but, given that most troops are coming up short on the preferred muster, that does not speak well for you, young man.’
Tom could not argue with that and so he said nothing, at a loss to determine what he was doing in a room with a captain who did not lead men in battle and three secretaries who were so intent on their writing that they had not so much as glanced at him since he arrived.
‘Interesting,’ the captain said, finger and thumb stroking the tuft of brown hair that jutted from his chin.
Captain Crafte was a small, neat man with a neat man’s economy of movement, so that when he walked, as he did now towards the window, he barely disturbed the old straw on the farm kitchen’s earthen floor.
‘Are you perchance a relation of Sir Francis Rivers, who died at Kineton Fight?’
‘He was my father,’ Tom said, seeing no reason to lie. Crafte stopped still, staring out of the narrow, stone-mullioned window whose pane afforded a murky light. Candles burnt here and there about the room.
‘And may I ask how you came to fight against your father’s master the King?’
‘You may ask, sir, but you’ll get no answer. I have my reasons.’
His back to Tom, Crafte was still as stone, hands clasped behind him. ‘You come to me seeking employment and yet your tongue barely stirs to promote your cause.’
‘I come seeking nothing. I do not know why I am here,’ Tom said, growing irritated by the incessant scratching of quills on paper. ‘Captain Clement might not want a killer in his troop, and that makes him a strange officer if you ask me, but I never thought the man a fool. He told me to find you and so here I am.’ He shrugged. ‘Clearly there has been some mistake, sir. By your leave I will go and find a troop that wants fighters.’
Crafte turned round, his small nose crinkling like a mole’s. ‘Of course you don’t know why you are here,’ he said, a smile touching his watery eyes. ‘I dare say Captain Clement has only the vaguest notion of what it is I do here. How I labour for the cause and do it all unseen. Imagine, Thomas, if you would, a band of bell-ringers pulling on the ropes. Well, I am the man who tells them which ropes to pull and in what order. The resulting peal, that euphony which carries far on the wind, is my design. And yet I am never seen.’ He tugged his tuft of beard, his small eyes boring into Tom’s. Tom had the sudden notion that the man might be mad, that perhaps the dour Captain Clement had a sense of humour after all and had sent him to Crafte for his own amusement.
‘But I need men to pull the ropes,’ Crafte said. ‘What would you say are your … talents, Thomas Rivers? And I would not include geniality amongst them,’ he added with the merest twitch of a smile.
‘I can ride,’ Tom replied. ‘There are few men in England who can handle a stallion as I can.’
‘Yet you came here riding a mare,’ Crafte said.
‘My stallion was killed under me at Kineton Fight,’ Tom said. ‘He would have galloped through the gates of Hell for me.’
Crafte seemed to consider this for a moment. ‘What other abilities do you possess, young man?’
‘I can shoot straight and I can use a sword.’
Crafte flapped a hand as though shooing a fly. ‘Firelocks and blades. Mere tools,’ he said. ‘Useless without the intent of the hands wielding them. How many men have you killed for our most righteous cause?’
For the cause? Or for myself? Tom wondered. ‘I do not know,’ he said honestly. ‘Many.’
‘That’s a good sign,’ Crafte acknowledged with a careful nod. ‘You are not plagued by foul, dark dreams after taking a man’s life?’
Tom shook his head. He had known dark dreams but they were of Martha Green hanging by the neck, swinging gently beneath a stone bridge, and Crafte had no business knowing about them.
‘Can you hear that?’ Crafte said, cupping a hand to his right ear, his head half turned towards the window.
Tom shrugged. ‘Just the sounds of the camp,’ he said.
‘Precisely,’ Crafte said, ‘but soon you will hear the peal of bells. They will chime for England and her people. For I have a job for you, Thomas Rivers.’
CHAPTER FOUR
THOUGH HER CHEEKS were numbing, Bess felt the faintest touch of the tear coursing down her cheek. She cuffed it away just as Joseph glanced at her from his saddle, the concern in his eyes not quite daring to find voice and offer words of comfort.
‘It is bitter cold,’ she said, not meeting his eye, hoping that the young man might take her tears as a symptom of their riding into the wind. The day had begun still and cold when they had set out from Warrington, but now a biting south-westerly was scouring the Cheshire plain, buffeting an array of ravens and jackdaws that came barrelling through the nearby woods to roost, and causing the skeletal hedgerows to shiver incessantly.
‘Take my cloak, my lady,’ Joseph said, raising raw, gloveless hands from the reins to remove the thick woollen garment.
Bess shook her head. ‘Thank you, Joseph, but it is only my face that feels the chill,’ she lied, giving him a smile that was meant, if not convincing. ‘And remember you must call me Bess, simply Bess. To be safe.’
The lad nodded, pushing two fingers against his mouth as if chastising himself for forgetting their arrangement, and Bess waved a hand as though it were of no matter, at least whilst they two were alone out there. The young man riding with her, a blunderbuss strapped across his back, was as thin as a birch and would likely freeze to death without his cloak, which meant that his kind offer was another blade in Bess’s conscience. For she knew Joseph would do anything for her, that freezing to death would be a contentment to him if she would only wear his cloak. Which was, of course (she had no illusions) why she had asked him to ride from Shear House with her, the two of them slipping away through the pre-dawn cold the night before last.
Well, she had not exactly asked him; she had told him of her intentions, perhaps at that time simply confiding in him because there was no one else she felt she could tell. But Joseph had offered to go with her, to guard her, had all but insisted, and perhaps Bess had known that he would. Certainly her protestations that he must remain with the garrison or surely face Major Radcliffe’s wrath had felt hollow on her tongue. And had she not admitted that she would feel safer on the road with a brave man such as he beside her?
‘I can see that your mind is made up to go, my lady,’ Joseph had said with a determined nod, ‘and I will not have you travel alone.’
She had smiled at him then, a warm, true smile that was for him certainly, but half for herself too and the excitement of the planned journey upon which she had set her mind to embark. Not that she was without fear, for even in times of peace it would be a dangerous enterprise for a woman to set off across the country as Bess had done. To do so in the midst of war, and with Bess being who she was – a woman long on privilege but short on
experience – was recklessly foolish and Bess knew it. But she would risk anything … everything to bring her family back together, to have her brothers back under the roof of Shear House and spare them the fate of those she had loved and lost. Was she not as brave as they? Was she not a Rivers too?
‘You are a good friend, Joe,’ she said now, stifling a shiver that ran up the backs of her arms, ‘and I’m lucky to have you. Do not think I don’t know it.’
His head lifted at that, his boy’s eyes giving away too much, the smile on his chapped lips joy tempered by pride.
I owe him that much at least, she thought, and this time she cuffed away the tear whilst it yet welled in her eye. Because if she felt guilty for drawing this young man into her scheme, it was as nothing compared with the shame that sat in her belly like a coiled serpent for leaving her baby.
She had tried to smooth the thing in her mind countless times. Little Francis, her love, her pride, would be fine, she had told herself. Mother will dote on the boy, will see him rarely leave the crook of her arm and all his needs attended. For where else could Lady Mary’s heart settle now, with her husband dead, her sons off fighting in the war and Bess gone without so much as a parting word?
And yet she had missed her baby from the moment she had last kissed his soft cheek and inhaled his scent, and it had been a cold writhing in her guts ever since.
‘Do you recognize the place, Bess?’ Joseph asked, watching a great white owl that was observing them from atop an old post stuck in the marsh that bordered the stream on their left. Ahead, at the end of a well-worn track from which grass and weeds sprouted in tufts, stood a rambling old farmhouse that seemed to Bess to be subsiding into the wild profusion of climbing plants surrounding it.
‘I came here once but I was too young to remember it,’ she said. Then, on reflection: ‘I do recall orchards. I remember challenging Tom and Mun to see which of them could steal the most apples without getting caught.’ That faint memory was a blush of warmth on a frigid day. ‘My grandfather was a strict man.’
Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) Page 4