by S. J. Deas
I heard a grunting from the huddle of women. A pair of eyes opened and blinked in astonishment to see me standing.
‘I do not,’ I said, ‘but I mean to find out.’
CHAPTER 14
I came back to camp at a slow trot. It was still the black of night as I crossed the border fires. A dark silhouette hallooed me as I rode in but I spurred the horse on and made for the black spire of the church. The only figures abroad in the town so late at night were the camp guards, idly patrolling the lanes. My head throbbed and I struggled to hold my eyes open as I came slowly past the swinging dead man in the chestnut square. I paused underneath him. There was nobody to investigate this man’s death. I wondered if, even after the wickedness he’d committed, that was right. I’d had no such hesitation in Yorkshire when, against the King’s command, I sent the ravisher to the gallows. Surely I did not regret it? The exertions of this night had sapped me of my strength, that was all. I was in my fortieth year and I felt immeasurably old. I wanted to go home.
I roped my horse to a post in the livery stables behind the inn and approached Miss Cain’s house with caution. There were no lights within and only the weakest tendril of smoke curled from the chimney. As I’d returned the sky had grown overcast, readying itself for fresh snow, and it was difficult to judge the time. I reckoned it past midnight. The blackest hour.
The door gave with no resistance. No latch had been dropped. I stole inside: embers still glowed in the range in the scullery and I was drawn to their warmth like a moth to a lantern; yet I had not crossed half the chamber when I heard her voice. I turned and saw her sitting in the darkness, her arms wrapped around herself. She was cast in dark shadows so I couldn’t see her face. Sharply, I turned. ‘Miss Cain,’ I began. ‘Forgive me. You gave me a fright.’
I stepped around so the fire might throw more light on her delicate features. Only after a long silence had passed did I know for sure what I was looking at. It took me too long to accustom my eyes to the light; but, when I did, I saw that her face was dark and swollen on one side, one of her eyes half shut. I went to her and dropped to my knees but she flung her hands up and refused to let me near.
‘Who did this?’ I asked.
‘You know.’ She said it flatly. It wasn’t an accusation, only two simple words. All the same, they stung me exactly as she’d intended.
‘Warbeck?’ She shook her head. ‘Purkiss?’
‘Not his fists. His fists couldn’t do this to me.’
She loosened her body. Where she had been holding up her legs, hugging them to her chest, now she sat bolt upright so that I might see her fearsomeness in all its ugly glory. She wanted to look me in the eye but something kept drawing her away. Instead she gazed into the last vestiges of the fire.
‘Purkiss,’ I said. ‘He brought men with him. Camp guards.’
She nodded. ‘You promised to come back.’
‘I meant to, Miss Cain. It was an oath and I didn’t mean to break it. I was . . . waylaid.’
‘By a group of whores?’ Her voice broke from a whisper to a cry of sorts, but on the last word she strangled it and looked at the ceiling above us, worried she might wake Warbeck in the bedroom above.
‘Miss Cain,’ I said, ‘I don’t expect you to believe me, but I’ll tell you the truth. They ambushed me. I meant only to speak to them but they took me for some ravisher sneaked out of camp.’ I took her hand. She didn’t resist so I turned and placed her fingers over the lump on the back of my head. My hair, I realised as I did, was still matted with blood. As she touched the wound fresh knives of pain jabbed through my skull. I flinched from her.
A lingering silence told me that she had not, at least, dismissed the story out of hand. ‘A big man like you,’ she snorted, ‘overcome by a string of camp girls?’
The mockery pleased me. I reckoned it meant I was . . . if not forgiven then at least not blamed. ‘I’m truly sorry,’ I said. ‘You should have told them where I went.’
‘I did,’ Miss Cain replied. She lifted a cup to her lips and drank slowly. ‘I told them even before they began. I told you before you left, I’m not a fool. I do what I have to do to get by, so that one day . . .’
‘One day,’ I said, kneeling again, ‘when the war is over . . .’
She looked away. ‘I didn’t wait an hour before I went to tell them. I waited four, until I could wait no longer. I knew by then it was too long. Did you at least find what you were looking for, Falkland? Or is all this –’ she tilted her head, exposing the worst swelling to the dim orange light – ‘for nothing?’
‘She was called Mary,’ I said. ‘Whore to the first boy that died. Whore to his brother too.’
‘Happy families.’ She snorted then immediately seemed to regret the jibe and lifted a hand as if it was my own daughter she’d wronged.
‘She had a story to tell. She’s convinced Richard Wildman hanged himself, that he wasn’t murdered.’ I frowned then, for I’d expected the opposite. No person cares to believe that the one they love would damn themselves by taking their own life. ‘She said that something got to him and made him believe he’d been taking part in devilry all his life just because he was raised to hear Mass and go to confession. Whatever it was, it turned him to that pocket book they all keep. He started devouring it.’
‘There are plenty of boys in camp who take pleasure from baiting any cavalier sorts they can find. Catholic cavaliers must have it worse than most.’
‘Schoolboy stuff. Two boys picking on another because he can’t swim or ride as fast . . . But I’ve never known a schoolboy start dreading the devil. I’ve never known a schoolboy take himself to a tree and put a rope round his neck and hurl himself off.’
‘Or steal a granadoe.’
I looked up. ‘He said a man would come. There was another thing she said. His last words. She told them exactly as he said them. I would rather die by my own hand than burn on somebody else’s pyre.’
The words floated around us, settling like snow. ‘It makes me think of witchcraft,’ Miss Cain said slowly.
‘Witchcraft?’
‘They say to kill a witch you must burn her alive. It forces the spirit out of her and chokes it before it can escape. Falkland . . .’ As I waited, I noticed that I still held her hand. I had not dropped it and she had not pulled it away. It seemed very . . . natural.
‘Kate?’
‘When I took you to the tree two nights back, you asked me who I thought you’d been when I first saw you standing at my door. You said I’d mistaken you for someone else, and I told you it was true and I’d heard whispers of a man coming who would make this army godly. Do you remember?’
I nodded.
‘I didn’t say more because it seemed foolish, but those whispers were not of priests. They were of two witch-finders who would cleanse this army, who would find the ones who secretly worshipped the devil and burn them alive.’ She shuddered. ‘That was my first thought when I saw you at my door with Black Tom, that you’d come to burn ungodly men alive.’
I thought of the man Warbeck and I had seen, come out of his hut in the darkness to stare at us with abject terror, and then of the two Catholics in the alley beside the church where one had dropped his rosary as he fled. I understood now: he hadn’t dropped it in his panic, he’d thrown it away. ‘You weren’t the only one,’ I said.
I pulled away and took up a bare wooden stool and sat beside her. This time she turned to me. My legs parted and enveloped hers. I could feel she was trembling. It rippled through me until I was trembling in chorus. I tensed, held myself fast, forced her to do the same. When I reached out, I meant only to hold her arms, to knead some warmth back into her body, for she was devilishly cold. When I took her, however, her whole being seemed to crumble. She flopped forward, her battered face pressed against my chest, and began to heave big, hard, ugly tears. I felt them, warm and wet against my skin.
‘I am sorry,’ I whispered. ‘Truly, I am.’
She drew back, looked u
p with those vivid green eyes, her face hanging just underneath mine. She gave an almost imperceptible nod, enough for me to know that she believed me, that I might even have been forgiven, and then dropped again, holding me tight. This time, at least, she did not cry.
CHAPTER 15
‘You were under the strictest instructions not to leave camp,’ Black Tom spoke sluggishly as if he didn’t really want to be here. We stood together in the dirty snow between his farmhouse and the little oubliette where the ravisher was detained, his execution stayed indefinitely in case I ever changed my mind. After I left Miss Cain and returned to my bed, I’d slept through most of the day and awoken with a foul temper, a splitting head and an empty stomach. By the time Miss Cain had seen to the last of those the light was already fading. I’d lost almost the entire day and now here I was wasting what remained. I didn’t want to be here any more than Fairfax wanted to see me but I owed him an explanation of my actions, if only for Kate’s sake.
Fairfax shook his head. ‘Do I have to remind you, Falkland, that you are still a prisoner?’
‘I wasn’t thinking of myself as a prisoner, sir. I’ve been considering myself a pressed man. Part of the New Model. Like any other soldier you’ve rounded up and dressed in red.’
‘Stop thinking it,’ Black Tom said. ‘You’re not a man who enjoys deluding himself and don’t pretend that you are. You’re a prisoner here.’
‘You didn’t have to go after Miss Cain.’
Fairfax nodded. ‘She had instructions, as you had yours. And likewise disobeyed them.’
‘You’d have done better putting a man to watch me. Men make better guards.’
‘Women make better spies.’
‘You know why I went?’
Black Tom nodded and waved his hand dismissively. ‘Those camp girls were sent away for a reason. You won’t have the faintest idea what it takes to drill a beast like this army, Falkland. You should have come and asked permission. I would have sent Purkiss with you.’
‘I feared I would lose their trail.’
He laughed at me. ‘You feared you would be refused.’
‘Then prove my fears wrong, sir. I need your permission to leave camp again.’ This was too much. Black Tom turned on his heel and began to plod back towards the farmhouse, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. I marched alongside. ‘The two boys who died first were brothers. I have the location of their family farm near Exeter. I wish to go there.’
He stopped and gazed at me, full of derision. ‘And what do you hope to find, Falkland?’
In the grounds in front of the farmhouse a troop of pikemen were practising drills: turning and sweeping and adopting each position after the next. I found them an unruly mob and thought any cavalryman worth his horse could have ridden them down and divided them. ‘There may be something in their past, sir, to suggest why . . .’
‘Falkland, you were sent here to complete a task and I expect you to do it. If those two boys were truly murdered then you’ll not find whoever did it lurking in a farmhouse near Exeter, you’ll find them here; so go and look and bring me the evidence. Otherwise go back to London and tell Cromwell that it’s the price he pays for pressing royalist papists into the New Model instead of hanging them in the first place. All you’ll find at that farm is some old dear shivering in her shawl and hiding her Christmas goose.’ He paused. ‘Or is that it? Are you a Christ-tide kind of man, Falkland?’
‘I remember Christmases fondly,’ I replied. I refused to call it Christ-tide like any snivelling Puritan, terrified of the Mass. Fairfax’s words rankled. He spoke in such an offhand sort of way, as though my discovery that the boys had been brothers came as no surprise at all.
‘And your children? Did you have Christmases with them?’ he asked.
‘I did, sir.’
Black Tom grunted. ‘I had Christmases too, of course. I remember them fondly as well.’ We’d reached the farmhouse now. Two camp guards stepped aside as we prepared to enter. ‘Falkland, finish your task and finish it swiftly and you might have a Christmas with your own family rather than mine.’ He rolled his eyes toward the oubliette, where the ravisher was still rotting. ‘Of course, it could be finished any time you want it. All you have to do is say the word.’
I stopped at the door as Fairfax passed inside. ‘Sir,’ I called after him, ‘are you expecting someone to arrive at your camp who calls himself a witch-finder?’
A flicker of hesitation broke his stride. He paused and then turned back to me and looked me straight in the eye. ‘So you’ve heard these rumours too, have you? In my opinion, witches are superstitious nonsense.’ He paused again, then sighed. ‘Falkland, I’m about to dine. You may join me again if you wish. I’m afraid you’ll find my table more sparse than two nights ago but I dare say it’s better provisioned than Miss Cain’s pantry.’ He said no more but turned from me and walked briskly away. This time the guards let me pass and so I followed into the farm hall, where a table had already been set. A moment after he came in, the same serving girls I’d seen two nights earlier entered with a plate of cold mutton and a bowl of steaming boiled potatoes. Fairfax gestured for me to sit at a vacant place and a plate and knife were quickly found. Neither Warbeck nor Baxter were present tonight but instead several other men waited around the table, some of them faces I recognised from the night we arrived. These, I reasoned, must be Fairfax’s commanders. Purkiss too was here. Fairfax beckoned him over and whispered something while they stood at the door, and I saw Purkiss turn and scowl in my direction and then stomp away into the twilight. I wondered if I’d stolen his place at the table.
The other men waited until Fairfax took his seat. As soon as he did the girls brought in an artichoke pie. Fairfax took a slice and passed it to the man on his left, then helped himself to mutton and potatoes as he waved his knife at me. ‘Falkland here has been asking about witches.’ The other men around the table exchanged looks. A few of them laughed. A few, I saw, did not. ‘See, Falkland, I’ve shared my opinion with you twice already when it comes to armies and rumours. This one’s merely another. Before Christ-tide I dare say it will be forgotten, replaced by some nonsense about the French coming to the aid of the King, or maybe it will be the Spanish, or perhaps it will be that Prince Rupert has made yet another pact with the devil who now masquerades as his horse instead of his dog. Frankly, Falkland, I have no idea who to expect at my camp from one day to the next. If Cromwell chooses to send a man who calls himself witch-finder, I will tolerate him at my table with no more or less ease than a man who stands for the King and begs for a papist priest to take his confession.’ He looked at me hard. ‘And I will hang witches as I hang murderers, ravishers and plunderers, with firm evidence and a confession, nothing less.’
He gave no time for me to voice an opinion of my own, should I have one, but launched at once into a series of questions directed at his commanders. One, I deduced, was Henry Ireton who had commanded under him at Naseby. They spoke of drills and numbers of men, and as they talked I saw glances thrown my way full of mistrust and suspicion. I was, in their eyes, a King’s man sitting at table with the commanders of the New Model as they discussed their disposition. I made sure to eat well and then rose and begged Fairfax’s leave as quickly as I could. I was sure my presence was far from welcome and I fancied that I might prefer the company of Miss Cain over these dour gentlemen, though I had to admit that I preferred Black Tom’s larder. Fairfax waved me away without a glance; as I left I wondered why he’d kept me here at all.
Twilight had fallen to night and I hurried back across the bridge and through the fields to the outskirts of Crediton. The watchman was still there at the end of his row of cottages. I walked briskly past and into the town. Along the narrow lanes around the church I passed soldiers going about their business who scarcely spared me a glance; but as I crossed the square where the dead man hung I became aware of two men who pulled away from the shadows and took to following me, matching my stride. They kept their distan
ce but they stayed at my back and I found their presence oddly disconcerting. As I passed the inn they quickened their step.
I never saw the third man until he was upon me – I suppose he must have been waiting in the shadows of the alley beside Miss Cain’s house. The first I knew of him, his hands grabbed me and pulled me into the darkness, dragging me off the street. I heard the footsteps behind break into a run and I cried out, knowing I’d been ambushed. The hands in the alley pushed me hard against the wall and let go – I sensed them draw back ready to strike and so dodged sideways, further still from the street, and raised my fists to defend myself. I had to get around this man fast before his two friends came on me from behind. If I could do that then it would be a chase. I didn’t fancy I’d win it but I might last long enough to find help.
I felt a glancing blow against my arm. Here in the alley I couldn’t see anything of my assailant but that he kept himself positioned so I’d have to run him down to get past. I roared and launched myself and crashed into him. I tried to push past but he caught my coat and twisted me around. My legs tangled with his and we both slammed into the trampled snow together and I heard him cry out. He was big, this man, taller and stronger than I, perhaps more so even than I’d been before my four months wasting away in Newgate. I tore myself free and managed almost to rise but he caught my foot and pulled me down again. I knew the two men who’d followed me from the square were surely upon me and that I was lost. Three men against one is never a fair fight. I kicked and caught my assailant a good blow; whether against his face or his shoulder I couldn’t say, but he bellowed an oath and let go of my foot, and for a moment I was free. I twisted my head as I scrambled away but much to my surprise the other two men were gone; nevertheless, I needed no encouragement. I pelted along the alley, bouncing from wall to wall until I tumbled through the tiny ungated arch into the little yard behind Miss Cain’s house and hammered on the back door. ‘Kate! Kate! Open up! It’s Falkland.’