by S. J. Deas
‘Then he knows the whole sorry tale.’ There was silence. ‘Did he speak to Jacob?’
‘We’ve been watching Hotham closely, sir. He’s not returned to the surgeon’s.’
‘It’s only a matter of time,’ Black Tom said. ‘Carew, you were trusted with this simple task. I had high hopes for you.’
‘I had my own hopes too, sir.’ For the first time, Carew sounded contrite. Then a sudden flourish of pride surged in his voice. ‘General, I won’t lie down for this. We had your assurances that Cromwell’s man wouldn’t be a hindrance. The man you forced to confess, you promised that would be an end to it.’
Black Tom grumbled, ‘He wouldn’t accept it. This Falkland is a man of bloody-minded conscience. That’s what Cromwell’s letter said. For once dear Oliver was not simply spinning a yarn.’ Fairfax paused. ‘Damn that man! A general sleeps with his army. He does not run off home at the first sight of snow! Yet he has his fingers here, even now!’ He paused. ‘This is my army, Carew. Mine. Cromwell can have his lords and his chambers and his robes. He can have his cavalry if he must – God knows he puts the fear into every royalist in England when he rides them. He can name himself the new King for all I care, go marching up and down his hallways in Westminster. But he does not get to control my army, and come spring when we force the King to his knees, my army will be a godly one!’
The third voice joined the conversation. Purkiss with his rough tones. ‘If I may, sir,’ he began, ‘this is not finished yet. Falkland has the pamphlets. He has the dagger. But . . .’ He paused. I could almost imagine the smile spreading across his features. ‘Sir, you see how the snows have fallen tonight. He’s not sent word to Cromwell, not out into this storm. There’s still time.’
‘Time for what?’ barked Black Tom.
‘We must find Falkland before he can alert Cromwell.’
‘And then? He cannot be made to forget what he knows. I doubt you’ll either beat or bribe him into silence now.’
‘I think we are past that, sir.’
Here the voices hushed, becoming almost indistinct. I wheeled back through all they’d said. I began to think. Perhaps there were places in this monstrous camp where I might go unnoticed. There were still devout royalist boys here. Wildman and Whitelock’s friends, perhaps others. In an army of this size it might be easy for a man to disappear.
I gazed out into the blinding white. I could run. They had nothing on me. If Carew was taking his orders from Fairfax then I was not truly here to investigate the suicides of two poor boys. I was here as an agent of Cromwell, and to what end I was only just beginning to understand. I was no intelligencer. I was the same as a letter meant to be intercepted by the King, or a small force sacrificed to dupe Prince Rupert that the New Model was moving somewhere they were not. I was a pawn in a game and I no longer knew the rules.
I might have run then but the voices returned, as belligerent and distinct as ever before. Fairfax’s voice rose again. ‘No. We are not murderers. The woman, Kate Cain. She’ll harbour him,’ he said. ‘Put her under lock and key. Falkland has a fondness for her. If she won’t tell you where he is, perhaps he’ll come to bargain for her safety.’
My fists curled.
‘And we’re not brutes, Purkiss,’ Black Tom said. ‘Do not hurt her this time.’
Footsteps tramped away. They were heavy and sounded loudly through the walls.
‘He must not leave camp, Carew. The second he leaves camp, the game is lost. And I will not command Cromwell’s army of mongrel dogs. Come the spring we will go out as good, godly men – every last one of us, every last heathen saved – or we will not ride out at all. Bring him to me. Some way or another we’ll find an accommodation.’
I would have liked to have marched in there and then and told him that no, we would not. I might even have understood his fervour, but three boys were dead and however much Fairfax claimed he was no murderer, Carew had meant to hang me. Nor had I forgotten the bruises on Kate’s face.
I crept around to the front of the house to watch Carew go. I fancy Warbeck did the same but went the other way. I didn’t see him; but outside the door Purkiss had waited for Carew. I heard them both clearly now.
‘You said Falkland had others with him. Who were they?’ asked Purkiss.
‘The woman he lives with.’
Purkiss snorted with derision. ‘Miss Cain? He ambushed you with Miss Cain . . . ?’
‘And the other one who came with him.’
‘Warbeck?’
‘I don’t know his name. He shot one of my men.’
There was a pause. I thought perhaps Purkiss understood in that moment what I’d come to understand earlier that night – who it was who was truly Cromwell’s intelligencer here. ‘All three have to be stopped,’ he said after a time. ‘And Miss Cain might be kept quiet, but not the other two. None of them must leave the camp.’
‘Sir, what would you have us do?’
‘What you must.’ He took a long look around at the snow-covered landscape. ‘On a night like this, anything might happen to a man not tucked safely up in bed.’
‘Sir?’
‘You know what’s needed, Carew. See to it. Start with the house. And Edmund?’
‘Sir?’
‘Black Tom will know but it mustn’t stand glaring before him. Take them away from the camp when you’re done and let them be found in their own time. Set upon by royalist deserters from Exeter or some such. That would do.’
‘Miss Cain as well, sir?’
I didn’t hear Purkiss answer. I feared he simply nodded. Carew left and I remained, crouched in my shadows there for a long time after he was gone. Purkiss went back inside. Presently the lights were extinguished.
In one pocket I had the dagger. In the other, the pamphlets they’d used to spread the story. I had a mind to creep inside and find a different dagger – one with a true steel blade – and plunge it into Fairfax’s heart. He’d known all along. More – he’d been the architect.
I fancied for a moment that I could see a cavalryman in the distance, coming up from beyond the southern fringe of the camp. It was only the way the snowflakes were falling that made a mirage, but all the same I pictured him riding from the night towards me. I saw myself and Warbeck coming that way not so many nights hence. I saw the terrified faces of the men who thought I was this Matthew Hopkins, the Witch-finder General, coming to Crediton to burn the whores and the Catholics. Carew had only been playing at his game, fumbling as an amateur. If Fairfax brought this Hopkins here to set about his business in earnest then he’d have a hundred Puritan boys as his eager apprentices and a thousand would burn. Catholics and royalists – devils and witches, all the same.
I crept away to the wall and circled around the guards until I found where Kate had hidden herself, shivering. I lunged forward and grabbed her and pulled her close to me.
‘Falkland!’ she gasped. ‘I might have shrieked!’
We held each other close in the frozen darkness. ‘Where’s Warbeck?’ I asked.
‘I’m here,’ came a voice at my neck. ‘You heard all?’
I nodded.
‘So now you and I leave this camp for good.’
We began to retrace our steps, hurrying as best we could in the thick snow, hunched and crouched through the fields until we reached the bridge, hoping not to be seen. Warbeck led us across the ice of the frozen river and off through the camp, keeping away from the farmhouse track and then the lane. Our footprints in the snow would give us away if anyone saw us but the camp was huge and I didn’t imagine Carew and Purkiss setting to search the whole of it, not on a night like this. As we ran I told Kate what I’d heard. ‘They’re coming for you,’ I finished. ‘You have to leave Crediton now.’
We followed the way we’d come all the way across the camp and into the graveyard alley beside the church. As we reached the lane at the end, a soldier marched past. He didn’t see us and didn’t break his stride but I felt sure that at such an hour he must be on
e of the camp guards sent looking for us. Carew had surely reached the town ahead of us but he’d have to gather his men and it would take him a moment to break into Miss Cain’s house. The next place, if they had any sense, would be the stables. I judged we’d not have long before they knew we were gone.
Kate was at my side. Pointedly, I did not hold her tight. She followed the pikeman with her eyes and needled me between the ribs. ‘We should be moving.’
I nodded.
We beat back down the alley beside the graveyard, losing ourselves between the houses in the dead parts of Crediton where the soldiers didn’t camp. I wanted to go back to the house to find provisions and a weapon – even something as simple as a kitchen knife – but already we were too late.
‘You’ve seen how much of a mongrel this army is yourself,’ I said. We were past the back of the market square now and creeping through gardens and alleys. We’d have been quicker to use the lanes and already my heart was pounding. If Carew reached the stables before us then I was sure we were done for. I still had no notion how many men he’d drawn to his cause. ‘Cromwell built it this way because this is what he needs it to be, this is how he’s going to win the war and force the King to come to terms. But Fairfax isn’t the sort of man for a compromise. They don’t breed them like that up in Yorkshire. I should know – they tried to kill me up there too many times. I don’t know whether he ordered Hotham and Carew to start mongering the idea that a witch-finder is coming to expose all the devilry in camp or whether the idea was their own and Fairfax merely their sponsor. Carew used his dagger to prove there were witches and sorcerers in the soldiery. That’s what drove Wildman and Whitelock to finish it all. They thought themselves good Catholic boys but suddenly they were waiting to be exposed as witches and devils like Prince Rupert with Boy.’
‘That was why the desertions . . .’
‘Soldiers always try and desert, especially in winters like this. I met some on the road. Yet . . .’ We stopped. At the end of an alley another soldier hurried past along the lane. There were more of them on the prowl tonight than I’d seen on any night before. The hunt had begun. ‘Thomas Fletcher knew what was happening,’ I said. ‘I’ll wager he learned it wasn’t just Carew, that Black Tom was ordering it. Perhaps they dragged him to the same tree and threw him on one of the granadoes he was entrusted with guarding. Perhaps they wanted to work up a mystery around that place. Perhaps they thought it had a beauty about it . . .’
We reached the square where the ravisher hung. Warbeck gestured at us to hold back.
‘What about Hotham?’ asked Kate. ‘If he was working with Carew then why—’
‘I need to speak to him,’ I said.
Warbeck hawked up phlegm from the back of his throat and let it fly into the snow at our feet. ‘You can’t be serious, Falkland!’ he exclaimed. ‘Tonight? With the whole camp about to—’
I ignored him and looked only at Miss Cain. ‘I’d run,’ I said. ‘I would. I’d run and I’d take you with me and to Hell with roundheads and cavaliers. But . . .’ It was Whitelock I was thinking of. It was Wildman. It was little Thomas Fletcher himself. ‘I have a son. In another time perhaps he’d have been swallowed up and turned into a New Modeller with a Venice red coat and a pike at his side. And if this witch-finder comes to camp, if they’re set on turning good, honest lads into witches and devils just to purify . . .’ I almost choked on the word.
Kate shuffled closer to me and lifted her fingers to cup my chin. At her touch I calmed. ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I know. But Hotham is in the surgeon’s quarters. You can’t mean to . . .’
I glanced at Warbeck. ‘A horse and a mule are saddled in the stables. Two can go, not three. Warbeck will take you somewhere safe. Hotham is the only one who can tell me how it ends. There’s a reason he was hanging from that tree.’ I hesitated. I was aware for the first time of how the snow had stopped falling. ‘I’ll need a diversion . . .’
Kate trembled. She stepped out of my embrace, her eyes gleaming in the winter night. She opened her lips to speak but Warbeck hissed at us to be quiet. We all froze as yet another camp guard hurried across the square, breaking his march as he started to run. When he was past, Warbeck seized my arm. ‘Come on, Falkland! We haven’t got time for this!’
We dashed across the corner of the square and raced for the alley beside the inn. From somewhere down the street I heard a shout. Warbeck must have heard it too and hurled himself forward with abandon, skittering through the snow. ‘Faster, Falkland!’ Hue and cry rose up behind us. Warbeck stumbled and sprawled into a drift. He floundered a moment before righting himself as Kate and I caught him up. He’d left the stable door open, the horses ready and waiting, and took no time to vault into the saddle. ‘Come on, Falkland! Take the mule and let’s be gone!’
I shook my head and pushed Kate forward. ‘Take Miss Cain, Warbeck. Keep her safe.’
‘Don’t be a bloody idiot. You heard Fairfax. She’ll survive well enough once we’re gone.’
I doubted that. ‘I heard Purkiss too.’ And I’d already seen what he could do. ‘Kate, go!’ But she didn’t move.
‘The devil take you both!’ swore Warbeck. ‘We’ve no time for this.’ He kicked his horse forward and charged out of the stables. I heard a man shout and then another and then the crack of a musket.
‘Do you see now?’ I picked Kate up and dropped her struggling onto the back of the mule. ‘Now go! Before it’s too late!’
‘Falkland . . .’ She looked at me in despair. ‘Don’t die, Falkland. They’re not worth it.’
I slapped the mule and watched Miss Cain disappear into the night. Then I looked for a place to hide.
CHAPTER 23
I’d expected Carew’s men to burst into the stables at any moment and didn’t imagine my feeble skulking amid the hay and shadow would avail me for long, but for once I met with fortune. Warbeck’s flight must have distracted them: only two men came, and only as far as the door. I saw them make a quick count of the horses and then withdraw. They must have thought I’d fled too. I was glad I heard no more musket shots. The snow, I supposed, had dampened their powder and dimmed their sight.
When no other men came I crept out of my hiding place and moved with silent care around the back of the cottages beside the square, keeping to the darkest shadows as best I could. I returned at first to Miss Cain’s house and watched from the opening of a thin track on the other side of the lane. I saw a man come out, one of the pikemen Carew had brought to ambush me at the tree. He left the door wide open and marched off along the lane, close enough to have seen my breath misting around my head if only he’d cared to notice. I slipped inside behind his back and stood just past the threshold, ears straining, but I heard no other sound. I crept up the stairs to Warbeck’s room, quiet as I could. They wouldn’t imagine, I hoped, that any of us might return, but Warbeck was a walking armoury and I’d not seen him carry that much about him tonight. I was rewarded: under the bed I found a pair of muskets and a cavalry sabre with scabbard and belt. I’d hoped for pistols but the sabre would do. I left the muskets. On a night like this they’d be of little use.
Back in the lane I slipped into the alley where Carew’s pikeman had ambushed me and set off across the cottage gardens until I reached the back of Main Street and looked out onto Mrs Miller’s cottage. I wondered fleetingly if I might find shelter there but then thought better of it. Beatrice Miller wasn’t one to take such a risk.
Further down the road was the surgeon’s house with a pikeman standing outside. Candles still burned behind the shutters. I’d noted Hotham’s window on the day I went to see him and remembered it now. Light flickered there too. Did that mean he had someone with him?
A figure exited the house and joined the pikeman as I watched. Carew. They turned down the lane and stood there, facing the church with their backs to me. After a moment I took my chance and flitted across the lane, crouching in the shadows of Beatrice Miller’s door. Carew was carrying a sword at hi
s side. I wondered, feeling for my own, if he knew how to wield it. I crept closer. It seemed odd that Carew and his pikeman simply stood out in the falling snow on a night like this, as though they were at a loss for what to do. My impression of Carew had not been of a man who experienced such feelings. They still had their backs to me and were talking with quite some animation. They kept their voices low but as I crept closer I began to hear scraps of words. Something about Black Tom and Cromwell.
I was about to move for the steps to the surgeon’s house itself when another two figures hurried out of the night. I recognised Purkiss from the way he walked and I froze at once, crouched against the wall. I fancied that if I was still then they wouldn’t see me even if they happened to turn my way, but all I had to hide me was the darkness and my coat. The four of them spoke for a moment and I guessed that Carew must have told Purkiss of our escape, for Purkiss swore loudly and shook his head. ‘Black Tom will have to know, Carew. You were supposed to stop them!’ I didn’t hear Carew’s reply but whatever it was, Purkiss poured out his scorn. ‘In this weather and with such a start? You’ll never catch them. You’ll never even find them.’ He turned on his heel and trotted away. Carew stared after him. I took my chance and eased into the shadows of the steps leading up to the surgeon’s house and crouched again, out of sight. I heard Carew and the pikeman tramp through the snow towards me as they went back inside. The pikeman passed through the door. Behind him, Carew paused a moment; I felt certain he somehow sensed I was there – all he had to do to see me was to look down beside the steps. I tensed, ready to fight, but then heard him walk on and close the door behind him. The lane was empty again.
I waited and counted my breaths to a hundred, then mounted the steps myself, eased the door ajar and peered through the crack. The surgeon’s hall was dark. I listened and heard nothing at first, then the creak of a board from the upper floor and a low murmur of voices. I slipped inside and waited again. The house fell silent; and I’ll admit that I’d feared to find a half-dozen of Carew’s men on guard here, but it seemed they’d all been drawn away by Warbeck’s flight. I cursed myself now for sending Kate away with him. I didn’t fancy much for her chances if Carew got his hands on her in the camp but I had heard Black Tom order Purkiss not to hurt her. Out in the darkness, away from Crediton, Carew’s men would murder her in the most horrible way. I didn’t like to think on it. I feared I’d sent her to her death.