by S. J. Deas
I managed to extricate my hand as a servant appeared with a bowl of broth and a tankard of what looked like cider. I was shocked to see that the broth had great hunks of meat floating in it – chicken, if I wasn’t mistaken. My stomach started to cry out. Damn it but even my gut was creeping onto Cromwell’s side. ‘What does it have to do with me?’ I asked.
‘You’ve shown your character, Falkland,’ he said. ‘You might do so again.’
I took a spoonful of broth into my mouth. It burned me from the inside and I spat it back into the bowl. ‘You promised me my freedom.’
‘And so free you are. Take care not to lose your way and you could be home by . . .’ For once Cromwell’s smile seemed real. ‘By Christ-tide, Falkland.’
‘Then I could ride out of here and never see a soldier again?’
Cromwell shrugged but there was something about his patient demeanour that sickened me. ‘If that’s what you want,’ he said. ‘But I fancy you’ll return after Christ-tide and serve us a little longer.’
‘And that’s it? Out of nowhere you come and I’m free to go?’
‘Yes, Falkland.’ He nodded. ‘You’re free to go. You have my thanks.’
‘For what?’ For the life of me, I could not see what I had done that mattered save to a few Catholic boys pressed against their will into an army that didn’t want them.
‘You’ve saved my army, Falkland, from a zealous purge that could have destroyed it. This war could yet have ground us down for years.’
I rather thought it already had. I put the bowl and tankard down in the hearth and made to march past him. ‘I’m done,’ I said. My eyes were suddenly aglaze. It must have been the soot and smoke stinging me and causing them to water. All I could see was my Caro, my boy John, my little Charlotte. Fairfax’s farmhouse had become a ghostly apparition around me. ‘I’ll find my own way from here.’
I was almost at the door when he called out. ‘I’ll see you soon enough, Falkland.’
I didn’t turn round, and whatever else he might have replied, I didn’t care to listen.
Acknowledgements
With thanks to my editors Ali Hope and Flora Rees. To Sarah Bance and Darcy Nicholson for the copy-editing and to the proofreaders and production team, whose names I’ve rarely known. A special thanks to my agent Robert Dinsdale and to Sam Childs, without whom William Falkland would not exist.
I’ve always had a penchant for the Hollywood noir of the forties and fifties, and if William Falkland evokes something of the Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe then that’s probably no coincidence. The setting lends itself well, I think.
If you liked this book and would like to read more of William Falkland, please say so. Loudly and to lots of people.