William Falkland 01 - The Royalist

by S. J. Deas

  The guards led the women away. I thought they were going to carve a path through the horde itself but the crowd opened for them with a surprising grace. They passed us close by, heading along the road that led towards the church. The restless murmuring began again until Baxter opened his book of prayers and began another reading.

  I watched as they passed and then leaned and whispered into Miss Cain’s ear. ‘I can’t let them take those girls . . .’

  ‘Why? Itching for one of them, are you?’

  It was not the sort of jest I’d imagined Miss Cain would make. Momentarily, I drew back.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘It isn’t that.’

  ‘You can’t stop it, Falkland. They’ll say you’re ungodly.’

  ‘I can’t stop it and nor do I want to, but I must speak with one of those girls before she leaves.’ I realised I had hold of Miss Cain’s wrist again. I let go, urged her to follow me and we pushed again through the crowd, hearing the guttural disapproval of more than one stinking pikeman as we came. Miss Cain led me through an alley where the snow had been trampled but not cleared. The banks were as high as my knees and we kicked our way along, emerging at a narrow lane that ran along the church’s rear wall. I could see the Admonished girls now as they were led further off into the camp. From the way they moved I thought they had been roped together: we’d done that to Parliament prisoners we’d taken once, somewhere outside Islip, and they had marched much the same.

  We set to following. The girls and their escort passed around the back of the surgeon’s house and into the fields where the barns and tents had been erected, along trails through the snow already trampled by a thousand men. I’d become disorientated after we left the church but I realised with a start that I knew this part of the encampment. We were at the track that led to the hanging tree.

  Miss Cain and I stopped. We could see the women ahead, the only things moving in that empty expanse. They paused as the soldiers freed them from their ropes. The sheets were still wrapped tightly around them, constricting them so that they had an odd shuffling gait like amputees. Shortly after, a man on horseback rode out from the camp to accompany them.

  ‘Where did you stable my horse?’ I asked. I meant Warbeck’s horse, the one I’d been given, but it would not pay to quibble.

  ‘At the livery behind the inn like Black Tom said.’ She spoke hesitantly and when I turned to see her, had a distressed look about her. ‘You don’t mean to ride after them?’

  ‘I would speak to her alone where others do not watch and listen. I would have her words come freely.’

  ‘Falkland, you’re not supposed to leave camp . . .’

  I stopped. ‘What did you say?’

  Kate screwed her eyes as if regretting some spilled secret. ‘You’re not meant to leave camp,’ she admitted. ‘Master Warbeck thinks you want to desert. You’re being watched.’

  ‘Warbeck?’ I don’t know why it felt like such a betrayal to know she spoke with Warbeck behind my back. I’d only known her two days and she’d already proved herself wilful and independent. ‘Who does the watching?’ I asked.

  Her silence told me. She looked away and could not meet my eye.

  ‘He pays you for it, does he?’ I demanded.

  ‘Falkland, it’s not like that! You make it sound a terrible thing. I’m alive, aren’t I? And I have a roof, and food and –’ she looked out into the fields – ‘and I haven’t had to be like them.’ She stopped. Her defensiveness turned to anger, as if in my silence I was accusing her. ‘Nobody has died on my account, Falkland. If it makes a difference, Black Tom has me keeping a watch over both of you.’

  ‘I’ll need my horse,’ I said calmly. Silence twisted and turned between us and I felt as if we were having a bitter argument without a single word being said. At last she nodded and turned and disappeared back through the tents into the town. While she was gone I kept watch on the shambling girls as they followed the road away from Crediton and crossed the bridge over the river. It wasn’t long before they disappeared – whether into the shadow of a hill or only into the endless white, I could not tell. The cavalry man disappeared with them but it wasn’t long before he appeared once more. I watched him slowly get nearer to the camp, the tiny speck of his horse getting gradually bigger. My eyes are not what they were but before he reached camp I recognised him: Purkiss, Fairfax’s man. Another pair of eyes sent to watch and spy on me. Purkiss for Fairfax, Warbeck for Cromwell, Kate for Warbeck and Fairfax both? I watched hard. I had a sudden fancy to know exactly who Purkiss was and his role in this camp. I was of a mind to beat it out of him.

  He was trotting peacefully through the encampment border fires, still heading towards us but out of sight behind a rise and the rows of tents, when Miss Cain returned astride my horse. She swung herself down and ran a hand across the animal’s flank. His eyeballs rolled madly.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Cain.’

  ‘I will be in sore trouble if I don’t report you leaving,’ she said.

  I put my boot in the stirrup and launched myself into the saddle. It was not a comfortable feeling. My inner thighs felt tender and my joints ached. ‘I’ll be coming back,’ I said. ‘You have my word on it.’

  ‘Nevertheless, Master Falkland. The trouble will be the same either way.’

  I wheeled the horse around, eager to be out of there before Purkiss reappeared. ‘Fairfax’s man. The one he sent to show me the tree. Do you know who he is?’ I asked.

  Kate nodded. ‘I heard he was an under-commander to Nathaniel Rich,’ she said.

  It was a name I’d learned when fighting under Prince Rupert’s banner. Nathaniel Rich was a colonel in the Parliament cavalry. We called them the Ironsides for the way they could smash through our lines no matter how determined we were to hold position. Rich had been a prominent Ironside in the stories we told, but I’d not heard of an Alfred Purkiss. ‘Why would Fairfax have an interest in those girls?’

  Miss Cain seemed to think me a fool. ‘He has an interest in everything that’s happening in camp, Falkland. It was worse when Cromwell was here. There wasn’t a thing that happened that one of them didn’t know.’

  ‘Miss Cain,’ I said, ‘you must do what you must do. I beg you give me an hour before you tell them I’m gone. That’s all I ask.’

  Kate peered into the whiteness. The black mark that was Purkiss’s horse was getting bigger, more recognisable. I could see every kick of its legs. ‘One hour,’ she whispered. ‘After that, Falkland, I’ll tell them. I’m sorry, but I must.’

  I nodded. An hour was enough and I did not wish to see her punished for anything I had done.

  CHAPTER 13

  I pushed the horse quickly into the sprawl of tents and lean-tos, losing myself in the labyrinth so Purkiss wouldn’t know anyone was there. A lane between two banks of tents broadened into a space where a fire still smouldered from the night before. I found myself a vantage there so that when Purkiss passed by, I would be able to see. He might have seen me and Kate when she brought me Warbeck’s horse but I wanted to be sure he didn’t see me following the women. I needed to be certain I would reach them before anyone could stop me. Or, as they would say, come to ‘escort’ me.

  The place was eerily silent. I tried to picture what it would be like when the soldiers returned to their camps from the spectacle at the square. Wintering had not been like this for the King’s army – nor, I suspected, any army in the history of the kingdom. Not since the Romans held sway over these isles had there been an army like it. While I waited, I peered into the tents. They were big enough to sleep six men, with mattresses of straw and cloth raised from the floor and a variety of different packs. On one of the beds I saw a copy of The Soldier’s Pocket Bible and decided to take it for my own. Perhaps there was something pertinent here, something that would be of use. I had learned a little about how the New Model nourished its soldiers’ spirits but I was keen to know more.

  I heard the soft clatter of a horse kicki
ng through the snow and knew that Purkiss was drawing near. I crept between the tents and watched as he trotted past. He was wheezing heavily and his face was purple with cold. This man was, I thought, more at home stuffing his face with stewed apples than fighting a war, although one could never be sure. I’d thought the same of Warbeck at the start. I knew better now; there was a cold killer in him.

  When I was certain Purkiss had passed on as far as the borders of Crediton, I hauled myself back into the saddle and, whispering kind words into the horse’s ear, climbed up the bank and followed the trail. It had once been farmland in these parts but the fields quickly gave way to a sharp bank and low hills began to rise. It was difficult to tell where sky started and the snowy hills stopped but at least I had Purkiss’s tracks to guide me. The trail crossed a bridge over the frozen river. To my left I could plainly see the hanging tree, not far away. Beyond the bridge the track followed a shallow valley and I soon saw the first thickets of skeletal trees. The hills quickly became wooded, a mongrel mix of conifers and ancient forest. I was glad to see it because it meant the banished whores might not freeze to death tonight. There would be shelter and, if they were canny, there could even be a fire. I didn’t think much of their chances for finding or snaring a good dinner but perhaps there was some plundering to be done.

  In time I came to a sharp bend where the trail suddenly plummeted down a steep bank. At the bottom of the bank the snow had been kicked up in circles. In some places I could even make out bare earth. After that, the tracks changed, became less deep. This was where Purkiss had left the women and turned back to the camp. I went on carefully now, not so slowly that I would risk getting back to the encampment too late, but slow enough that I could spy the wooded banks and find the place where the women had gone to ground. I was certain they would have sought out shelter just as soon as they knew Purkiss wasn’t coming back. If I were a camp whore, I’d have judged it my only chance: wait for the fervour of the Day of Admonishment to die away and somehow sneak back. Surely every one of them had somebody in camp who didn’t want to see them go, no matter how fervently they lent their voices to the jeering today. Few men are proud of their whores in public but even fewer do not dream of them at night.

  I found the spot with surprising ease. The footprints stopped and the snow was kicked up and I judged the women had gathered there, arguing over which way to go. I got down from my horse, roped him to a tree with his rein and followed the footprints up the bank and between the first trees. As I entered the woodland there came a feverish beating of wings. Two wood pigeons hurtled up through the bare branches. I was sorry to have panicked them so; they would have made someone a good dinner tonight.

  Inside the wood the air was still and almost silent. With only a few strides I could have imagined I was anywhere in the world. The borders of the Crediton camp were a scant mile away but I might have been in any corner of the kingdom, away from the wars, away from roundheads and cavaliers and godly men and secret Catholics. I allowed myself a brief pause, braced against the trunk of a tree, and closed my eyes. This was what I wanted. I’d not felt peace so intensely as I did then since I had marched from London with the King to face the Scots.

  The trail led on into the trees. I followed it a while until I could no longer tell how far I’d come. The forest grew wild and it was dark as dusk among the boughs; it was a ghostly, unearthly world. I looked up, trying to get my bearings. There was no sun to mark the passage of time but I fancied I’d been gone from camp longer than half an hour already. I’d have to turn back soon or risk breaking my promise. I pressed on, making sure to mark my way by snapping dead branches or peeling bark from the trunks of the trees, although in truth I need not have bothered – the trail the camp whores had left was clear enough. The ground here had only a dusting of snow, the rest trapped in the branches so that it felt as if I was walking through a dank cavern of ice, but I could make out the tread of the women. I could even distinguish who were the heaviest and who walked with the lightest feet.

  I came to a clearing. The women had stopped here to get their bearings. Perhaps they had thought it a good place for a camp: if so then I was glad they’d moved on for they were surely wrong. A clearing would be too exposed to whatever blizzards the night threw down. I crossed, following their tracks, and had hardly gone another hundred yards through fir trees and air heavy with scent when I heard their voices. Somebody was crying; and somebody else was telling them to be still in words that could not have been less kind. The voice was shrill but commanding, as authoritative as Fairfax or any of the other commanders I’d seen in Crediton camp. I used to like it when my wife Caro bossed me that way. It made me know I’d been a fool but that it did not matter.

  I crept on, careful with where I placed my feet lest I scare them before I announced myself. Twenty yards further on I saw three figures propped against trees, another sitting on a high boulder where moss grew thick. Two others held onto each other while the last stood at a distance. I began to hear their words.

  ‘We must go further,’ the authoritative voice insisted.

  ‘There isn’t anything further,’ a second voice returned. ‘You don’t really believe a handsome woodcutter is going to take us in, do you?’

  ‘I hardly think a man would devote his life to wandering in the woods if he were handsome,’ the first voice said, ‘but we have to get as far away from camp as we can. I dread to think what will happen if we’re followed.’

  ‘Followed?’

  ‘Are you really so foolish, girl? It’s time you started using that pretty head of yours for more than pleasing a lad who knows nought else. It was fine in camp. They were good to us there. In camp we were one thing but out here we aren’t their whores, we’re just a rag of girls. Fugitives. You’ve seen what those soldiers can do to a refugee girl when the fancy takes them. They’d look after us when we were their whores, but now . . .’

  ‘You don’t mean to say they’d come out here after us just to . . .’ It was a third voice, warm and frightened. I shifted for a better view and caught a fleeting glance through the trees of the girl to whom it belonged. It was the girl I’d come for, the one I’d seen tending to Whitelock and Wildman’s grave.

  ‘Mary,’ the lead voice snapped, ‘what I mean to say is that we shouldn’t take anything for granted. Not any more.’

  ‘But . . . what if we’re tired?’ the second girl chipped in. ‘What if we’re cold and we’re tired and it’s getting dark and . . . we want to make this camp.’

  ‘Yes!’ the girl called Mary exclaimed, rising to the challenge. ‘If we’re not whores any more then that means we don’t need whoring. We’re not soldiers with you as our officer so who—’

  The sound was as loud as musket fire. Mary reeled, clutching her cheek where she’d felt the back of the first woman’s hand. Beyond her, somewhere I couldn’t see, a fourth voice barked out. Then a fifth joined the din. If there really were soldiers hereabouts then these women were doing a grand job of announcing themselves. They might as well have lit a signal fire. It was, I thought, time to make an entrance. Perhaps in exchange for the information I sought, I might help them with their camp. I doubted they had much practice at such things and a poor choice of shelter through a winter night can be the last mistake any soldier makes. I took a step, then another, careful this time that my tread should be heavy. A fallen branch, iced with thick snow, blocked my path and I stepped on it hard. The snap reverberated through the ghostly woodland and the bickering suddenly stopped.

  ‘Quick!’ the lead woman barked. ‘Into the trees! Come on, girls!’

  I didn’t mean for them to scatter. I hurried forward, snagging myself on winter briars. The girl Mary’s eyes locked with mine as she turned to flee and I could see the red mark of her mistress’s hand on her face. ‘Mary,’ I said. She froze at her name. I lifted my hands to show her I held no weapon. ‘I came only to . . .’

  I was denied the chance to say anything more for suddenly the world shook and a
pain such as I’d not felt in years exploded across the back of my head. I lurched forward towards her, instinctively holding my arms up as if she might catch me. Terrified, she stepped back and let me sink to the ground. For a moment I was kneeling. My hearing was suddenly gone and the world whirled in front of me as though I’d lost myself in a dozen skins of wine.

  Then the pain came again, a fresh blow as hard as the last. I cried out. All the woodland around me reduced to a single speck of light; and after that there was only the dark.

  When I awoke it was night. I knew this from the cold in the air before I even opened my eyes. I kept them closed for as long as I could stand it for there was a fresh Hell opened at the back of my head. Vivid images forced themselves on me but they were not of the winter woodland where surely I still lay. In my head I was back in my prison cell, awaiting a hangman’s noose. I’d been so eager for the end then but now the idea brought sticky bile to the back of my throat.

  Choking, I wrenched myself upright, heaving whatever morsels were left in my stomach into the dirty trodden snow. My limbs were so stiffened with cold that they would barely move. Once I opened my eyes it took me a moment to accustom them to the night. I dared not think how many hours had passed. There were patches between the branches, laden with snow, where I could make out the sky. Clouds shifted and came apart, and now and then I saw stars. It had been midday, thereabouts, when I had left the camp.

  The pain in my head was blinding. One becomes, as a soldier, accustomed to pain, but not such as this. I’ve been shot, which I’ll admit was worse, but it took all the will I could muster not to close my eyes once more and pray for the bliss of unconsciousness. My hands were tied behind my back. They’d not used rope and I strained to get myself free. I was bound in lengths of white sheet, the same sheets with which the women had been wrapped for their Admonishment. I slowly turned myself around, my delicate caution more for fear of a fresh explosion inside my head than of being seen or heard. In a cauldron of stones between the trees a low fire smouldered. One of the women had been wise to the ways of the wild after all: they’d built up walls with the snow, protecting us all from the chill of the wind, and the women slept sitting up on a platform of dead branches, huddled together for warmth. Two sat removed from the others, closer to the fire. They’d been keeping watch, I supposed, but had not been up to the task. That was why the fire burned so low. They’d been taken by sleep and had not been feeding it.