Some of the newly arrived men cantered towards the Prince and Mun was relieved to see O’Brien, Jonathan and other familiar faces amongst them. The majority, though, led by Lieutenant Colonel O’Neale, broke into a full-blooded charge across the field. Yelling furiously, these hammered into the enemy’s right flank, which buckled in confusion, its men caught in fateful indecision between fight and flight.
‘Good lads!’ Prince Rupert said through gritted teeth, every sinew in his body straining, like a mastiff at the leash, to join the fray.
‘Even the dog got here before you, Clancy,’ Mun growled at the Irishman, noting that the rebel whose arm he had cut off was lying dead. The grass around the corpse in all directions had been sprayed with dark blood.
‘If I’d have followed you, she and me would still be sitting in that hedge back there,’ O’Brien growled back, patting his big mare’s neck. Then he nodded towards Jonathan. ‘Had to all but grab a fistful of youngen’s beast’s tail to stop him coming after you,’ he said, but the young man seemed not to hear, the reins in his fists and his awe-filled eyes riveted on the enemy.
‘Like old times, eh, Sir Edmund?’ Mun turned to see Vincent Rowe wheeling his mount in tight circles, the horse’s eyes rolling, foaming spittle dripping from its mouth as it savaged the bit. ‘They said all this would be over by last Christmastide.’
‘They also said the rebel horse would never stand,’ Richard Downes replied, staring at the mêlée across the field, his lavish curls dark against a bright white lace falling band. ‘But they were bloody wrong about that and all.’
The rebel right flank was not running. Rather its men were turning to face the threat of Lieutenant Colonel O’Neale’s charge, and Mun winced to see them give O’Neale’s men a good volley with their pistols. Troopers were thrown back in their saddles or fell from their horses into the maelstrom of thrashing hooves and were pummelled. Then the rebels gave a second volley and a tremor ran through O’Neale’s thrust, though his men fired their own pistols and those who had pushed deep amongst the enemy set about them with blades, hacking like maniacal butchers. Mun watched swords hauled back amidst arcs of blood, saw them plunge again and heard the ring of steel and feral high-pitched screams that were, horrifyingly, the same whether from man or beast.
‘Shall we give O’Neale this day’s glory?’ Prince Rupert yelled, turning fire-filled eyes on the men around him. ‘Or shall we attend to these traitorous dogs ourselves and give them a sound whipping?’
‘God save the King!’ Captain Boone cried and the Prince’s men, gathering thickly around him now, took up the call, thrusting pistols or swords towards the hated foe.
‘God save the King!’
Mun spurred Hector forward and the whole seething mass around him seemed to explode like a powder keg shown the flame.
‘Kill them!’ John Cole screamed. ‘Kill the maggot-ridden scabs!’ And in the time it takes to hurl a terse prayer up to the heavens they were in full flight, the ground beneath them trembling, and Mun was filled with a sudden rush of joy because the enemy, being engaged with O’Neale’s men, were not ready to receive them.
This time, as though to show the Prince’s stallion that he was the finer beast, Hector outstripped Rupert and Mun found himself the sharp end of the wedge, had only the enemy before him and knew he would be the first to plunge into Parliament’s left flank. Twenty paces before impact he swung his carbine round, for he must empty as many saddles as he could to enable the wedge to drive deep and split the foe like an oak trunk.
God, give me courage …
Then he smashed into the press of bodies, the impact almost throwing him from the saddle, and a desperate man fired his wheellock at him but the ball screamed above Mun’s head because the rebel was young and inexperienced and that was his death. For Mun thrust his carbine against the man’s breastplate and pulled the trigger and there was a deafening crack and thunk as the ball punched deep into the young man’s chest, only stopped by his backplate. For a moment he glared at Mun, in that heartbeat his lips curling as though he might cry, then he slumped dead, his hands dropping reins and pistol as he tipped from the saddle.
‘Godless devil bastards!’ a Parliamentarian officer yelled at Mun, spurring his mount forward into the oncoming tide of flesh and bone, leather and steel. ‘Fight me, you whoreson! Fight me!’ he screamed, spraying white spittle across the bars of his pot and brandishing his sword as a challenge.
In one fluid movement Mun threw his carbine across his back, drew his left-side pistol and fired and the rebel officer’s face collapsed in on itself in a welter of blood and brain. A glancing blow scraped against Mun’s helmet and he drew his last pistol, thrust it between his left arm and his side and pulled the trigger, looking over his shoulder as his attacker screeched in agony, Mun’s ball having exploded his jaw so that white shards flopped around on sloppy, blood-flinging scraps of flesh. The same instinct had Mun’s pistol holstered and his Irish hilt in his hand before the rebel even knew he was dead, and he caught a sword blow on his own blade’s forte and pushed it wide, then scythed the broadsword back against the bars of a man’s pot. But the bars took the blow and the man, though stunned, brought a pistol up in his other hand.
‘Not today, laddie!’ O’Brien bellowed, planting his poll-axe into the rebel’s horse’s head between the eyes. The horse’s legs buckled and it dropped like a rock just as its master fired and Mun felt the lead ball rip the air beside him. Mun glanced to his right, eyes filtering the seething, deafening chaos for friend and foe, then saw Jonathan parrying a flurry of blows from a huge bare-headed man wielding the biggest broadsword Mun had ever seen on a battlefield.
‘The boy!’ he shouted at O’Brien who grimaced and nodded, and together they spurred through the press and Mun took a sword blow on his right shoulder that sent a wave of agony through the whole bone, numbing his fingers, but he pushed on, ignoring his assailant because Jonathan would be dead in moments.
‘Withdraw! Back!’ Mun recognized the Prince’s voice, felt men around him begin to extricate themselves from the fight. The rebels, too, backed off, for both sides had expended their firearms and few men relished the desperate butchery of blades.
‘Hold on, lad,’ Mun murmured, willing Jonathan to defy the giant a little while longer, for those two were clearly in it to the death no matter what went on around them. ‘Go on, Hector!’ The stallion ploughed on, unstoppable, buffeting other horses aside, his great muscled neck plunging through the fray. Mun’s world shrank, its entirety framed by the steel bars before his face, all sound gone but for the metallic rasp of his own breath that was distilled, made more intense by the helmet.
The blond-haired giant was roaring, battering Jonathan’s blade with his own enormous sword, so that the lad was almost out of his saddle yet he somehow clung on, then Mun was there and Hector’s great chest smashed into the giant’s mare’s shoulder, causing the beast to turn, shrieking, so that now Mun and the giant were side by side and the rebel flung his sword arm back, the weapon’s hilt smashing into the bars of Mun’s pot and sending him flying back over Hector’s rump to land in a crash of iron and kit. Mun could not breathe, could get no air into his tortured lungs as his mind tried to make sense of what had happened. Blinking the world into focus he looked up, so far up, to see O’Brien and the giant grappling each other, neither able to free his weapon from the other’s grasp, the Irishman’s face a knot of rage.
‘Fuck off, lad!’ O’Brien roared at Jonathan who was trying to manoeuvre his horse round to strike at the giant, whose buff-coat looked to be made from two different coats sewn roughly together. Then Mun heard thunder and everything was a frenzy of hooves and horses’ legs and flying turf as the two forces split and galloped away, and though he saw it coming, in a flash of rider and steel, he was too late to warn O’Brien. A rebel hacked into the Irishman’s shoulder as he galloped past, a parting blow as he raced for his lines that by rights should have taken O’Brien’s arm off. As it was, the imp
act twisted him horribly and must have stunned him like a fish struck between the eyes but he cleaved to the rebel even as he fell, dragging the bigger man down with him so that they thumped to the ground. Mun felt the impact beneath him as he scrambled backwards to avoid being mauled by hooves as their horses stepped back from the flailing mass.
‘Devil! I’ll kill you, you Hell-born bastard!’ the blond giant bellowed.
Their swords dropped in the fall, the giant was on top of O’Brien, hands clasped around the Irishman’s thick neck trying to choke the life from him and growling like a monster. Dazed but moving, Mun stumbled across, fingers working at his helmet strap, then yanked the pot from his head and swung it, cracking it across the giant’s head, but the man was berserk and turned, yelling ferociously, and launched himself at Mun, grabbing him and yanking him forward to smash his head into Mun’s face. Mun felt the ground strike him but saw only flashing lights in a shifting black sea. Then the pain exploded in his nose and he was coughing, choking on the blood pouring down his throat. His vision returning, though blurred as though he were underwater, he dragged an arm across his eyes, trying to wipe away the tears, and saw Jonathan, dismounted now, swing his sword at the giant. The rebel took the blow on his leather-protected forearm and hammered a fist into Jonathan’s face, dropping him.
‘In Ireland we’ve got farm girls who are stronger than you, you ballock-faced gollumpus.’ O’Brien was on his feet, unsteady as they were, beckoning the rebel to him with a flap of his own big hand.
The blond giant grinned, spat, and went in for the kill.
A salvo of hoof-beats filled Mun’s ears and a trooper reined in beside him, his horse neighing spiritedly. The rider lifted his pistol, pointed it at the rebel’s head and fired. Some of the giant’s brains slapped into Mun’s breastplate and he looked up to see Richard Downes grinning like a fiend.
‘Have you lads finished making friends?’ Downes asked.
Smearing hot blood across his face Mun saw that, having reloaded, the Prince’s men were cantering back towards them to re-engage the enemy. The fight was not over yet and he grasped for Hector’s reins though he could barely focus on them.
‘I was just about to give the overgrown son of a whore the hiding of his life,’ O’Brien growled at all of them. He looked barely able to stand.
Downes shook his head slowly, glancing up towards the enemy lines as he took his powder flask and poured a charge down his wheellock’s muzzle. ‘I don’t know how you gentlemen survived without me,’ he said.
It had been a relief to walk across the Magdalen Bridge into Oxford, the King’s new capital. Bess had felt pride blossom in her chest when the guards at the east gate had questioned them and she had introduced herself as Elizabeth Rivers, daughter of the late Sir Francis Rivers.
‘My father gave his life in service to His Majesty at Kineton Fight,’ she had said. ‘Sir Francis was killed with Sir Edmund Verney trying to save the Royal Standard.’ She had not mentioned Emmanuel. That pain was private to her. But the dragoons had seemed humbled, all but falling over themselves to offer their condolences whilst advising Dane and Joseph where they might find the warmest hospitality Oxford had to offer. That had been three days ago and they were still lodging at The Glove and The Cross, recommended by a young dragoon not so much for its ale as for its nutmeg and cinnamon pancakes and its Banbury cake. It had surprised Bess to discover that Dane had a weakness for sweet treats that almost matched his weakness for drink. ‘I had a cousin from Astley near Salford who died for his sweet tooth,’ he had said on the first night when, after four days on the road, they had sat down with grumbling bellies to put the young dragoon’s endorsement of The Glove and The Cross to the test.
‘He died from a surfeit of pancakes?’ Bess had asked, sharing a silent look with Joseph, who showed no sign of curbing his own appetite as he tucked into his third pancake.
Dane shook his head. ‘His wife made him an apple pie full to the crust with atropine.’
‘Atropine?’ Joseph had mumbled through a mouth full.
‘Belladonna, Joe,’ Bess had said, and the young man had grimaced then carried on eating.
‘She poisoned poor old Gilbert for his snoring. At least that’s what folk said.’ Dane had dabbed his lips with a napkin and smiled. ‘It’s safer not to get married if you ask me.’
‘Nobody asked you,’ Bess had said, looking to Joseph for support but finding only a boy’s grin.
Now, she and Dane sat in the tavern’s smoky snug, driven out of the bar by the din of soldiers singing bawdy tales of women and ale. Oxford was alive with music and merry-making. It thronged with soldiers and whores, merchants and the myriad lickspittles, dandies and catch-farts that attended the King’s court like flies attend a turd was how Dane had put it, so that unlike London, Oxford was a bubbling, intoxicating cauldron of dash and debauchery.
‘You would have thought the war is of no concern. Or else that it is as good as won,’ Bess said, sipping her weak beer and half watching two men trying to talk a brace of painted wenches into visiting their rooms upstairs.
‘I hear His Majesty spends coin from his war chest on masques and plays,’ Dane said, ‘money that I suspect would be better spent on powder and shot and horses and a thousand other things which they tell me are of use when one is fighting a war.’ He was cradling a cup of claret wine and a jug of the stuff sat on the upturned barrel which served as a table. ‘More worrying still is that there is talk of forbidding the sale of strong drink in the city after nine in the evening on account of the brawling. There’s lots of brawling apparently.’
‘Poor man. Whatever will you do?’ Bess leant forward and patted his forearm. ‘Perhaps you should petition the King. I am sure he will turn a blind eye in your case. Perhaps he’ll share his wine with you, after all you have done for our cause.’
Dane drank and dragged a hand across his lips. ‘I may not have killed for His Majesty but I have killed for you, Elizabeth Rivers,’ he said, holding her eye.
That was true enough and Bess felt a twinge of guilt for how she treated Dane. The man had saved her life. Joseph’s too. Perhaps she could try to be a bit more civil to him. At the least, there was nothing to be gained by goading him.
‘I never thanked you properly,’ she said. ‘I am grateful.’ The horror of that night was like a cold sweat on her skin.
Dane shrugged, then drank again. ‘I wouldn’t have got paid if I’d let those men rape and kill you,’ he said, and with that Bess gritted her teeth and held her tongue. For a moment at least.
‘You are the most ill-mannered miscreant I have ever met,’ she said and he shrugged. Then they both sat back, Dane watching a pretty serving girl wiping down a table and she watching the two eager men boasting to the painted women of their heroics at Kineton Fight when it was clear that coin would impress them more. And she wondered how Joseph was getting on.
It had been Joseph’s idea to come to Oxford. Well, he had been the one to put the idea in Bess’s mind. Still reeling after the disappointment of finding no sign of Tom amongst Parliament’s army at Richmond, Bess had not known what their next course of action should be. They had returned to Southwark and visited the Tabard Inn which stood on the east side of Borough High Street, for Bess had remembered her father talking of the place and wondered if perhaps Tom had recalled the same stories and thus chosen to lodge there. He had not. But the Tabard was only one among a dingy clutter of inns lining the thoroughfare leading south from London Bridge towards Canterbury and Dover. They tried the Spur, the Christopher, the Bull, the Queen’s Head, the George, the Hart, the King’s Head and many more, taking bed and board at some so that they could ask regular patrons if they knew Tom or had seen a young man matching his description. With no luck they had crossed back into the city’s heart and searched innumerable hostelries and weeks passed and they came no closer to finding Tom.
‘We all have a motive, Bess,’ Joseph had said eventually, finally having got used to using her famili
ar name. ‘We all have a wind that fills our sail.’ The young man’s cheeks had flushed at that, which in turn put heat in Bess’s own because she knew that he loved her. ‘Yours is to find your brother,’ Joseph went on, ‘mine is to help you and do my duty in this war. Mr Dane here seeks to fatten his purse.’ Joseph had glanced at Dane but the man had not taken offence. ‘You must ask yourself what wind fills Tom’s sail, Bess, for you will know that better than anyone.’
The answer to that had not taken a heartbeat to come to.
‘Tom wants revenge,’ Bess had said. ‘Revenge against Lord Denton and his son for their odious offences. For their part in Martha Green’s death and for the humiliations they heaped upon Tom that I will not talk of.’
‘And is your brother a man of action?’ Dane had asked, one eyebrow cocked. ‘Turning his back on his family and joining the rebels is one thing, but is he fool enough to go after a man like Lord Denton in the cold light of day?’
‘Where will we find Lord Denton?’ Bess had asked, knowing it to be answer enough.
‘I don’t know,’ Dane had said. ‘But it will be easier to find him than your brother.’
And so it had been, for it turned out that the King had issued a proclamation that a new Royal Mint was to be established and that Lord Denton would be the man to see it done. And this mint would be at His Majesty’s new capital. Oxford.
They had arrived not knowing exactly what they would do when they got there, but the theory was better than any other they could come up with. By being close to Denton they might catch word, or possibly even sight, of Tom. Bess had daydreamed the scenario. She would glimpse her brother strolling through the city’s streets and even though he would likely be somehow disguised, heavily bearded perhaps or wearing the red scarf of the King’s men, she would recognize him. They would embrace and she would talk him out of his rash plan, dissipate his murderous intention like a fresh breeze blowing through a noisome tavern, and Tom would agree to go back north with her, home to Shear House. Or perhaps they would set off together, there and then, to find Mun so that the boys could make their peace.
Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) Page 28