Treason's Daughter

by Antonia Senior

  Pudding shuffles beneath him, and Sam reaches down to pat her neck.

  He hears a voice behind him from the troop: ‘Fucking nancies, we look – full battle deployment and no bastard in sight.’

  ‘Maybe we’re fighting them cows.’

  Sam thinks about ordering the men to be silent, but lets it go.

  Below them, in the dip underneath the ridge, a herd of cows grazes, their herdsman leaning on a stick and seemingly unconcerned about the appearance of a full army above him. Sam remembers the herdsman at Marston Moor, his placid surprise at the troops’ appearance, and Sam’s hurried explanation of the king’s quarrel. The laconic reply: ‘Himself fallen out with the parliament, then, has he?’

  The men laugh at some ribald humour about MPs and cows. Sam smiles at the laughter behind him. Suddenly he hears the signal to form a marching order. Ahead of him, Captain Fenwick appears alongside Prince Rupert himself, the massive bulk of their chief unmistakable next to the slim-hipped captain.

  ‘Explain as we go, man,’ the prince instructs Fenwick, and wheels round to set off at a slow trot.

  ‘Right,’ says Fenwick, his voice so low they strain to hear him. ‘The rebel bastards are here somewhere. Must be. Our boys clashed with them two days ago, and the scoutmaster-general, may God grant the poor blind sod a miracle, has failed to find them. So, like every dirty job in this fucking war, us noble horse must do it ourselves if we want it smartly. If we find the bastards, no heroics. Your lieutenant,’ he gestures at Sam, ‘may want to take the bastards on without our two-footed simpleton friends in the infantry, but I intend to see my wife’s teats one more time before I die, boys. So eyes open, mouths shut, and follow my lead.’

  ‘That what your wife says, sir?’

  ‘Lucky we’re going on a forlorn fucking suicide run, Peters, or I’d kill you myself,’ says Fenwick.

  The men smile through taut, hard faces.

  They ride down the hill. A couple of scouting parties are detached and sent ahead. This is strange, tricksy land. It folds and curves in hillocks and mounds. It is pitted with false horizons and deceptive slopes. The bastards could be ten feet away, over a ridge, and you wouldn’t know it until you landed in their laps begging to be spitted.

  The prince rides back and forth along the line, stopping here and there for a word. He falls back until he is riding next to Sam.

  ‘Lieutenant…’ He pauses.

  ‘Challoner, sir. Your Highness, sir.’

  ‘Sir will do in the field,’ says Prince Rupert. Their horses walk side by side. Pudding is small beside the prince’s mount, and Sam pats her neck in case she feels it. He is confused by the great man’s presence. The junior officers and troopers hold him in such awe. Rupert’s life is already a legend, and he is barely twenty-six. Royalists tell of his courage, his battle-madness and glory. He is a new Alexander. And yet Sam can remember running with the London apprentices, who sang of Rupert’s bestiality, of his moonlit dances with the devil, and of his ferocious coupling with witches that spawned Boy, the imp dog.

  Sam watched from afar, last summer, as Rupert mourned Boy’s death in the grisly aftermath of Marston Moor. He watched Rupert cry for the companion of his youth, and at that moment had given in to the consuming hero-worship displayed by the other boys in Rupert’s horse. The dispossessed and the younger sons and the glory-seekers – they worshipped their wandering prince. Now not theirs alone; he is commander of the king’s whole army. To have him ambling alongside is horribly disconcerting – as if Ares himself has tumbled out of Mount Olympos for a natter.

  Rupert breaks the silence. ‘Of course, I remember. The linen merchant’s boy. I hear good words of you.’

  Sam can only nod. Say something, you fool.

  Rupert speaks first. ‘Will your troop change its colours, I wonder, now that the Lord Essex is no longer commanding the enemy?’

  Sam thinks of their colours, the streaming banner he used to carry with such pride as a cornet. And the words ‘Cuckolds, we come’ emblazoned on green-flowered damask.

  ‘I think, sir, the words still hold true. All the time those bastards spend on their knees, their wives must be crying out for red blood.’ He regrets the words even as he says them, remembering too late Rupert’s reputation for sobriety and propriety. He is relieved to hear a low chuckle.

  ‘Well, then, perhaps it may serve. Now silence, I think. We are near the edges of where the cuckolds may be lurking.’

  They ride on, slowly, stealthily. Up hill and through the unnaturally quiet village of Clipston. The only sound is the squelch of their hooves in the muddy path, which doubtless heralded their arrival to the hidden locals. Who’d be an artillery officer? Sam imagines the job of pulling the heavy pieces up and down these rain-drenched, boggy mounds. They clear the last house, then crest the top of a hill, and suddenly, there they are. Thousands of the joyless bastards, beetling across the opposite hill. They look like they are retreating. Are they? Or just repositioning? It is impossible to tell.

  Rupert’s horse follow his lead and pull up to watch. Nervous men soothe twitchy, panting beasts.

  Nearby, the prince takes counsel with his advisers and the locals he co-opted last night in Market Harborough. Sam hears the unmistakable Germanic inflection in his demi-god’s voice as he curses the king’s council for deciding to confront the New Noddle.

  ‘I told them we should withdraw to Leicester until Goring arrives with his horse.’

  A lower voice reminds him of the king’s council’s view; a retreat could leave them trapped between Fairfax’s army and the advancing Scots.

  ‘So here we are,’ Rupert says, louder, intending the whole party to hear. ‘Outmanned, outhorsed, outgunned. Still, gentlemen, we have faced worse odds. We shall find ways to amuse the rebels.’

  Rupert calls out over his shoulder. ‘Captain Fenwick, to me. Your two best riders with you.’

  Fenwick barks: ‘Jenkins, Challoner.’

  They move forward. Jenkins is a small boy, younger than Sam. The son of a horse breeder, he is said to have suckled a mare as a baby, after his mother died in birthing him. He is more horse than human. Sam canters alongside him, his back pike-straight, thighs tight, trying not to let this great and swelling pride obscure his concentration.

  ‘Sir,’ says Fenwick. ‘Corporal Jenkins and Lieutenant Challoner.’

  Prince Rupert says: ‘This ground is pure shite, gentlemen. We’ll break our necks before we can swing a sword at a rebel head. Fenwick, take your troop and ride for the king. Give Jenkins the letter in case of an ambush. He must get through. Tell the king our position. There’s Mill Hill for your waypoint. Tell him we must flank the enemy to engage on our terms. Tell him Dust Hill is where we will stand, and hope to God the bastards follow us. I’m sending Challoner here with a flag up Moot Hill, to show the angle of advance. It’s all in this letter. The field word is “Queen Mary”.’

  Rupert takes the letter from Sir Bernard de Gomme, the Walloon staff officer at his side. He squints at it, reading it through, before handing it to Jenkins.

  The prince turns to Challoner. ‘You understand, lieutenant? The far side of the hill from the enemy, so they can’t see the flag, but place it so we can see it at Dust Hill –’ he points – ‘and the king can see it from the current billet. Do you understand? Your cornet will hold your place in the line until you rejoin, when we’re all in place.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ says Sam, accepting Rupert’s colours from the aide, and settling the point of the lance against his hip as he used to as a cornet.

  ‘Don’t fail,’ says the prince. ‘This is it, I think, gentlemen,’ he says to his small band of horsemen. ‘Their way or, God willing, ours – all will be decided today.’

  The ground is horribly boggy and pockmarked with warrens. Sam can see the rabbits scurrying about, ignoring the lone horse walking though their terrain and its nervous rider. A broken ankle here would be disastrous. Sam whispers to Pudding as she picks her way across the treacherous
ground.

  ‘Careful, my Pudding, careful, my darling.’

  He wonders if the captain and Jenkins have reached the king. And he wonders about Ned, before cursing himself for losing concentration.

  The terrain begins to slope upwards and, for a lurching moment, Sam loses his bearings. Is this the right hill? He imagines the royalist foot following the flag into an ambush, rebel pikes scything them down like wheat. His palms are sweating. Holding onto the reins and the lance becomes difficult. He wedges it against his belt.

  I would rather charge pikes, he thinks, than have this responsibility. What stuff must Prince Rupert be made of, to bear the whole army on his shoulders?

  Pudding, untroubled, continues her early morning saunter uphill. Sam forces himself to breathe. Think. This must be the right hill. He tries to remember the map they studied yesterday on the march. Only yesterday? If this is Moot Hill, I would have walked through enemy pickets. If it is Mill Hill, I would see the sails of a windmill – and more to the point, I would have a rebel sword in my bowels. Yes. The right hill.

  They continue to climb. They aren’t big hills, for all that they play with a man’s senses. Not like those big sods in the north they gadded about in the summer just gone. Jesus wept, but that was a tough campaign. And you survived that where thousands didn’t, he tells himself. Man up, boy, man up.

  As he approaches what looks like the top, Sam stops and dismounts. Tying Pudding’s reins to a low bush, he walks up the rest of the hill, checking for a false summit, and getting his bearings. He steps on a dry branch, which cracks like a gunshot. His heart thumps so violently it near batters its way out of his chest.

  The summit flattens out to a small plateau. It seems like a flat field, and Sam has the sense, for a moment, that he has walked down instead of up. He walks forward, and the edge of the field falls away suddenly. To his right is a deep valley which ridges and folds like a tangle of thighs. Ahead, he can see, far away in the distance, the rebels are on the move. They’re marching west on top of a ridge. They’re following Rupert’s flanking march. There will be a fight today, God willing. The rebels seem game. Fools. Staffed by God-botherers, officered by butchers and bakers; how can they prevail against the king’s own? But, God’s blood, there are a lot of them.

  ‘More for us to kill,’ Sam says aloud, and feels foolish. What use is the Cavalier’s fearless banter if nobody is there to hear it?

  He looks behind him, and he can see the king’s army. Too far to make out any colours or banners, but they seem to be on the move. They are marching, in full battalia, the three or so miles to where the prince stipulated. An hour, then, to go. Less until they pass below him. He slithers back down to Pudding, who tosses her head when she sees him. He plants the banner where he thinks it must be visible, pushing the point of the lance into the earth. Pudding is idly nibbling at a bush, and he pats her neck.

  ‘We’ll join them when they pass below, hey, Pud? That cornet best be keeping them in order, or I’ll scrag him.’

  Reaching into his saddle, Sam finds the last of the dried, salt meat he’s been saving. Spreading his cloak on the ground, he sits and stretches out his legs. He starts to worry at the meat with his teeth.

  ‘Like a damned picnic, this,’ he says to Pudding. ‘Do you think Ned is there?’ She reaches across and splutters into the back of his neck, tickling him.

  ‘Do you know, Pud, we used to fight, me and Ned. But not always. We played too, at soldiers, mostly. Ain’t that funny, Pud? Me and Ned toting branches at each other, playing at saints and papists. We’d charge with sticks. Build forts in the garden, though Benny would shout at us. He got to be Gustavus Adolphus, with him the elder.’ He takes another bite of meat. ‘Those birds don’t half make a racket up here.’ He throws a stone at the tree, with a short prayer to land a songbird. Some fresh meat would be exquisite. The birds flutter out of the tree in a fluster, and the singing stops.

  Sam realises he is unused to solitude; a soldier’s life does not allow much time to be alone. He finds it disquieting. Talking dispels the sinister edge, but he whispers, and looks around him with nervous eyes.

  ‘Aye, Pud. He drew blood once, with a stick fashioned into a pike. I must have been a little ’un. Five, say, or six. Ripped right through my cheek, it did. And do you know what Ned did, when he saw me bleeding? He cried, my Pudding. He cried.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  IT STARTS WITH THE TRUMPET’S HIGH, INSISTENT CALL.

  Sam is back where he should be, alongside his men. They move off slowly, down the slope. The rebels line the hill opposite; between them lays the battlefield. The place where the reckoning will come. Sam busies himself with details. Are they in close order, three foot from nose to tail, knee to knee? He shouts at one trooper whose horse is skittering sideways.

  ‘Keep close!’

  Knee to knee, they advance at a slow trot. They can see the bastards lined up against them begin to move. And they, Rupert’s own, leading the king’s men to battle. There is the prince himself, all brawn and fire, leading the slow charge forward. He should be at the back, behind the lifeguards with the king. That’s where the commander-in-chief should stand, and Sam heard the muttering from the old-timers. But the prince will charge with them, and they will break the enemy’s right, and wheel behind the rebel bastards, and Rupert will then, and only then, join the old men at the back.

  Did Alexander skulk at the back, Sam shouts silently to the sky. Did Hector, or Belisarius? Did King Harry at Agincourt?

  ‘Did they fuck!’ he shouts aloud, and Pudding tosses her head at the sound of his voice as it carries over the sound of the trumpet playing the notes of the ‘Carga, Carga’, the call to charge, and the drum roll of the horses’ hooves shredding the turf.

  ‘Rupert! Rupert!’ he cries, and the men take it up, and the prince waves his sword in acknowledgement, not wavering, his helmeted head facing ever forwards towards the enemy.

  On and on they trot, over flat ground now. Suddenly there are gunshots and screams. A horse falls sideways into its line, felling another, and forcing a crab-like movement to the side. Pudding skips a little, and throws her head skyward, seeking reassurance from the hands she knows best.

  ‘Re-form, re-form!’ screams Sam, and the troopers battle with their horses’ terror, even as more men and more beasts are caught by unknown assassins.

  The bastards are hiding in the bushes to the side of them, picking them off.

  ‘Ignore the fuckers!’ shouts Sam. ‘Advance, advance.’ He can hear other voices shouting the same words, but blocks them out. Concentrate on your own job, boy, and let the rest of the army take care of itself. Captain Fenwick told him that once. He presses Pudding onwards with his knees, back straight. On she goes. God, he loves her, his gallant, noble Pud.

  ‘Swords, swords!’ he shouts. ‘No fucker draws pistols until we’re on them.’ He waves his sword, solid and heavy and deadly in his hand. The cavalry in front are looming larger now. The trumpet will give the call any second, and Sam’s men will ratchet up the speed. The line ahead looks inviolable. It moves towards them in immaculate close order. We will break on them. Waves on a cliff, shattering into spumey foam. Too late now; too late to stop. I will break, oh God, I will break.

  The trumpet calls, and they are off. There comes a shard of fear so sharp it is indistinguishable from joy. He shouts now, the terror and the ecstasy tumbling together out of his mouth in an immortal roar. Oaths and obscenities fly from his lips, spit raining on Pudding’s neck and his own white-knuckled hand, which clasps the reins so tight his nails have broken the skin of his palm. Smoke wreaths the horsemen ahead of them as they fire at Sam’s advancing men.

  ‘Kiss my arse!’ screams the trooper nearest to Sam, as a bullet clangs loudly off his helmet. ‘Kiss my godless arse!’

  There are barely metres to go.

  ‘Charge!’ screams Sam, his throat raw.

  He fixes his eyes on one helmet coming towards him, praying that Pudding,
gallant Pudding, will not swerve, will not break, and then, in an instant, they are upon the enemy. Among them, and smiting them, and pressing them. And the enemy break; they spin and tumble and run. They are running! We are gods! We are fucking immortal! His body is so fiercely alive it cannot possibly die. Spit flies from his open mouth; his heart pummels his chest. He is a giant! He is Titan, hear him roar: ‘Rupert!’ he screams. ‘Rupert!’

  He pulls back his sword and whirls it around his head. Pudding, brave Pudding, canters on. Sam brings his sword down on a rebel neck, and laughs for joy as he finds the soft skin between helmet and breastplate. Blood erupts. Crescents of it shoot skyward, and Sam laughs again. Now who is dead, you bastard? Not me! Not me. You. You.

  He doesn’t wait to watch the man fall, but finds another, and another. His sword is part of his arm, and both are coated in blood. Not mine, he screams. Their blood. Theirs! He is so light, and so alive, he might float up to the sky. He grips Pudding tighter with trembling thighs, and again he shouts: ‘Rupert!’

  Ned watches as Ireton’s horse gives in front of Rupert’s charge.

  ‘Jesus, what arseholes,’ mutters a voice behind him.

  ‘Silence,’ orders Ned. ‘Sergeant, take that man’s name. If he lives, I’ll flog him myself.’

  The men behind him shift at their stations. But they have more to worry them than their hard-horse lieutenant. The horse was first, but here comes the foot.

  ‘Fire in ranks!’ Ned shouts.

  The frontline of muskets kneels and fires, and the second comes forward, kneels and fires, and on they go. Slowly, in good order. Lord God, thank you for these men, these wonderful men. Their pikes bristle at the enemy, and Ned is so ferociously proud of their courage, he feels as if God’s breath is pushing them forward. And then – then they collide with the king’s foot in a grunt of pain and relief and terror.