by Maria McCann
‘Aye, Rupert.’ A flat dissembling voice: he was still afraid of me, though his lips curved upwards towards cold blue eyes. A real viper’s mouth. I felt in my cheek the smart of the bitten place. Let me once get you alone, I swore to him in my heart, you’ll know what it is to be bitten. It was like promising myself the best wine, and on the strength of it I smiled on him almost tenderly. ‘Be so good, Nathan, as to tell our friend Ferris we are reconciled.’
‘Aye, Rupert.’
‘We should not wrangle when we may find our judgement day tomorrow.’
‘I will tell Ferris.’ He backed away from me. My spirits rose, for he had left the pot in the fire. I lay down again, feigned sleep and waited for it to be rescued. Gently, humbly did I rehearse words of loving-kindness against my friend’s coming.
He came without speaking, to the far side of the fire. Like Nathan, he bent over the food, and the light showed up his disfigured face, now much thinner than when we first met on the road. I sat up and waited for him to notice me. He met my look at once, without a bow or even a nod.
‘Yes, he’s told me,’ he said. ‘And I’m come over, not to see you, but because he’s mortally afraid to fetch a pot of pease while you are there.’
‘The Bible,’ I said, holding it out to him as he wrapped the iron pot in a cloth.
He made to take it, then backed away. ‘I’ll come for it later.’
Perhaps he wished to sit down with me. But no, it was only because he needed both hands to manage the pottage. He went off with the smoking mess to a group of men some distance away; I knew without looking that Nathan was among them. Sitting on the ground, my knees drawn up and head on my arms, I was wretched as a child none will play with, having said nothing to Ferris of all the fine words I had framed in advance. I snatched up the Bible and put it back inside my shirt, then lay down again. Fat Tommy would still be with him: I shuddered at all the tales he could invent about one Cullen who was run away from his master. No truth so ugly it can’t be made worse. Now the men were calling me bad, and Nathan was afraid to come back to the fire. A shivering, fierce as an ague, took possession of me when I thought of Ferris giving ear to Tommy.
When I looked up my eyes went straight to that knot of men and I caught my friend staring at me. He at once looked away.
After this I was afraid either to see Ferris or to miss him. As often before, I escaped misery in sleep. I was asleep while the rest were still eating and talking, and for a marvel, I did not dream, though I was constantly waking through the night.
Once, looking about me in the early hours, I saw the guard wall ripple as men dropped from it in the moonlight. I should have raised the alarm, but something told me these were no skirmishers but poor wretches hoping to escape the Armageddon John Paulet had brought upon himself and all that were his. They were servants, as I had been, and I let them go.
Before dawn I awoke again, unable to lie longer. I felt in my shirt: the Bible was there, warm in the darkness. The moon was behind cloud. I crawled to the fire and took out a brand, then, blowing on it for light, picked my way across the grass. I saw Tommy, and heard his snores; for a moment I thought of putting the brand in his spiteful mouth, but this was not the time.
At last I came to the one I sought. Ferris slept on his back, breath quick and shallow. His soldier’s coat, despite the cold, was open. Nathan, lying beside him, had rolled so that his head rested on my friend’s chest and Ferris’s arm curled over the boy’s shoulder.
I took the Bible and laid it on Ferris’s shirt front, brushing away a few strands of Nathan’s hair. When I again raised my eyes to his face, Ferris was looking directly at me. We stared each at the other, his gaze black in the firelight and so level, it might well be unseeing. Perhaps, I thought, he was rapt: one of those who dream eyes open. Then Nathan shifted, pressing his face into my friend’s breast, and Ferris drew his coat over the boy’s head as if to shield him from me.
I backed away. Men swore as I stumbled over to my own place by the fire. Lying down again, I drew my knees up to my chest to ease the pain that was there.
I must have slept again, for soon after came the call to rise, and for the first time, most men around me prayed rather than cursed. I heard them on all sides, imploring God that they might come safe through the assault, be worthy, get home soon to Margaret or to Father. I made no such prayer, but held Caro and my brothers a minute in my heart, and then stood, pierced by the usual aches. Someone had fed the fire nearest Ferris during the night, and the flames gave off just light enough for me to see him rise and the Bible fall from his chest. He picked it up, and before he could stop himself, looked over in my direction. I bowed. He turned away.
TEN
Golgotha
The bitter gloom before dawn was thick with the rustling of unseen men, ghosts condemned for some hideous crime perpetually to arm themselves and fight. The officers got us into formation with the aid of dark lanterns, that is, lanterns which showed no light on the side of the enemy, and part of me thought, as calmly as if I were a scholar studying a sermon, what an apt name dark lantern was for false religion. As the soldiers filled their bandoliers, and rinsed their throats with drink, the stench of powder battled with that of Hollands. This liquor I had always refused, being disgusted by its smell. Now men passed huge flasks of it back and forth as they waited for Preacher William Beech to furnish them with more spiritual comforts.
‘What’s this?’ I asked as I was handed a weapon.
‘Pikemen are to have brown bills for today,’ said the man in charge. ‘And swords.’
I looked at the bill I had been given. It was shorter than the pike, and hooked. Evidently we were in for much mauling and grappling. My heart began to knock in my breast.
‘Swords also,’ the fellow insisted, passing a baldric round my neck.
‘Here.’ The man next to me pushed a flask into my hand. ‘Get that down you.’
I took a pull at the foul stuff and it seared my throat. Spitting, I made to pass it back but he would not let me. ‘Drink, soldier. It gives courage.’
Gasping, I let more of the poisonous brew into my belly.
‘And blunts pain. Good lad.’ My comrade took the flask, upended it at his mouth and downed all that was left.
William Beech was begun. He waved his arms at us as if herding cattle, stamped the earth and had evidently a month’s mind to his work.
‘They are open enemies of God,’ he called in a hoarse voice which seemed to have got the damp of the place into it. Each time he passed before a lantern I saw his words fly away in clouds to join the mist which lay about us.
‘Papist…vermin…deserving of the fate of all who stand against His might…’
His urgings came to me in drifts, cut across by coughs and wheezes on every side. Staring about for Ferris, unable to see him, I wondered how he looked, angry or despairing, as he listened to that sermon. My eye fell on a man nodding and clenching his fists: this was Colonel Harrison, whose hatred of recusants and other ‘vermin’ outwent even Beech’s. I had reason for noticing this officer, for on an earlier occasion some soldier had pointed out Harrison for his pure, fierce love of God, and I had seen Ferris’s jaw set with loathing. Now I saw God’s Executioner breathe hard as he strained to catch the sermon through the raw air and the barking of soldiers trying to clear their throats.
…the fate the Lord of Hosts justly meted out to Sodom and Gomorrah…’
Men swilled down as much Hollands as their sides could hold. Beyond the crowd, the land, hacked up and trampled, lay desolate.
There was a great ‘Amen’ roared out. On every side I saw helmets pulled on over caps, a wisp of straw stuffed into the hole at the back as a field sign. I weighed the brown bill in my unpractised hand.
Commanders moved along the lines, making sure we were in our right order. First through the gap were to be unhorsed cavalry, who were the freshest of the troops and had good buffcoats beside. It came to me that by the time I got there we would be
treading the wounded underfoot. Then the commanders went back to their posts, and something like a shiver ran through the field. My mouth grew suddenly dry, so dry I could scarce swallow, and I felt I must piss at once, let go there and then unless I would do myself some hurt. Fumbling with cold hands in my breeches, I realised that the man next to me was untrussing likewise.
He observed my surprise and said, ‘It is always thus before battle,’ in the harsh voice of our shared thirst. ‘Look about you.’
I did so, and observed a frenzy of pissing among the ranks. Steam, smelling of stewed apples, rose from the mud. It was a practice, like that of the Hollands, never read of in Sir John Roche’s thill manual.
The church bell tolled six, and was followed threctly by four cannon shots. I thought my heart would come out of my mouth.
‘Christ be with you! And no quarter,’ cried my neighbour. The drummers gave the order to advance; the troops began moving forwards, walking at first and then trotting until we were in a headlong run. I could no longer hear any drum and it was all a man could do to keep level with his fellows. When we were halfway across the park the gaps in the wall suddenly filled with soldiers, ready and waiting.
Men were screaming, ‘For God and Parliament!’ I saw the first of ours run up the breach and fling himself on the defenders. There were flashes, followed by the sounds of musket fire, and screams. I struggled to run with my weapon upright and not fall over it. At the front I could see a great mass of men packed and heaving together. A little further forward and we were pressing into the breach, those inside jabbing at us with bills. Slashing back, I laid a face open. Muskets fired on us from the upper storeys, hand grenades rained down and I saw a man’s head shot to bits in front of me, felt his blood and brains fleck my skin. Those in the gap, lacking time to reload their muskets, had fallen to clubbing one another. Men fell screaming and were pressed onto the stones, the scrape and clatter of their helmets adding to the hellish noise. The drum struck up again nearby but was straightway drowned in shots and cries. A sudden warmth bathed my leg: someone was bleeding on me. He fell backwards against my chest; I saw brown eyes turned up to mine and blood on his teeth before he sank beneath our feet.
The defenders could not long hold the breach in this wise, and at last gave ground. Our men burst in like the Flood, though the heathen strove to make them pay for every foot gained, and Paulet’s men fled to the houses.
There was now no order but a desperate struggle. A new cry was everywhere heard: ‘Down with the Papists’. We scaled the sides of the house, every instant losing men to granadoes and shot, and entered by the windows of the first floor where their apartments were situated. Once inside, the brown bill was useless, so I cast it away and put my hand to my sword. Men jostled one another as at a fair, hard put to it to draw arms, but where they could wield their weapons freely, they cut and slashed so that I was like to have lost my footing in the slime. There was a hideous stench which I could not place; when I understood it was the stink of slit bowels, my guts worked and I near vomited.
Opposite to me I saw a great fair-headed fellow all plumes, and while he was engaged with another of ours I put my entire might into driving the sword into his neck. So did we fell him between us. Many times was I heartily glad of my helmet. One of theirs tried to lop off my hand – all he could reach – and left me with a bloody cut across the knuckles, which I saw but felt not. Sweat ran into my eyes. The place rang with clashes and screams; slowly we moved forwards, slowly the enemy gave ground. As they dropped, more would present themselves, and I saw there must be an army of them hidden in the inner fastnesses of the house, where we would have to smoke them out.
It was scarce a time for looking about me, but even a glance showed that Basing far excelled its fabled greatness, and made our old house, which I had thought so rich, a dungheap in comparison. The great hall by torchlight was now a gilded slaughterhouse, with pictures everywhere, filthy idolatries in paint and in stone. I glanced up in blinking the warm water from my eyes and saw wood carved fine as lace. Velvet and gold tissue ran with gore or were caught on pikes and torn from the walls: men were blown up and fell in gobbets through jewelled windows. I saw one soldier ram a sword down another’s throat, and heard the scream grow shrill and then choke off as the blade was driven home. Above them, high on the far wall, a marble Christ pale in death looked down from the cross upon His people.
All this time I continued pushing blindly forward, for there was nothing else to be done, cutting at a man here, being shouldered by another there. A burning in my thigh told me that I had been stabbed; though badly frighted and harassed by pain, I was unable to examine any of my wounds for fear of catching worse. Drill, which I had thought such war-like preparation, had been a country dance to this.
Paulet’s men being at last unable to stem the flow, our soldiers rushed the stairs, swords out. I let myself be borne up with them, and found another fight going on before some chamber doors. Servants and gentlemen of the household barred the way, but being utterly unequal to so many adversaries they were spitted against the door and kicked aside. We shouldered the panels until the bolts burst off. There was a wailing from the inside, and I knew we had found the women of the household. They huddled together like rabbits in corn: I did not want to touch them. I looked round quickly for Philip and saw him not. I little doubted to see the females violently abused before my eyes, but the men dragged them out and down the stairs. Some, resisting, were kicked from the top step to the bottom and their screams were fit to tear flesh. An old woman’s leg was shattered by the fall, and I saw her near the bottom of the steps, trying to crawl between men’s feet as they gouged one another.
More men, come up with me by this rime, broke open the door of another apartment and found therein an old man in strange priestly garments and a young woman, both on their knees before an idol in manifest defiance of God’s commandments. The woman was ill dressed for prayer, in a pale green dress the colour of milk infused with mint, gleaming like metal in the candlelight and cut so low that she might almost have suckled a child without disarranging it; and in this wise she had knelt before God. I saw a beauty in her, in the black gypsy eyes and hair of bronze, but also that arrogance of carriage which has been the downfall of many in these times, and so it was hers.
One of our lads made to take captive the man, and seeing him reach towards a chest, thought it best not to wait to see what was within, and fired first. There was a great scream from the wench as she saw the old man wounded and clutching at his shoulder; she jumped up and commenced railing, calling us ‘Roundheads’ and ‘traitors’.
A soldier straightway gave her his sword across the head. She gasped, and clapped her hand to the wound; and then he ran her through. I heard the crunch of the blade, saw it disappear into her, and yet she remained standing, looking into his face, and reached down softly, as if to adjust some portion of her dress, until her fingers circled the steel. He at once wrenched it out, slitting her hand, upon which she held the bleeding palm up to her face and her lips worked as if she would cry. There was red coming down her neck from under her hair, and I saw a blotch spreading through the greenish, milky cloth over her belly. Suddenly blood streamed out from under her skirts. The old man shrieked like a dog that is scalded. The soldier whose work it was glared upon the girl as if he could have torn her in pieces for outright detestation. She looked at me, seeming to appeal for help, then softly folded downwards until she laid her cheek on the carpet. I watched her lips draw back and her shoulders rise and fall. The back of the gown was beginning to stain.
The man turned to the rest of us. ‘And so will the proud and vainglorious be utterly pulled down and vanquished!’ His voice trembled with passion; indeed, his whole body shook as if he had encountered with Satan himself. I nodded, feeling nothing but intense cold within me.
‘Tie the old one,’ he ordered.
I could see nothing to tie him with. Another man prodded with his sword at the girl’s silk girdle, now
clotted with blood. Her hair brushed my hand as I pulled at the fastening. At last it was off and I began tying the prisoner. Then the first soldier, still not finished, knelt and stripped her of every garment until she was naked under the old man’s eyes.
I finished binding the priest. Speechless and wracked with dry heaves, he was left for the time being to contemplate the corpse. The woman’s destroyer, having tied her dress round his neck by the sleeves so that it hung from his back like a cloak, went out ‘to hunt up more wolves’, the others following. I leant against the wall, fingering my wounded thigh and sweating, until I could stand straight. When I left the old man’s gaze followed me to the door.
There were many passageways, many chambers leading off each. Men surged back and forth, pushing prisoners before them, slashing the images in their great carven frames, shattering the statues. I saw one soldier with strings of bloody pearls about his neck. Others bore off plate and cloth, or tore jewels from women’s ears. They tripped over the dead and dying, slipped on their blood and vomit, trampled their intestines. The air was foul beyond anything. I beat off a man who hacked at me, until he thought better of it and went to find someone smaller.
Directly beside me was another door. Opening it, I found myself in an empty bedchamber with a key, which I turned, on the inside of the lock. The urge to piss again came violently upon me, so I stood next the window, looking out of it as I relieved myself against the wall. The scene outside blurred and I understood by this that tears were rising in my eyes, but knew it in a blank, insensible fashion, like an idiot that cannot say why he laughs or weeps.
The window gave onto the courtyard, which was evidently under our control. Below me stood four priests, roped together; in another corner huddled the flock of women, now stripped to their shifts. I could not see the one with the broken leg. Their dresses were heaped upon a cart, and men were bringing other garments out of the house to add to the pile. A feeble daylight made it possible to pick out the colours of the pillaged clothing, but it was still bitterly cold. On the ground lay some old sick creature in a blanket, his naked legs like string.