William Falkland 01 - The Royalist

by S. J. Deas

  I gawped at him. ‘You think we take the King’s banner because the Queen is a Catholic or some nonsense like that? You think we fight because we wish to reunite our church with that of Rome?’ Perhaps some men did, but none that I’d seen, and in truth Cromwell had the right of it – that idea had been dead and buried long before I’d been born. Most of us were fighting because there was no way out, not for King or country or God – notions of God, I had supposed, were reserved for those who fought for Parliament. Cromwell had said otherwise. For my own part, I had long lost any idea of what any of us were fighting for. In the early days, I knew, much of England had tried simply to keep out of it, hiring bands of clubmen to try and hold the armies of both sides at bay, but it hadn’t done them any good. The war was a kind of collective mania and it touched us all. It’s hard to explain to the true believers. I’d tried before and never found much joy, and I supposed Warbeck would be the same. ‘How long will we be on the road?’ I asked.

  ‘Seven nights. Perhaps more, perhaps less. It will depend on what we find.’ He reached beneath the carriage seat, produced a bundle and handed it to me. I didn’t have to unwrap it to know that within it was a musket. Being a cavalryman I wasn’t used to the weapon, so I made to hand it back.

  ‘No.’ He pressed the musket into my hands. ‘You must carry it until we reach the camp. The roads are not safe.’ He had more under his seat, I saw. Three or four at least, wrapped to keep them dry. He didn’t offer me any powder. I was to bluff, then? And yet it pleased a small part of me – despite myself – to know that, even this close to London, bands of the King’s men perhaps travelled the roads. I hoped we didn’t find them. I’d sooner have died at the hands of an enemy than a friend.

  We passed through Richmond and the long hours drew out in silence. There was no incident that day and we repaired for the night to an inn on the road near the hamlet of Longcross. It was called the Lantern but no light shone from within. Indeed, I hadn’t known it was there until Warbeck commanded the carriage to stop and ordered me out. We were on a desolate stretch of highway where there had once been farmland but now only wild grasses grew. It had been dark for hours already and I could see a sweep of majestic stars. The inn door was locked but Warbeck made a special knock and, after much fumbling, we were invited inside. A candle flickered and I could see what had once been the inn’s front room in a state of disarray. Only a single stool remained. Apart from that the building had been gutted. Even the floor had been torn apart, the boards stolen to be burned to keep soldiers warm through a freezing night. The innkeeper returned from a back room with a bottle of something dark which he gave to Warbeck without a word. Then he shuffled away. I watched him go.

  ‘Don’t bother yourself with him, Falkland. We keep him well fed. That’s about all he can ask for.’

  ‘Your soldiers gutted this place,’ I said.

  Warbeck didn’t dispute it. He handed me the bottle. ‘Drink,’ he insisted. ‘You’ll freeze.’

  I supposed there was some wisdom to that and took a long swallow from the bottle. It was strong, sweet wine and in seconds I felt light-headed. Starvation and deprivation do that to a man.

  ‘Time to rest, Falkland. There’ll be no carriage for us in the morning. From here, we ride.’

  In the morning there were two horses waiting in the stable. Both were piebald and difficult to saddle but they looked better fed than any soldier I’d seen since almost the start of the war. From the way he took to his horse I supposed Warbeck had been a cavalryman as well. He whispered into its ears just the same as I would, knew when to console and when to cajole. I wondered if we’d once met in battle.

  We rode in silence. By the afternoon the land looked untouched by the war and I began to think that there was something worth saving in England after all. I’d been so long between battlefields and then in a prison cell that I’d forgotten there was indeed a country worth fighting for. Even though the fields were brown and the trees out of leaf, I was reminded of the little farm on which I had imagined Caro and myself living out our days. I knew I wasn’t headed there but, all the same, with every hour that passed I was an hour closer. In the evening, Warbeck demanded to know why I seemed so happy. I told him it was only the fresh air, the sight of England that had renewed my spirits, but that was only a part of the truth. I was thinking of my family and it no longer hurt as it had in that Newgate cell.

  Warbeck pushed us on towards Andover. The King’s armies under Hopton had been driven out of this part of England two years back but that hadn’t stopped the fighting from swinging back and forth until the New Model had come. I had no notion of how things stood now – back before I was taken, Winchester and Basing House both remained for the King, though both had been attacked several times. Near midday we passed within a few miles of the latter. It occurred to me then that I had no idea through whose England we were travelling now, whether any soldiers we might encounter would most likely be roundheads or cavaliers or – most likely of all – deserters. Twice Warbeck hurried us off the road when he saw soldiers. He must have seen my face the second time, some sparking hope of escape, because he rounded on me after the soldiers were past. ‘Don’t get up your hopes, Falkland. Winchester surrendered a month ago. Cromwell and the New Model took Basing House by storm shortly after.’ He had a look in his eye as though he’d been there himself. A fiery glee. ‘After we looted the place, some fool set it alight. It burned for a day and a night and when it was done there was naught left but bare walls and chimneys. Before he left it, Cromwell’s orders were to tear them down, demolish the ruin and cart away the bricks and stones. There’s nothing left of your King here.’

  I said nothing by reply but I saw we still kept away from the road when bands of soldiers hove into view. In truth I had little interest in running, not yet. Warbeck was already taking me towards the places I wanted to be.

  With Andover in sight we spent the second night huddled in an abandoned farmhouse and pushed our horses hard through the third day to another, a bleak and lonely place on the top of a hill. We saw almost no one on those days of riding together. I thought perhaps we might be somewhere within a day of Bristol now, a city which, last I’d heard, was still held by the King after Prince Rupert had stormed it in the summer of 1643. When I asked Warbeck he merely grunted.

  ‘Your Prince surrendered the city to Fairfax and the New Model in September, Falkland.’ He watched me closely that night, perhaps imagining that I saw my old friends and allies not so far away. If I could escape and keep free of him for a day then perhaps I could be among royalists once more. I could see him thinking it.

  ‘Would you like to bind me?’ I asked him, full of disdain.

  ‘Oh I’ll catch you quick enough if you run, Falkland.’

  And in truth I did lie awake a while, weighing that choice, but in the end I found it wanting. I might slip away from Warbeck but what then? I didn’t know this land. We’d ridden through wild and lonely hills these last few hours and in the night with no sun to guide me I might confuse my direction. England had become such a patchwork of loyalties, some conquered, some divided. Yet most of all what stayed me was the thought of success – what if I reached the King in Oxford or some other place, what then? If the King’s armies were in retreat as Cromwell had said then I’d be pressed into service once more. So I slept and in the morning let Warbeck lead us on. I suppose he thought me weak or afraid and it never crossed his mind that each step I took at his side was a step closer to my Caro. Alone, I would have travelled the same roads. Better to ride them with Warbeck behind me than as a hunted man.

  He pushed us hard that next day and, from what little he would admit when I questioned him, I gathered we were approaching Taunton, which I’d last heard was held for Parliament but under siege. We reached another one of Warbeck’s inns where a secret knock allowed us entry. Once again every room had been plundered, although this time I supposed it could have been either army. I wondered why we had not camped instead but got my answer
when Warbeck led me to the inn’s pantry and pushed me inside. ‘You sleep in here tonight, Falkland.’ From his nervous disposition I surmised that the siege must continue and that he didn’t trust me not to run. Can’t say as I blamed him for that.

  I supposed he would simply lock me inside and leave but instead he squatted in the doorway as I sat down and regarded me with a curious expression. It was cramped in that pantry but not because the shelves were packed. There was only a single jar and even that, when I opened it, was empty. I breathed in the scent of honey and found myself taken back to my boyhood, to summer days and sunshine and flowers and the bees.

  ‘Doesn’t it fly against everything you’re fighting for, Falkland?’ he asked me. ‘If your King can be wrong?’

  I could hardly see why. ‘A king is just a man like any other.’ I tried to stretch out but there wasn’t enough room, so instead I made myself a pillow of my boots and twisted into a shape I thought might give me a little sleep. ‘A man was justly hanged for his crimes and that was all I saw of it. I gave it little thought at all.’ I suppose at the time I doubted the King would even notice. Afterwards I’d had my fears for a time but I’d never suffered any consequence. ‘How is it that you and Cromwell give it so much more?’

  ‘Oh, you caused quite a stir.’ Warbeck gave a sly smile and then shook his head. ‘You defy him and yet you continue to fight for him. You confound me, Falkland.’ Abruptly he rose. I wondered, then, if that was why the King would never let me go home after I was wounded. Perhaps there had been consequences after all, just too subtle for me to see. ‘Good night, Falkland. I dare say you’d give me your word not to run if I asked for it and I dare say you’d run anyway.’ He closed the door and I heard the click of the lock.

  Taunton. We were close to the country I knew now. Caro had fled to Taunton for a time but she hadn’t stayed there long. Perhaps Warbeck was right. Perhaps I would run now if I could, this close to home; but there was no sense thinking about it locked in a pantry until morning and so I dozed. Though I kept waking to the sounds of scurrying in the walls. The rats would be as sore disappointed as I was, because there was no food for them here. They’d have done better out on the road. Sometimes we didn’t have time to bury our dead before beating a retreat.

  CHAPTER 4

  When I next opened my eyes I thought I heard the rats again. I hammered my fist at the wall for it felt as though they were ferreting away only inches from my head. Then I heard a sound that made me freeze. Seconds later it came again. Footsteps on the other side of the pantry door. Footsteps that weren’t Warbeck. It was a heavy tread. That was how I knew it wasn’t him – a man with a voice as musical as his walks lightly, graceful as a dancer, but this man was bigger, broader, and he was wearing heavy boots. There was another sound like the clanking of metal tassets. It was an armour I only knew pikemen to wear – but what pikemen were doing roaming this inn at night escaped me.

  I had a horrible thought. Locked in this pantry I had no way of telling the hour. My body’s clock told me it was still the thick of night but prison had played cruel tricks on my body’s clock before. Perhaps it was morning already. Silently I crouched by the door. My legs were cramped and my feet sore but I gritted my teeth and pressed my eye to the keyhole. I had to be careful not to touch the door in case the man outside saw it shift. It was dark in the passage but somebody was carrying a lantern and strange shadows like spiderwebs danced up and down the hall. Then, suddenly, there was blackness. Moments passed and the light returned. A second man had passed by the door, blocking the lamp. Now I was certain it wasn’t simply Warbeck prowling about.

  And that, of course, begged the question: what exactly had become of Warbeck?

  The footsteps stopped and I saw a flash of purple as one of the men turned around. I’d seen purple dress only once before. On the battlefield it’s notoriously difficult to tell one’s enemy from one’s allies, especially when the fighting comes to close quarter in the thick of the mud, but in the early years we’d come against a militia with purple sashes on many occasions. Their leader, Lord Brooke, was said to be Exeter’s heir – indeed, more of a man than that poor cuckold could ever be – and his purple soldiers were as well drilled a unit as any I’ve come up against. It was Brooke who took Kineton for Parliament, Brooke who held Lichfield Cathedral to that terrible siege. In the end we couldn’t defeat him in open battle. I used to think it a coward’s move, but we got him with a musket ball from a hidden hillside. It is a terrible war when you don’t even have to look into the eyes of the men you kill.

  Brooke’s militia had been gone for two years, probably more. Perhaps some soldiers still wore the purple sash but something about it didn’t seem right. Cromwell had been clear: his army was the New Model now, not a hundred different militias under a hundred different generals. Now there was only Cromwell and Fairfax, commanders of twelve thousand men. The New Model stripped men down. It took their ranks, their names, their histories and made them anew: fresh, brave, godly and pure. From what I remembered they all dressed the same: Venice red coats, in better or worse states of repair.

  Suddenly I knew who had stumbled into the inn tonight. I lifted back my fist and hammered at the door – these weren’t Parliament’s men, they were from the King’s armies, perhaps the ones that laid siege to Taunton, deserting or scattered by a skirmish. They were wearing foraged clothes, hoping to slide under Parliament’s nose.

  ‘In here!’

  I heard the clanking of armour again as the men turned around, desperate to know who was shouting.

  ‘This door!’ I bellowed. ‘Quickly!’

  A fist grappled at the handle but quickly stopped.

  ‘What if it’s a trap?’ asked a voice.

  ‘From inside a locked cupboard?’ said a second.

  They wrestled with the door until I heard something snap. I recoiled. When the door flew open all I saw at first was a ball of fiery light as they pushed their lantern inside. The next was a pointed silhouette – the tip of a sabre that came perilously close to my throat.

  ‘Name yourself!’ the first voice growled.

  ‘I’m Falkland,’ I said. ‘I’m the King’s man!’

  They lowered the lantern a few degrees, the better to get a look at me. I must have seemed pathetic, scrabbling around in the dirt. At least they didn’t run me through.

  ‘What are you doing in there? Explain yourself!’

  ‘There’s another man in the inn. He has me captive.’

  ‘One man?’

  The way his voice rose at the end of the question made me seem foolish. No true soldier fighting for the King could be taken captive by a single weaselly Puritan.

  ‘Out of there, sir. Be quick now!’

  It took me a moment to get to my feet, longer to wrestle them back into my boots. They were still sore and I grimaced as I dressed.

  ‘This man who has you captive, where is he?’ one of the men asked.

  ‘I don’t know. He said he would come for me in the morning.’

  ‘A Parliament man?’

  I nodded. ‘You’re from the siege of Taunton?’ I asked. The way the man in front of me paused told me at once that I was wrong.

  ‘The roundheads routed that siege months ago,’ he said. ‘There’s no place safe for a King’s man in these parts now. What garrison are you from?’

  ‘They had me in Newgate.’ As soon as I spoke, I regretted it. I was being foolish. There was too much mystery in a man released from prison and at once they took me for a trickster. The man behind me drew up his sabre while the one in front revealed a small dagger in his hand. I could have said I was fleeing from the slaughter at Basing House or the capitulation of Winchester, things I’d garnered from Warbeck on the road. But it was too late for that now.

  ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘I am unarmed.’ I opened my palms to prove it.

  ‘Out,’ whispered the man behind me. ‘We can’t stay here tonight.’

  I thought a little before I moved. I’d never
supposed myself to have much truck with deserters and their ilk; but I’d made my choice when I rattled that door and called for their help and so I rose, unsteady, to my feet. The men hurried away. There was a door at the end of the passage that opened onto a courtyard. We came to it in single file. There had once been a tree in the centre but it was freshly hacked down. A single bough lay across the stones; apart from that the yard was barren. The night was deathly cold, the sky clear and plastered with stars and I felt, all of a sudden, as small as an ant. I’d been in a prison cell with only stinking stones above my head for too long. A terrible thing to do to a man, make him afraid of the sky.

  We kept to the south wall and crossed the courtyard, finding an archway that led to the stables. Our horses were still in the stalls so I knew that Warbeck had not gone far. I allowed myself to hope he still slept but I knew it was a foolish notion; if he’d not heard me hammering at the door, he’d surely heard them wrenching it apart.

  The first man reached over the stall door to fumble with the catch.

  ‘Your horses?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘What is your name, sir?’ I asked him. Years of soldiering had taught me that it becomes harder to simply murder a man once he calls you by your name.

  ‘You ride with the Parliament man?’ He looked right through me and I became aware again of the dagger in his hand.

  ‘I told you,’ I said. ‘He has me captive.’

  ‘Yet you ride with him without a guard?’

  I wanted to answer but I had no words. It dawned on me that he was right, that the man I had been before they put me in that prison cell would have run Warbeck down when we passed Bristol. I was a tenant farmer once but William Falkland had become a different man in these last years. I’d been a pikeman first and then a dragoon. At the last I’d been a cavalryman who could soothe the fears of a dozen others with a single look. Surely I’d not lost all of that? Yet I’d followed Warbeck without complaint and told myself it was because he was leading me towards my home. One last thing, they had said, and you can live – but who had decided my life was theirs to make as a gift to me?