Traitor's Field

by Robert Wilton

  ‘My own. As always.’

  She nodded, as if this had satisfied her curiosity. ‘George was last here very recently. Probably only a week or so before – before the battle.’ She tried to push the war back beyond the hills. ‘He seemed. . . rather changed.’

  Shay looked round into her face. ‘Changed?’

  ‘He was always rather serious, wasn’t he?’ She smiled. ‘When we were younger I found it almost – almost attractive. But that last time he was more. . . worried.’ Shay was still watching her. ‘Perhaps he was just concerned for the fate of the army. He’d been with them for part of the journey down from Scotland, and. . .’ – she looked up at him hesitantly – ‘I suppose you men can tell when the crisis of a conflict is near.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps that was it. Was he talking about the army?’

  ‘No – no, of course not.’ It would have been as much indecorous as indiscreet. ‘He seemed fretful. Talking of this and that. Pontefract.’

  ‘Pontefract?’

  ‘It’s not that far.’

  ‘I know where it is. Why on earth should he fret about Pontefract?’

  Lady Sarah Saville shrugged, and smiled with a shyness out of place on her fifty years. The affairs of men.

  ‘I once asked him why he was interested, and he said that Pontefract would tell him much.’

  What had Astbury been fussing about? He was more curious than concerned.

  Her face was closer to his suddenly, and Shay felt the breath of her whisper. ‘If only you’d been able to ask Marmaduke Langdale.’

  ‘Langdale?’

  The voice was an excited murmur; she was a girl again. ‘He was here!’

  Shay glanced quickly around; her behaviour more than her words was going to attract attention. There were two young men – three – several yards away, and they looked down as he saw them. For a distracted moment he wondered whether they would see him as competition for the girl across the room.

  ‘Langdale was here? You mean – after Preston?’

  Hissed excitement still: ‘We sheltered him for a night.’

  He smiled. ‘You’re a good woman, Sarah.’ It was genuine affection, and she could tell. ‘Did he talk about Astbury?’

  ‘Only about his probably being dead. But he mentioned Pontefract, too, and so I mentioned Astbury.’

  ‘Langdale was fretting about Pontefract as well?’

  ‘He was trying to get there, I think. Something about “his men”.’

  Shay nodded. ‘Those who fought with him during the main years of the war. Many are now besieged at Pontefract. He went in that direction when he left here?’

  ‘I don’t know. They – they captured him. . . I suppose not long after.’ She said it tentatively, not sure whether he knew.

  ‘Mm. I’d heard rumour.’

  ‘He’s in Nottingham Castle.’

  ‘Is he, indeed?’

  ‘It’s—’

  ‘I know where Nottingham is.’ He smiled to take the edge off his asperity. ‘You’re well-informed, Sarah.’

  She was suddenly serious. ‘These are my people. This is my world.’ There was almost hurt there, too. ‘You will allow me not to forget it, at least.’

  He nodded, sincere. Is it war or is it just age, this insistent accounting of the mementoes of the past?

  ‘It’s wrong. It’s wrong for a man – a good man, and he’s not young – to be locked up like that. Weeks now, I think.’

  ‘Knowing Langdale, he’ll have made their lives more miserable than they have his.’

  But suddenly her fingers were on his arm again. ‘You could do something! You could get him out!’ Her eyes and mouth were wide in the dream. ‘Oh, do it!’ It was desperation, an empty clutching at a vision of a more heroic past, more romantic. ‘Save him, Mortimer.’

  There was movement near them: the three young men were watching them more openly, and Shay wondered how much their voices had carried. Sarah Saville had followed his glance, and now looked back up at him with more composure, a little more height.

  ‘I was never a fair woman, Mortimer, but I was always true.’ She said it with dignity, and only a little embarrassed smile at the end marred the effect. ‘I charge you with this; say it’s a quest. If you have no greater, make this man your interest. Prove that something good and daring may still be done here.’

  His eyes had been elsewhere, calculating. It was ridiculous, of course. Now he turned to look her full and blatant in the face, and the eyes were big and hard, and then they narrowed in intent, something animal. Her eyes widened in reaction, a faint flush of excitement and alarm.

  Sir Mortimer Shay, roaming once more the houses and hearts of England.

  ‘Astbury died at Preston. Shay has his place.’

  ‘How came Shay by the office? By no pleasant means, I am sure. Was he fighting for Cromwell that day? He is uncontrollable.’

  ‘He is unstoppable. He held the office briefly before.’

  ‘He was removed from the office, and with high good reason.’

  ‘We may add persistence to his list of qualities.’

  ‘I am right glad to be out of England.’

  Sir,

  Cromwell, Fairfax and St John must work continuously to keep the scales in balance. For whereas on the one hand they threaten the Scots with the Army should they fail to surrender Berwick and Carlisle, so on the other hand that same Army is in a ferment and may not fully be relied upon. September is now spoken of as a month of mutiny. The so-called Levellers have petitioned Parliament again for their radical claims, and the regiments in the north – those same who would be most necessary should the Scots seek battle again – have been loud in their support. The Army that Cromwell unleashed in this land threatens to escape his control quite, and those renewed rumours seem most credible, which do say that he himself contrived to remove the King from Army control last winter for fear of some outrage by the Agitators and Levellers in the ranks.

  Faithfully, S. V.

  [SS C/S/48/17]

  Shay spent a night in an inn outside Derby. He would have preparations to manage in the town during the next days, and further preparations once he reached Nottingham.

  He was the only man staying in the inn – indeed, the only man to step through the door for the hours he was there – and he spent what remained of the evening sitting in silence with a jug of wine, trying to keep his head turned to judgement and not memory.

  Warm and desperate for life, Lady Sarah Saville had offered Langdale to him as a quest, and as amusement for his interest. And what if it serves the King’s interest as well? He needed to understand what Astbury had done with the Comptrollerate-General – principally the book. He needed to understand what had preyed on Astbury’s mind in those last days: Pontefract, and the field at Preston. Sir Marmaduke Langdale was a rare link to that.

  Besides, even an empty exploit against the new regime would serve a purpose. The complacency of these Parliament men might stand a little shaking.

  Three men followed Shay on his meandering journey, always a mile or two behind, and he did not see them.

  Until its final deliberate destruction, the old Nottingham Castle rose like a vast and solitary yellow tooth from the uneven gum of the surrounding landscape.

  The first Richard, back from crusade wild and strange, with grim leather-skinned companions and new engines of war, had laid siege to the castle as part of his campaign to recapture his kingdom from the partisans of his brother. The third Edward had come of age here, seizing his usurper stepfather in a night-time ambush with just a handful of friends and a subconscious inheritance of right. The centuries and the sieges had left it broken and rotten, a relic of an older society with crumbling walls and fallen roofs and Roundhead soldiers trying to keep it defensible and warm.

  On a morning in October in 1648, a man appeared in the heart of the castle, a shadow suddenly on the yellow-grey stone in a forgotten corridor. He sensed his way through the castle, feeling his way by memory, adjusting
to the rhythms of fallen masonry and half-heard sentries’ footsteps.

  He was prepared for violence: a sentry or two might need to be subdued or killed, and such men could easily disappear unnoticed for an hour or for ever in the shambling ruined maze. But it was not necessary. An hour of observation showed that, through indifference or calculated routine, the room now being used as a cell was not closely guarded. The man slipped through the cold tunnels unobtrusive but assured, the scuff of his boots echoing weird in unknown staircases and holes in the roof. He pressed close to the cell door.

  Sir Marmaduke Langdale: the hair was grey now, the heavy eyes sagging, but still the great beak of a nose thrust itself proud and ludicrous into the world’s business. Age had given it a certain nobility. On the young Langdale, obsessed with discipline and supply as they marched to the Rhine, it had been merely comic. But that was nigh thirty years ago. He watched the gaunt grim face a second more, framed in the iron-crossed window of the cell door. Now a hero two or three times over, in a losing cause.

  A furtive delicate click from the lock; the cell door squawked briefly as it opened, and again as it closed. The narrow face lifted instinctively, soured at the interruption, and then caught in surprise as it recognized the intruder.

  Langdale took a great breath, and then swallowed it. ‘Shay!’ he whispered, hoarse. Sitting high in a wooden chair by the window, he slumped back into it.

  ‘Afternoon, Langdale.’

  He spoke at normal volume, and the General set his tone accordingly. ‘I tolerate a certain indignity in my current circumstances, Shay, but I absolutely refuse to share my confinement with you.’

  ‘They haven’t caught me, yet. I wandered in on my own account.’

  This didn’t seem to surprise Langdale. ‘Last we heard you were in Holland. I’d thought you long hanged.’

  ‘You’re out of luck.’

  Langdale stood, and they shook hands like old oak branches creaking in the wind. ‘You want to borrow money, presumably.’

  ‘Merely ask a question of an old comrade.’

  ‘Don’t come the old comrade with me, you misbegotten bandit.’ Langdale returned to his chair. ‘The lack of furniture deprives me of the pleasure of not offering you a seat.’

  ‘I need to have an ear anyway. What was George Astbury doing on the field at Preston?’

  ‘I feel you’ve spent your life keeping furtive watch, Shay: fathers, husbands, bailiffs, sergeants-at-arms. You have passed your every minute of existence in some pursuit or other that must be hid from other men.’ He folded his hands primly in front of him. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘You know old Astbury. A worthy fellow, I’m sure, but I doubt he did a reckless act in his whole life. He’d been given no place in the line of battle, surely?’ Langdale shook his head. ‘And he had no business there. Yet I found his body not thirty paces from that midden where you fought the day out.’

  Langdale’s heavy eyebrows had risen. ‘He did die, then? I had heard it said.’ The beaked face twisted sadly. ‘Not a warm man, but a decent one. He was terribly in earnest that day.’ The eyes were gone back into the battlefield. ‘Bustling everywhere. He would insist on checking everything with the scouts.’

  ‘The scouts?’

  ‘Jumped on anything they reported. Rode out to see for himself. Back again, quiz the fellows, check the map, off into the field again. Well, you know how scouts are.’ Silent agreement from Shay. ‘Solitary, nervy fellows. Didn’t like this much. Ruce – Scoutmaster that day – he got very unhappy about it.’

  ‘What did Astbury think he was doing?’

  ‘I couldn’t imagine. He was pretty dismissive about Ruce – thought he was just a low fellow, a mechanical, didn’t credit him for any initiative. When he started bustling around me I told him straight not to interfere. He’d got into a kind of fever over when and how Cromwell might catch us out. Cromwell’ – the words became sharper and more pronounced – ‘has a way of bewitching men.’

  ‘Mm. He mention Pontefract at all?’

  ‘Astbury? Might have done – siege still going on, people were thinking about it – but I don’t. . .’ He turned to Shay. ‘Yes. I do remember one comment. We were talking about it – there were fresh rumours – usual fatuous chatter; you know how it is. Came to old George, and he looked very thoughtful, and he just said, “There is sickness there.” That was the word: sickness. Sounded rather final.’

  What was Astbury’s obsession? The repeated references to the place; the last letter in his pocket. ‘Meaning disease, you think?’

  ‘That is what sickness means, Shay, yes. But I can’t speak for George Astbury. Ask him yourself, in the unlikely event you end up in the same billet. He seemed damned bleak about it, that I can say.’

  Shay was silent. ‘I had rather gathered,’ Langdale went on, examining his folded hands and then peering hard at Shay, ‘that Astbury was starting to interest himself in intelligencing matters.’ Still silence. ‘That might explain his interest in the scouting, I mean to say. Same sort of business you always seemed to be dabbling in. Stuff you never talked about.’

  Slowly, Shay produced a malevolent smile. ‘Quite,’ he said. Langdale’s face was sharp and hard and full of distaste.

  The journey from Coventry to Nottingham was fifty miles, and the two Parliament men plodded most of them through a wet afternoon along muddy Derbyshire roads, cloaks hunched around shoulders and the few words lost to the wind.

  The region was still uncertain: angry hunted Scots were loose and lost and roaming wild, and little bitter deeds of Royalist violence could catch a man anywhere. So they had an escort: one fat levy, hardly the pick of the new Army, which told them what they needed to know of their own significance. The soldier trotted behind them, walked behind them, stood behind them, and had done all this for many days, and John Thurloe could not recall a single word from him in all that time.

  They had found a good room in Kegworth, dried their clothes and eaten and slept well, and the fresh morning had shared their rejuvenation. They rode to Nottingham with the sun brightening their faces and the green of England around them, and the old castle gleamed across the landscape as they approached the city. Webster was kin to the castle’s Governor and wanted to pay his respects, and then they might find a good lunch somewhere, and for a few warm hours England seemed a place where a man could find life pleasant and even pleasurable.

  Strangely, into Thurloe’s reverie of pleasantness kept striding the image of Sir Anthony Astbury’s daughter, as she had done intermittently over the previous weeks, proud and shaken and angry, hair awry and staring at him venomously.

  As they approached the main gate of the castle they were overtaken by a messenger on horseback, brisk and businesslike and high in the saddle as his horse rattled over the drawbridge.

  ‘How did they take you, old ghost?’

  Langdale’s face twisted into a scowl. ‘In an alehouse.’ He offered the words precisely, as a gift to Shay’s scorn.

  Shay just nodded, and winced slightly at what Langdale’s mighty pride had been through.

  Langdale shrugged. ‘It was clear they would take me that day or night. Better to go with a hot meal and dry boots.’

  Another nod. The shared precepts of three decades. Shay said more softly, ‘I saw the field. Your men stood fast like gods.’

  The old General just shook his head. ‘Even I would not have believed it of them. They were annihilated, and they would not run.’ Another shake of the head, back in the sunken miry lane, then he looked up. ‘Shay, I am right sick of it all.’

  ‘You’ve life yet.’

  ‘Perhaps so – for which I should thank you, I suppose.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I thought you came to rescue me.’

  ‘Not particularly. I just had that question.’

  ‘I see. I’m pleased to be of service, Shay; you know me.’

  ‘Indeed. Why? Would you like to be rescued?’

  ‘I ask favours
of no man, Shay, least of all a pirate such as you.’

  ‘So I assumed. I also assumed that if you wanted to escape you’d have done so. Crumbling old ruin like this.’ His head was bent to the door again.

  ‘Quite. I have made preliminary work with two of my gaolers. One is a man of true and passionate belief, God save us all, and that’s always fertile ground. The other is healthily corruptible; young wife, too, he tells me, and that sounded promising. A couple more days’ conversation and I’ll come and go as I choose. But not much point until I’m rather surer of the ground outside. I don’t mind escaping, but I’m too old to run hither and yon to no purpose.’ Langdale pulled his cloak around him and settled comfortably. ‘You were wont to dress a little more showy, Shay. Why those drab black weeds today?’

  TO THE GOVERNOR OF NOTTINGHAM CASTLE COLONEL JOHN HUTCHINSON, LORD RADCLIFFE FROM THE COMMITTEE OF SECURITY OF THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND, MET IN LONDON, IN HARMONIOUS ASSOCIATION WITH THE ARMY COUNCIL

  Colonel,

  be forewarned that envoys of this Committee shall visit you this day, with the express and specific purpose of scrutinising the good-holding and condition of the prisoner Marmaduke Langdale, General in the illegitimate and rebellious Army of the upstart King Charles Stuart. Our envoys may interrogate the prisoner as they deem fit, and will judge of their own accord whether he may be better removed to some other strong-hold for his further interrogation and prosecution.

  We send formal greeting to you, Colonel, fully cognizant of our respective offices, under the love and protection of God.

  [SS C/T/48/01]

  ‘Well, Langdale, this has been pleasant enough; but I’ve business elsewhere. I’ll bid you good day.’

  ‘Good day to you, Shay. My regards to Lady Margaret.’

  ‘Unless you want to come with me. . .?’

  Langdale looked up. ‘Is that an invitation? A request?’

  Shay shrugged. ‘If you like.’

  ‘Well, if you’re asking me. For fellowship’s sake, then.’ Langdale was up out of the chair with surprising speed, and heaving hurriedly at his palliasse. A loose stone pulled away, and he was pushing a book into his jacket, a knife into his belt and a ring onto one gnarled finger. Shay gestured him to stillness briefly in the doorway, and then they were out into the passage.