by S. J. Deas
I heard no answer, nor any footsteps. I turned my face to the arch. As I stood there, waiting, breathing hard, I knew I’d made a fatal mistake. The yard was walled and there was no other way out. I’d made a trap for myself. I raised my fists, ready to make as good a fight of it as a man could, wishing I had a pistol or a sabre, or at least a dagger that might make my attackers pause. I wished the alley wasn’t so dark. I would have preferred to at least see the faces of the men who would murder me.
A shape blundered past the arch, muttering and cursing under his breath. I swear he cast me a glance right in the eye but he didn’t stop or even pause. I heard his footsteps a few moments longer and then silence. I waited, counting out my heartbeats as they gradually slowed, then returned with caution into the alley, eyes alert for the other men. It was empty. When I returned to the road, that too was deserted as though the two who had followed me from the square had simply vanished away like bats into the night. I found myself thinking that Helena and Mary and the other camp follower girls had done a far better job when it came to ambushes.
Then I saw Miss Cain’s door ajar and the sight set my heart to pounding again. Was that where they’d gone, those two other men? A moment ago I’d been set on running for my life but now I didn’t hesitate. I pushed the door wide open and crept inside.
It was silent in the house. I moved quickly from the threshold into the shadows of the front room, where I stood still and strained my ears. As I did I thought I saw a shape at the back door; I heard the creak of it opening, felt a cold breath of air, and then heard it close again. Footsteps came closer. They were light and slow and cautious. They passed where I lurked in the dark.
‘Kate?’
It was her. She gasped in alarm and jumped and almost fell. I stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlit hall.
‘Falkland?’ She sounded breathless. ‘By the Lord you gave me a fright!’
‘I’m sorry.’ I reached out and took her arm to steady her but she shook me away.
‘What was all that?’ she asked. ‘I heard you cry out. Then I heard someone at the back. What happened?’
‘An ambush.’
‘I came out to see when I heard your shout. There were three men brawling and shouting in the road.’
‘Three?’ I remembered only two.
‘They were not together. One was on his hands and knees, clutching at the back of his head. A second was dragging him up. I heard a banging at the back of the house and then the third drew a sabre on the other two and they all ran off as fast as they could, the one with the sabre giving chase. I thought I heard you call from the back.’
‘I did. There was a third man in the alley. We scuffled. He was meant to hold me there until his friends could join him, but when they didn’t he ran away. I suppose he saw your man with the sabre. When I saw the door ajar, I feared . . .’ I could not say exactly what I feared. ‘I feared they meant some mischief.’
Kate shook her head. ‘They ran away. Are you hurt?’
I laughed, echoing the thought I’d had outside. ‘The whores did worse.’ I touched her arm again. In the dark it was hard to see her face. ‘Kate? Did you recognise any of them?’
I thought I saw her shake her head. I could feel how close she was. I could almost feel her trembling. ‘No, Falkland, I didn’t. It was too dark and the voices when they shouted weren’t familiar.’
‘A pity. I should like to know who the man with the sabre was most of all. I’m sure he saved me a beating or worse.’
‘Oh.’ She sounded surprised. ‘I thought you meant the others, Falkland. I’m quite sure it was Master Warbeck with the sabre. I thought . . . I thought he was with you.’
CHAPTER 16
Warbeck didn’t return that night so I had no opportunity to quiz him. I spent the next morning hunting down boys who had known Whitelock and Wildman, worrying them with questions about what had happened in those last few days to raise such torment in Wildman’s heart. The boys had been camped together on the western edge of Crediton where the fields were less even and thus their tents more sparsely set out. A string of derelict farm buildings lined the fields and, though they were disused, provided something of a windbreak for snow storms coming in from the east. It looked almost as if a great white wall had grown up out of the earth, hiding Crediton from the rest of the world.
Perhaps because of those drifts and the sense of separation they brought, this part of the encampment seemed more settled than the rest. There were no tourneys here, no bored boys picking up sabres and harrying their companions. On the edge of the field nearest the town, timber shelters had been built – and against the old farmhouses too, where some of the constructions looked almost like fairy-tale cottages with their crowns of snow. Forming a circle nestled inside the timber constructions, were more tents like those I’d seen in the rest of Crediton. If this was how towns grew and spread then I wondered what would be left of the New Model once winter was finished.
The middle expanse of the field was broad and empty, a battlefield where I suspected drills were run and, if my past experience of camp was anything to go by, prayer meetings held. Indeed, as I wandered among them, I saw more than one boy with his face buried in his Soldier’s Pocket Bible. I was surprised they’d not had enough of it at Baxter’s gathering.
The boys here were meeker and, perhaps because of that, more willing to take me into their tents and let me ask my questions. I had nothing to offer in return, not even the coin an informer might usually expect of his intelligencer, but they didn’t cast me out and for that I was thankful. By asking only a few probing questions I learned that Richard Wildman and Samuel Whitelock, though brothers, had camped in separate parts of this field. This wasn’t to say, I was told, that they weren’t close. Indeed, they were as close as brothers ought to be – by which was meant that they bickered and fought and then thought nothing of it. All the same, they had their own friends, own camps, own fraternities.
By chance I spoke to Whitelock’s friends first. They were as ugly a bunch as I’d seen in camp, most of them boys no older than my own son John with the pocked faces of youth. They sat me down and offered me a hunk of bread, for which I thanked them but declined to take. I’d eaten at Fairfax’s table last night while some of these boys looked starving.
‘Did you notice anything untoward,’ I asked, ‘in the days before his death?’
Each time I asked it the answer came back the same: Samuel had not seemed unusually perturbed until the night Richard could not be found in camp. Come the morning, when the hallo went up that he’d been found hanging from the tree, Whitelock, naturally, changed.
‘He said it was his fault,’ one boy told me. ‘But that’s the way of it, isn’t it? You always believe there’s something you could have done.’
After I’d finished with Whitelock’s friends I found my way to the tents where Wildman had camped. The boys here were much like the ones I had just spoken to and I wondered why they had kept their distance. Perhaps it was only the natural nonsense that flows between brothers. I introduced myself to a rangy lad with dark red hair, the progeny of an Irishman if ever I knew one. This army was no place for him, especially if, like Whitelock and Wildman, he’d secretly been seeking confession. Cromwell had a reputation in this camp for hanging ravishers, but his longer reputation across the whole of England was for hanging Irish Catholics by the drove. I fancied he’d see them wiped off the face of the Earth if he could. The thought left me all the more perplexed that Cromwell tolerated this mongrel army – that he, indeed, had pieced it together. Sometimes there’s no accounting for the ways a man can compromise with his own ideals.
The rangy boy led me inside the tent where two other lads were sitting, gambling with sticks. This would probably have been a sin and seen them Admonished just like the camp whores, if only they had any coins to be gambling with.
‘This is Master Falkland,’ the red-headed boy said. ‘He’s come asking after Richard.’
The boys
shifted to their pallets. Their game, it seemed, was now over. A mousy boy a full head smaller than the rest looked me up and down. ‘Who sent you?’ he asked.
‘I won’t tell a lie,’ I replied. ‘I’m here at Oliver Cromwell’s request.’
The little boy sat bolt upright, his eyebrows raised. If I was not mistaken, he was impressed. ‘Cromwell?’
‘Aye.’
‘Cromwell hisself knows about Richard?’
‘None other.’ Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised but I’d expected associates of Wildman and Whitelock to be dismissive of Cromwell, not in awe. I wondered if they’d seen him leading his cavalry in battle. That would be enough to strike awe into any man, no matter his allegiance. I will admit it: having come up against them once before, it had struck awe into me.
‘Sit down, sir,’ the boy said. ‘We haven’t got much, but if it’s Richard you’re here for, you’re welcome to it.’
‘I see he was liked well enough.’
The boys muttered their agreement. Richard Wildman, it seemed, was not without his admirers. ‘He was the sort who cares for things, sir. Sometimes it didn’t matter what it was. He’d feel something when you cut down a tree. Found things like that everywhere he turned.’
It wasn’t quite the picture Mary had painted of him but perhaps it was closer to the truth. The Richard Wildman they described was a sensitive boy but not without toughness. He was, they said, a natural pikeman – perhaps not as stocky as most, but he took to drills well and his body seemed to remember each motion perfectly without the months of training that others often took. His superiors liked him for that. It might have inspired envy in his companions but Wildman was too ordinary a fellow to inspire much at all. Better than most with a pike perhaps, but he was still a novice in life. Of women and the world, Richard Wildman knew little – and his brother Samuel even less.
‘In his last days,’ I said, ‘he took to The Soldier’s Pocket Bible.’ I watched them to see how they’d react. They were measured. Still. ‘He hadn’t been a boy for it before, had he?’
This time they shared a secretive look.
‘You can speak freely,’ I said. ‘I know he went to confession. I know he grew up listening to the Mass. He’d have been celebrating Christmas as well, wouldn’t he? If he had lived?’
‘You mean Christ-tide,’ the smallest boy muttered.
‘Do I take it you shared this with him?’ Not one of them wanted to say it but I could see it on their faces. These were boys who had grown up with communion and confession, red wine and wafers. ‘Were you from royalist militias as well?’
‘You did say Cromwell sent you?’
This time it was the rangy red-haired boy. He remained seated but he drew himself up and, for the first time, I pictured what it would be like to face him in battle. He wasn’t brawny like some soldiers but his arms were heavy and he looked as if he could stand for a long fight. I looked them all over, one by one, and felt a great sympathy for them. I could understand their wariness, how I must seem to them. ‘I was a King’s man,’ I told them. ‘I was in Yorkshire before it began, with the King. Afterwards I fought with Prince Rupert. I was at Edgehill and Newbury.’ Edgehill had been the most fearsome battle of my life. I mentioned it now so they might take me for a true King’s man. They didn’t have to know that I’d long ago given up choosing sides. Edgehill was still a byword for desperation, even for boys too young to have known it. Three years had gone by since we grappled for that Oxfordshire ridge and still no man on either side could say who won or lost.
‘You were pressed?’
‘Something of the kind. I’m here to learn what happened to Richard and his brothers. Doesn’t matter to me if he was a royalist. Doesn’t mean a thing to me if he drank the blood of Christ or kept a rosary or . . .’ I paused. ‘I know he kept a rosary,’ I said. ‘I spoke to his whore.’
‘You must be mistaken,’ the red-haired boy said. ‘Richard didn’t take whores.’
A boy who didn’t brag about his whoring? Wildman continued to vex my expectations. ‘She was one of those sent away at the Admonishment. She saw him the night before he died. Only it was the first time in days they’d been together. He came carrying that book, talking about Hell and damnation. Something had started eating at him. Something or somebody.’
I said it as pointedly as I could but not one of the boys reacted. They’d been with Richard through those days, they said, but they had noticed nothing unusual. If anything he’d been more dutiful, spending endless hours cleaning his weapons, practising the sweep and parry of a pike even without anyone to bark out orders.
‘And his brother Samuel?’
‘We went to see him on the day Richard was found. He wouldn’t speak to us. After that we didn’t know a thing about where he went. Somebody saw him at the church in the village . . .’
‘Looking at the glass Richard had smashed?’
The red-haired boy’s eyes opened fractionally. ‘You know?’
‘What made him do it?’ I asked. ‘A good Catholic boy like Richard Wildman taking a stone to the church? You boys aren’t like the ones I saw yesterday. Ripping up market crosses. Pouring church wine into ditches. Wildman wasn’t like that either – not until the days before he hanged himself. As best I can make of it he was a decent country lad, the sort who might easily have been forgotten. I’ve been thinking too much about that long, lonely walk he made. Knowing he was leaving his brother behind, knowing he was leaving his friends and his whore, his mother . . . I don’t think he deserved any of it. I simply cannot fathom what would make him do that. Or should I ask who?’
They didn’t reply. I stood up as if to leave. When I turned back they were staring at me with blank expressions. For all their courtesy they seemed eager that I should be gone. ‘There was another boy,’ I said. ‘Fletcher. He threw himself on a granadoe underneath the same tree.’
The red-haired boy nodded. ‘We heard the story but we didn’t know him.’
‘It strikes me as strange that he should choose the tree where Richard and his brother died. Perhaps he thought it fitting? He’d have heard, just like the rest of you, about the suicide tree. But you say you don’t know him.’ I took a step away. Then I paused, slowly and deliberately. ‘What do you know,’ I asked, ‘of a boy named Jacob Hotham?’
The red-haired boy rose. ‘Now, you look here!’ he exclaimed. ‘We’re as sorry as any that Richard isn’t here. We grieve for him just like we grieved for the rest of our friends at Naseby and . . .’ He must have realised in saying the words that we had perhaps both been at the same battle. Had the day been different then one of us might have died at the other’s hands. No matter that we had both started out royalists, this war pitted Englishman against Englishman whoever they were. ‘Sir, we’d help you if we could.’
‘Hotham still lives,’ I said. I’d wanted it to be a revelation but I couldn’t tell if I was right. ‘You know him, don’t you? And Richard – he knew him too?’
‘Know and want to know are two separate matters, sir!’
‘Is Hotham like you? Seeking the confessional, carrying a rosary, Christmas instead of Christ-tide? Was he royalist as well as Catholic? Is that how Richard Wildman knew him?’
The red-haired boy seemed suddenly to calm. He must have risen to his tiptoes like a man making himself large to face down a wolf or a bear, because now he seemed to shrink. All the tension and anger evaporated from his body. His and the diminutive lad’s faces creased in quickly stifled laughter. ‘Jacob Hotham isn’t a boy who’d care to fraternise with us, sir.’ He gestured for me to sit back down. Cautiously, I did so. ‘Jacob Hotham was never in the King’s army like lots of boys round here. He was a Parliament man from the very beginning. A rabid pamphleteer from London. They say his uncle served in Whitehall. Oh, he’s not as vicious as some – he wouldn’t drag a boy out of his camp and goad him into a contest or a tourney, or whip him up into swearing an oath to the New Model or quoting from the Pocket Bible until his thr
oat is hoarse. But . . .’ He paused. ‘Boys like Jacob Hotham can be worse than that. They’re quiet and they’re thoughtful and they’ll wait and . . . It’s like a spider with a fly, sir. He spins his web first so the fly can never get away. Hotham is too clever to be a bully. He and those friends of his, they’re everything Richard and Samuel weren’t. Sir, they’d hang every Catholic, every royalist . . .’ He took a deep breath and looked me in the eye. ‘Sir, Jacob Hotham would see the King dead and start marching in the street for joy.’
‘You know him well for a lad you wouldn’t call a friend,’ I said. ‘And yet he was found hanging from that very same tree as Samuel Whitelock and Richard Wildman, above the very same spot where Tom Fletcher blew himself to shreds.’
The red-haired boy nodded. ‘But we don’t count the scales balanced yet, sir. Three of us for one of them. That hardly seems just, now does it?’
CHAPTER 17
I pondered those last words long into the afternoon as I made my circuit around the camp, watching and waiting. We don’t count the scales balanced yet. There might have been a confession in those words, more in the way the red-haired boy looked at me as he said them, as if he’d decided he could confide in me. Yet . . . I found I didn’t want to believe it.
I thought I was beginning to see. The war between King and Parliament didn’t just take place on battlefields and in city sieges. It took place here, too, in miniature – royalist boys and roundheads brawling along the lanes of their shared encampment, seeking whatever petty victories they might. Somehow it had led to the deaths of two naïve brothers and one local lad who’d seen his home town turned into a sprawling garrison and could not stand to watch the horror unfold.