Captain Fantom

by Reginald Hill

  ‘What gift shall I give you at Christmas?’ I asked him one night in December as we lay about a dozen miles from Winchester.

  ‘Nothing,’ he answered. ‘There is nothing I know that you can give me.’

  Well, that was ambiguous enough to tickle a Jesuit. I pondered it all night. Next day, a Tuesday as I recall, we attacked the city. Those dragoons must have scented rich pickings and small resistance for they drove into the town with the power of a troop of Tilly’s veterans and the small force of Royalist cavalry which held it was overrun in only an hour. Waller most civilly permitted the surviving Cavaliers to withdraw to Oxford where the King was, but the good people of the town held such courtesy was for baronets and took revenge for remembered wrongs by hurling stones after the marching line. Meanwhile those ungodly dragoons were tearing the inside of the cathedral to pieces. I watched with distaste as they ripped tapestries, danced on books, and smashed the organ, then after selecting a couple of pieces of silver plate (which I quickly beat into an unrecognizable mass for these English tend to be squeamish about such booty) I went with Christopher in search of lodging, first for our horses, then for ourselves.

  We found a decent clean house owned by a once handsome woman of middle age who had a daughter dressed to look about ten years old but whom I suspected to be some years older and accoutred thus in order to foil the lecherous Cavaliers. I was too tired to have been interested in her had she been dressed like a Turkish dancer and as my second boot hit the floor at the foot of the bed, I fell asleep.

  In the middle of the night, I was awoken by a terrible commotion. A woman’s voice was screaming most violently, though whether in fear or pain I could not detect. Seizing my sword, I ran out of my room and followed the noise to the floor below.

  I had been wrong in both cases. It was neither fear nor pain, but outraged anger that was making the older woman set up this din. And the cause was not far to seek. Naked on a bed and rolling over and over to avoid the mother’s blows were the daughter and Christopher. I had been right about the girl, I noted as I seized the woman from behind. She had bubs like a pair of fool’s baubles.

  ‘God’s knees, woman!’ I roared. ‘Will you not be quiet?’

  But she struggled still and turned her wrath and her assault against me. Suddenly, whether it was the sight of her daughter crouched naked and heaving before me with Christopher’s hands, despite his fear, still roaming compulsively over her flesh, or whether it was just the appointed time, my trumpets sounded and I tipped the woman onto the bed, pushed her nightgown up to her waist and set on.

  Now the girl too started screaming and Christopher had to drag her away from me else she would have pulled my hair out by the roots. She turned against him and they began to fight.

  So it was that the Watch found us a few moments later when, summoned by fearful neighbours, they broke into the house.

  Waller was hardly sympathetic but nor, fortunately, was he summary.

  ‘This is a grave offence, Captain Fantom,’ he said coldly.

  ‘Grave charges, sir,’ I said. ‘But I hope you will believe, no offence.’

  ‘How do you defend yourself?’ he demanded.

  ‘Is this all the trial I shall have, sir?’ I asked politely. ‘Or shall perhaps I have the pleasure of seeing you on a judicial bench on a later occasion?’

  This reminded him of his duties and also, of course, made him angrier still. How strange it is that reminders of duty, which we should all be grateful to have before us everyday, can make a man so angry.

  ‘You shall have a trial if that is your wish, sir,’ he pronounced.

  Of course it wasn’t my wish. Nothing was further from it. But since being arrested I had bribed three different people to take a message to Essex for me, informing him (with glosses) of the sad state of things and appealing for his intervention to prevent a miscarriage of justice. Being expert in human nature, I had promised each of the messengers another large sum on the day I was released. Without incentive, nobody feels obliged to work very hard for a man who is to be hanged in a day or two.

  I pleaded provocation, of course. It is always the best thing in these circumstances, but I discovered too late that the woman was famous (infamous, I would say) in the town for her strict morality, that she was a pillar of the Church, that after the birth of her daughter she announced that she had gone as far in matters sexual as the wedding service required her to go, and that according to local tradition it was this resolve, unswervingly adhered to, which had caused her late husband to waste away and finally expire five years later.

  Five years! I thought. Why, it would have done for me in a six-month!

  But the thought was merely an ego-boosting boast, I acknowledged instantly. I was not a man of frequent sexual needs. Why, in the field I had known myself to go for a month or more with no desire whatsoever. It was just that when it did come it was irresistible. Perhaps, I wondered, perhaps there was some link between all those carnal occasions. Perhaps something I had not yet identified triggered them off, some common denominator….

  It was an interesting line of speculation. When I came back from it to the world of so-called actuality it was to hear myself being sentenced to death by hanging.

  It came as a shock though I had expected no less. I could not blame those who sat in judgement on me. Only the previous month, Parliament in an effort to repress the widescale plundering and general indiscipline rife among the military had issued a declaration more or less ordering that the laws and ordinances of the Army should be strictly applied. Rapes, ravishments and unnatural abuses got you death.

  It was the week before Christmas and I settled down to wait for word from Essex. They could not hang me without first having the sentence confirmed by the Lord General and I complimented myself on having (I hope) ensured that he had received a version of events other than the totally condemnatory abstract of the trial. But it is well not to put one’s trust singly in man, so I turned to God, begging most civilly that I might be visited and instructed by one of the chaplains who so swelled the ranks of every Parliamentary force. At Edgehill a man could hardly swing his sword for these pious frantics who galloped up and down the lines, singing psalms and shouting encouragement. The one I picked was the famous Master Obadiah Jones, a fiery Welshman, who came gladly to lead me into the ways of truth. If a man’s time on this earth is short and he is in need of good counsel, then Master Jones is his best hope, for he could utter more words in one minute than your ordinary pulpit preacher could manage in five, thus keeping a constant stream of holiness playing over the hot and sweaty soul.

  And if that were not enough, he had another great attraction. He was not one of your canting words-are-mightier-than-the-sword men. No, he rode into battle with a stout blade swinging at his side, and a snaphance pistol thrust into his breeches.

  More importantly, he wore these when he came to the room in which I was confined and should Essex fail me, I had a plan to beat him over his red shaven neck with a chair-leg as we knelt together in our final prayers and make my escape with the aid of his weapons.

  But thank God (as Obadiah did most fervently) it never came to that. On Christmas Eve, Waller’s adjutant came with the news that a pardon had just been received from Essex. With it he brought me a private missive from the General which contained a great deal of nonsense about his knowledge of my character and a man not being condemned for a single untypical error. I laughed aloud as I read it and went out into the town to breathe the icy air and add my portion to the season’s merriment. I was more relieved than I would have thought possible – the idea of death must have entered deep into my being despite all my contingency plans for escape. And when I turned a corner and saw in the square before the city gaol a pair of gibbets looming high, my relief was so intense that I could almost in sincerity have knelt with Obadiah and given thanks.

  Poor devils, I mused as I walked beneath the dangling corpses, which the hard frost had tinselled till they shone like Christmas a
ngels, you had no friend to send you pardon.

  A harsh wind rose of a sudden, spinning the silver figure I gazed up at, so that one stiff bare foot (for his boots had been stolen) brushed against my shoulder. I shrank back, still looking up. That face! He had died hard; no quick breaking of a neck here, but the slow agony of strangulation which leaves a man unrecognizable … almost unrecognizable … I cried out in fear and alarm; the Watch was passing so I begged him to shine his lanthorn in the face of the dead man. He looked at me oddly, but complied. I peered close as I could. Through the frost, through the contortions, the features emerged at last. I had no doubt. It was Christopher Allen.

  Poor Christopher. In my concern with my own plight, I had forgotten his. My excuse is that I had not thought he would be taken up for any offence graver than fornication which the ordinance states ‘shall be punished with discretion, according to the quality of the offence’. (Did this mean, I wondered, that a good screw would get you more punishment than a mediocre one?)

  I resolved to look further into his death, but first went to check on the health of my horses which Christopher’s taking off must have put in jeopardy. My fears proved true to some extent. Petrarch and Luke were in excellent condition, but Digby was gone – stolen so the shifty-eyed ostler claimed, but I doubted him much. The villain, I swear, knowing Christopher to be hanged and anticipating that I would soon follow, had got rid of my trooper’s horse and was fattening the other two with thought of selling them also. I beat him till he cried for mercy, but he would not confess. Which was wise as then I would surely have killed him.

  After that I made inquiry into Christopher’s fate and discovered that the girl of the house in fear both of her mother and for her reputation had claimed that she too had been ravished. The trial had been much speedier than mine. The sergeant who had been his custodian told me that, realizing that the daughter would stick to her story and the mother was adamant in confirming it, Christopher had appealed to have me fetched as a witness on his behalf, but this had been refused on the grounds of my incompetence as a prisoner under the same charge.

  That night with my cloak wrapped round my head I went in search of a pair of those thorough-going villains who are to be found in any town. They thought I was crazy when I told them what I wanted, but the sight of gold in my one hand and a pistol in the other persuaded them to comply.

  Next morning early risers discovered, bound tight to the two corpses hanging from the gibbets, the mother and daughter, naked and half frozen to death.

  Waller glared at me angrily when we met later in the day, but I greeted him courteously and there was nothing he could say. Nor did any countermand my orders when I commanded that Christopher’s body be taken down. I had it pulled behind me on a cart as I rode out of Winchester and started back for London. In a village some miles beyond the town, I bribed and threatened the sexton and his grave-diggers from their squalid hearths and stood over them while they hacked a hole in the frozen churchyard. When the parson came out to see what the activity was, I kept him there also to speed Christopher’s soul on its journey to wherever the innocent dead may go. And when I reached London, I wrote a letter to his family in Norwich telling them how their son had died bravely in the taking of Winchester (which, I discovered, Pym and his gang had inflated into a great steeple-ringing victory).

  Such are the sentimentalities which age can bring a man to if he does not take care.

  1643

  Bedford — Lincolnshire — Nottingbamsbire

  A man who has been very close to death suddenly realizes how futile and vain are those things so valued by the commonalty of man, as friendship, honour and the so-called comforts of religion. My resolve to grow rich was confirmed by my experience in Winchester. A wealthy man could die as easily as a poor one. So I set about surrounding myself with a troop of like-thinking fellows, who were not far to find. The constitution of regiments was not yet so clearly regulated as it was to become in the New Model Army after 1645 and my troop of some fifty men though small was nonetheless acceptable. I had as my lieutenant a crop-shaven shabby boy of twenty-two or -three who had the look and language of one of those bible-waving preachers who were the only entertainment permitted in this miserable army. His name was James Croft and I would have avoided him like the plague had I not caught him ransacking my quarters one night when I returned unexpectedly. When I challenged him he showed no alarm but answered, ‘In the name of Our Saviour, Captain, this is well met, for I have been instructed by the provost-marshal to search your belongings, upon traitorous and malicious information that you carried missives between the King and certain disaffected gentlemen of our party. But, praised be the name of the Lord, I have found nothing and was presently hastening to you with the news – you are innocent!’

  He made it sound like a genuine discovery worthy of celebration and I found myself on the point of taking his outstretched hand. Instead I hit him in the stomach and as he doubled up, I went behind him, seized his ankles and shook him in the air till most of what he had stolen fell to the floor.

  After that, I gave him a glass of brandy which, for a fervent denouncer of the evils of strong liquor, he downed with great skill. When he had drunk another and regained his composure, we talked. An hour later he was my lieutenant.

  My cornet was Thomas Turner, a fresh-faced lad who reminded me of Christopher. I found him sleeping drunkenly beneath a bush one night with a poinard in his hand, its steel dulled by dried blood. He was a thorough-going villain despite his looks, yet because of his resemblance to the dead trooper I always kept him at a distance.

  There only remained one more commissioned place to fill, that of quartermaster, and this I left vacant till the right man should present himeslf. The combination of talents needed in a good quartermaster is most rare – he must have the accountant’s gift of reckoning, the lawyer’s gift of concealing, the merchant’s gift of trading, the carrier’s gift of transporting, the priest’s gift of deceiving, and the soldier’s gift of not caring. Such men are hard to find and they are usually politicians or prelates – or sometimes kings. To be a quartermaster a man needs something extra – a disability which keeps him out of great place.

  My three corporals were three brothers called Parkin from a place called Yorkshire which, though I had not visited it, I had heard reputed as a breeding ground for a hard and vicious race of men. If this were accurate, then the brothers Parkin were true sons of their soil.

  As for my men, they recuited themselves. No one who was not the kind of soldier I wanted lasted long in my troop.

  We were attached to Sir Robert Pye’s regiment and between Sir Robert and myself existed a kind of armed truce for though he did not approve of me or my followers, yet he knew that in battle we would bring him nothing but honour and high reputation. Also my position as a favourite of Essex was still taken into account by those who held commands under him. I had seen little of Essex since the start of the year which perhaps was well, for I had felt but small inclination to comply with his Puritanical admonitions. I had thanked him civilly for my pardon though I made it clear that I regarded it not as an act of mercy but merely as the correction of a manifest injustice.

  Now it was high summer and we lay at the town of Bedford on our way north to Lincolnshire where fortune had fickled between the two sides all year. Presently Gainsborough was held by Lord Willoughby but a Royalist force under the great horseman, Cavendish, was threatening and various Parliamentary groups had been summoned in support. Whether we would arrive in time to help I did not know, nor much care. I had grown even more disenchanted with this war than when I entered it. The two sides swayed back and forth across the country like drunkards wrestling on a frozen pond. The only hope of a conclusion seemed to lie in the earth cracking and swallowing all the armies! Like the German wars I had wasted my youth in, there seemed no reason why this should not continue for a whole generation. The thought frightened me. Death in battle had always been a possibility, with death by hanging now a
good second. But to grow old in arms and die of age, still a soldier, that had a ring of futility about it. Not for me the willing acceptance of such a fate which I had once found almost admirable in old Lauder. No; I suddenly had ambitions to be a rich old civilian.

  Lauder. I had not thought of him for half a decade. It was nine years since I last saw him, his sword dripping with blood at the massacre of Eger. He had been ancient then. Surely the old bastard had had his quietus by now.

  I smiled at the thought of him. Our friendship had been the kind professionals ought to have. It was based on mutual awareness of the limits of our contract. Risks we would take for each other, but well within the bournes of reason. Lauder had warned me and saved my life, but had I been sitting at that table at Eger, he would have slit my throat with a steady edge.

  I smiled at the thought, then roused myself and left my tent. Mine was the only troop in the Army (so far as I knew) to have tents. I had used them in Germany for years – men on a long campaign must not be left to the vagaries of night and weather – but here in England, when no buildings presented themselves, the common soldiery slept in ditches and under hedges. I had no desire to be faced each morning with cold, damp, sullen men, coughing and wheezing like broken-winded nags. No, what I wanted to hear was what I heard now, coming to me through the morning mist, lusty voices raised in the 144th Psalm – ‘Blessed be the Lord my strength; who teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight.’ Jem Croft was a stickler for religious observances and to outward appearance we were the most devout gang of slit throats who ever robbed a poorhouse. I joined them in the Amen, then went to the picket-line to say good morning to my family. They neighed in delight at my approach, Luke almost pulling himself free in his joy, a display of emotion which Athene regarded with cool disdain. I had discovered the beginnings of sweet itch on Petrarch’s mane and after giving them each an apple, I examined this carefully while my groom looked anxiously on, knowing what would follow if I were not satisfied. But the fellow had followed my instructions to the letter and I congratulated him, at which the great fool simpered like a dairymaid being chucked under her chin.