Traitor's Field

by Robert Wilton

  He knows our systems.

  The eyes widened a little, and the staircase was momentarily colder. Thurloe pulled his cloak closer around him, and forced himself to settle back against the ancient smoothness of the centre pillar.

  But they cannot have known that I would come today. They did not know of me. He passed the rest of his hour in more companionable silence, wondering at the men so close to him.

  Hot and uneasy and exchanging empty expressions of uncertainty and bravado, the three riders followed the tree line to the track, and the track as it led into open country and to the elm, and then turned as instructed and dropped into the welcome gloom of woodland again. In the shadows they hesitated, their horses breathing heavy and rummaging in the long grass that fringed the roadway.

  A rustling from the undergrowth, and the two older men emerged from the trees, shadows from the darkness. Again the first of the three made to speak, and again he was ignored.

  Shay led them a further mile, until the wood ended in sight of a watermill, and beyond it Donington. He held them there for several minutes, dappled under the leaves and still silent, while he watched the mill intently.

  Eventually he led them down. The mill-owner met them at the gate of his yard. Shay murmured a word to the man, a word that the others could not catch. Without a reply or a glance the gate was pulled open, and Shay was gesturing his companions into the yard while he took a final full scan around them and then followed.

  He was the first to dismount, legs falling heavy and tired into the mud. ‘We change horses here.’ Langdale slid down too, stretching his legs uncomfortably.

  ‘But this is my horse, and a good one!’ Another of the young men.

  ‘It may be recognized, and that makes it a bad one.’ He nodded towards the mill-man. ‘It’s his now. The horses will be dispersed. Do any have a well-known mark? A brand?’

  Confusion, shakes of the head, weary and unhappy climbings down and then the three young men were standing forlorn in the mud as their horses were led away, the mill-man examining them with satisfaction.

  ‘A mill in the middle of nowhere, and you arrive unannounced and with a single word the man will do your bidding and swap your horses – risk his life?’

  Shay turned. The dark-haired one: medium height and compact, quiet-spoken but swallowing irritation. Shay said, ‘There are times when one needs a bed, or a horse, or a friend. One is wise to cultivate such arrangements.’

  He looked at all three of them, and then with old courtesy shook each by the hand before stepping back.

  ‘I’m grateful to you, gentlemen; that was a closer thing than I had conceived it.’ The three had straightened a little; young men, faces proud and clean and open. Did I look like that a lifetime ago? ‘Might you honour me with your names?’

  The compact figure took a step forward. The moustache was not yet a success, but there was nothing frail in the dark brown eyes or the voice. ‘Thomas Balfour, sir, and at your service.’

  ‘I am glad of it, sir.’

  The pale young man spoke, clear strong words from the well-boned face. Lord, the beauty of the young. ‘Henry Vyse.’

  The third stepped forward, but there was a grunt from behind Shay, and then Langdale’s growl: ‘Vyse? Son of Bernard Vyse – of Kent, and Sussex?’

  ‘Our lands are all forfeit, General. But I am still the son of Sir Bernard Vyse.’

  Langdale nodded. ‘A man could make no prouder boast. And your mother was Hester Carraway.’ A nod, and Langdale grunted again. ‘Give thanks to the Lord nightly, young man, that you got from your father your heart but not your looks.’

  The third man, heavy-set and slow-spoken, was Michael Manders, and again Langdale was interested. ‘Your father was beside me at Marston, young man. Losing him was as bad a blow as the battle itself.’

  ‘This was no longer a world in which he cared to live, sir; and he wanted no other death.’

  Shay was still staring into the blue eyes of Henry Vyse; the jaw was solid Vyse, whatever Langdale said, but not those eyes. Hester Carraway, by God. He saw a smile, heard a laugh through the decades, sighed a growl at the opening of a bodice. If I had sired, Lord, might it have been sons like these?

  Vyse spoke. ‘What happens now, sir?’

  ‘It will not be the season for Generals for some while. I must get Langdale abroad.’

  ‘How?’

  Manders. Shay’s eyes narrowed and hardened at him. ‘Secretly.’ He looked at the others. ‘Take a mug of beer in the mill here, but do not stay for a second one. Return to your normal pastures, but not for three days at least and not without well spying the land.’ He gave them a heavy nod. ‘Again, my thanks to. . . Why did you come after me, by the by?’

  Vyse again: ‘You. . . looked a sporting gentleman, sir. A man for a deed not a word.’

  Manders, louder: ‘Not enough of that in these days.’

  Three of the King’s bloods, standing in the mill-yard dirt. They’d have been too young for most of the fighting. The clothes were of good quality and fine style, but not new. Balfour’s in particular were worn, and perhaps even repaired in one or two spots. A last so-ho! for the old world.

  Vyse added, ‘Lady Sarah Saville said that your cause would always be a good one.’ Ah, Sarah, if only that were true.

  Shay smiled heavy. ‘You’re bold young men, and sharp.’ He looked at each of the three faces in turn. ‘I will have need of you. A message will come. You’ll not know how or from whom. But there’ll be no doubting it, and when it comes you’ll oblige me by not hesitating.’

  Vyse’s eyes widened a fraction. Manders started to speak, stopped, and then merely nodded.

  ‘Good lad.’

  Then the two older men were up on their replacement horses and through the gate and away, and even the memory of them seemed doubtful to the three left standing stupid in an unknown mill, looking at each other and their muddy boots and trying to recall how they came there.

  Doncaster early on a Sunday: the first of the sun rising out of the distant German Sea, turning the tower of St George’s pale, so that its stones seem more a part of the opaque sky in which it stands, alone and aloof on the edge of the town, than of the shadowed, furtive streets that scurry from its base.

  In them, the town is starting to stir, with its first shiftings and scratchings of morning. Stray dogs begin to snuffle and forage in the gutters. In Frenchgate, in the shadow of the town wall, two sleepy whores stare up sullen and bleary at a window across the street, in which a trim maid is getting dressed. From somewhere, a thoughtless hammering and clattering of wood as a stall is assembled. At gates and junctions and doorways across the town, from the river to the ruins of the old leper house of St James, sentries shift feet, and swap hands on the pikes that prop them up, and try a different shoulder against a pillar, and nod and droop and scowl and roll furred tongues around sour mouths in the weird drifting half-world between sleep and life.

  From the St Sepulchre gate, shouting and then the rumble and rattle of hooves at the trot.

  A military town now, Doncaster, but comfortable with it: the base of operations for the siege of Pontefract a day’s march away, it bustles confident, with the self-righteous imperative of duty and no danger. The soldiers thieve and scuffle and harass the girls, but there’s money enough flowing, for the innkeepers and the tailors and the smiths, for the pimps and the dips and the dice-sharps, and the town feels prosperous and satisfied as it wakes.

  The hooves echoing from different corners of the town now, tricksy and unsettling and unseen in the winding streets. The heavy breaths of horses standing in the High Street. Uninterested glances from sentry posts and windows. Words to a soldier, insistence, a shrug. Boots on a wooden stair. Voices again, then shouts and the vicious hiss of swords drawn, a grabbing at half-dressed men, wild eyes and anger and fear, and boots on the stair again and the sentry with a blade at his throat and the doorway to the High Street explodes in figures, wrestling and dragging and cursing. A scuff
le around the horses, the animals edgy and shifting and hard to mount. Shouts, orders, boots slipping clumsily out of stirrups that won’t stay still. Always the shouting, exhortation and intimidation and the Lord God invoked for all sides and purposes on his violated sabbath. ‘Move, damn you! Up! Mount up!’ Sword-points at breasts, a pistol jammed into a shirt front. ‘Up, damn you, or die here! Help him, then.’ Glances, curses, a chance, a lunge and a sudden frenzied scuffling, clumsy grappling for arms and weapons. ‘No! We don’t—’ and blades are rattling at each other and the Doncaster morning finally snaps in a pistol shot, and a scream, and now the swords cannot be stopped because blood can smell blood, and the swords are bickering and chattering and nothing is certain in the scrum of frightened animals, and from the muddle of shouts come more cries of pain, affronted and furious, and final. A moment of stupid bewilderment, because the works of men are inexplicable to themselves above all, then insistence and orders and the hurried sheathing of weapons and the grappling with saddles and reins, and the horses whirl and stutter, and then the hooves batter away down the cobbles like musket volleys.

  Two men die on the cobbles, pale and half-dressed and shocked, and cold.

  With a mighty thump, both of the pair of elegant doors burst open and before they had slammed against the walls the explosion himself was in the room, the big features angry, the hands still held high and flexing and unflexing as if looking for something to throttle, striding forward unstoppable by any earthly force. ‘Rainsborough is dead!’

  Oliver St John was standing on a low platform, head held high, one hand cocked against his hip and the other poised in elegant gesticulation, the long lace cuff rendering the wrist apparently lighter than air; his breeches were deep and heavy black, which only emphasized the richness of the doublet, brown turning to gold: a Chief Justice of England, and he looked and felt it. He raised an eyebrow.

  Cromwell needed a Royalist cavalry troop on which to vent his anger. ‘Hacked down in a Doncaster street while the Army snored!’

  St John contrived not to lower his chin, but the eyes dropped into a frown. ‘God be with him and grant him rest.’ He glanced at the man working in front of him, hands still full of palette and brushes and now staring uncomfortably between his patron and the newcomer. The man had never met Master Cromwell, but Master Cromwell was the most dangerous man in the country. Master Cromwell was also, very obviously, in a black blazing fury.

  ‘I pray that he may. He is unlikely to do as much for us.’

  St John frowned again, sighed, and then waved the artist away. The artist retreated hurriedly and happily, head down and still clutching his tools.

  ‘Not to imply anything less than complete Christian charity in you, Cromwell, but Rainsborough was hardly a convenient person for us.’ He stepped down from the platform and strolled to the easel.

  ‘He was a brave man, and a man of princ—’

  ‘Spare me.’ St John peeked round the easel at his new eternal self. ‘For us, he was a damned dangerous nuisance.’

  Cromwell would not stand still. ‘He remains so. Thomas Scot and his group are crying murder and conspiracy. They will not accept that this was a Royalist assassination. Rainsborough is like to be their first Leveller martyr, and they will use him to make all the mischief they can.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘They demand an investigation.’

  St John nodded. ‘Then we should give them one.’

  ‘Scot himself is our chief intelligencer. You countenance unleashing him – in his current mood? He will upend society – he will upend the Army, if he can.’

  St John was scowling at his other face. ‘Mm. Not him, of course. But I have a better man.’

  ‘I have better men digging privies.’

  A pained smile. ‘More apt, and more able. I got him some clerkship – Cursitor’s fines – and use him on discreet errands. A man of great shrewdness and great good sense.’

  ‘Godly?’

  ‘Not ungodly. I don’t think we need bring our Lord into this overmuch. Baines!’ The last a roar, and a head appeared between the doors immediately. ‘Baines, find Thurloe. Find him wherever he lurks, and have him to Master Cromwell before day’s end.’

  MERCURIUS FIDELIS

  or

  The honeſt truth written for every Engliſhman that cares to read it

  From MONDAY, OCTOBER 26. to MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2. 1648.

  WEDSNEDAY, OCTOBER 28.

  ECENT events do ſurely ſhow that the Lord GOD doth puniſh wickedneſs, and that as he ſo briefly allows the unrighteous their vain hopes, ſo doth he reward the righteous for their faith. Every phenomenon in nature, ſome men believe, hath its oppoſite, ſo the nettle hath the dock etc. Perhaps likewiſe in the affairs of men doth the LORD guarantee a right balance and equanimity, ſeemly unto his creation. On October 28. there died at Wincheſter Lady Blanche ARUNDELL, widow of Thomas, Baron Arundell of Wardour, and ſhe was buried next her heroic huſband in their vault at TISBURY. Rightly doth ſhe lie beſide her huſband, for ſhe proved equally a warrior and a true heart. The ſtory of her defence of her houſe at Wardour, aſſiſted by the mereſt of her maids and ſervants and children, againſt fully one hundred times their number of mercenaries and rebels, is become a legend of the rightful ſtruggle in this Kingdom and a worthy ſign of the defiance of Kingly government againſt the cankers that ſo beſet it. The loſs of ſo great a heart to the loyal cauſe might be taken as a victory for the rebels, but that we may all rejoice that the Lord GOD hath taken unto himſelf so precious a ſoul.

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29.

  Not more than one day after, the LORD showed his juſt command of nature. Having taken off a righteous ſoul and thereby given the unGodly cauſe perhaps to rejoice, he cauſed the deſtruction of an unrighteous ſoul, and showed the faithful a full meaſure of his mercy and truſt. Colonel Thomas Rainſborowe was the moſt brutal of men, if ſuch he may deſerve to be called, that ever took up arms in the miſbegotten cauſe. He was a ſelf-proclaimed leveller of ſociety, a breaker of the right order of the world, who had ſhown his inhumanneſs in every action of this war in which he partook. While taking his eaſe in Doncaſter, muſing on the ſtarvation and further deprivation of the poor inhabitants of Pontefract who yet reſift the onſlaught of the unGodly, he was ſlain in the public ſtreet, like a cur or vagrant, in an heroic ſally by a few of thoſe men he thought to have bottled up in Pontefract. This act of valour was the braveſt yet by the defiant defenders of that town, and yet may not we ſee in it the hand of the Lord GOD himſelf meting his rightful puniſhment upon thoſe who would upſet the proper order that he has commanded?

  [SS C/T/48/9 (EXTRACT)]

  Oliver Cromwell: Member of Parliament but the greatest threat to that Parliament; the most devout of men, and the most brutally effective in war; the pre-eminent General of the age, victor of innumerable battles and two wars; the man with the word of the Lord in his mouth and the scourge of the Lord in his hand. Oliver Cromwell, staring up at him from behind the table, two great dark eyes glaring out of the heavy features.

  John Thurloe stood silent, slowly unclenched and then clenched one hand, tried to hold the mighty stare.

  ‘Master St John reports you a man of tact, a man of intellect, a man of determination.’ The voice seemed to come from the heavy timbers of the table.

  ‘I owe Master St John much.’

  ‘You neither challenge nor endorse his description.’

  What game is this? Cromwell the man of prayer. Cromwell the man of war. Thurloe thought for a second, and then shook his head very slightly.

  ‘St John reports you a man to be trusted to the uttermost.’

  ‘I own a duty to my masters, and a duty to my God, and I hope that I know when and how to choose between them.’

  A nod. A pause. ‘You are not a voluble man, Master Thurloe.’

  Thurloe smiled slightly.

  Cromwell nodded again. ‘I like that.’

  Sir,

&nbs
p; the assassination of Rainsboro by a sally from the Pontefract garrison has put Cromwell into a fury at the slow progress of the siege. His fire is the greater, because the radical men of his clique, principally the republican Thomas Scot, a sympathiser to the so-called Levellers and still spymaster to the Parliament, saw Rainsboro as their own particular hero. They have been quick to cry treason and half-heartedness in all directions, and they now present this incident as a test of the commitment of Army and Parliament to reform. Irregardless of policy and strategy, Cromwell must satisfy these radical men or risk a break with them.

  A man called Thurloe has been set to investigate the affair at Doncaster.

  Faithfully, S. V.

  [SS C/S/48/23]

  Colonel Thomas Rainsborough died many times, and had lived many lives, in the letters and pamphlets that recorded his death. Each page, each leaf in the whirling autumn storm, told its own particular truth.

  Colonel Thomas Rainsborough had been a coward and a warrior, a traitor and a crusader, a monster and a saint. He had lived a life of humility, of kindness, of purity, of peace, of passion, of hatred, of debauchery, and of blood.

  He was killed by knives, by swords, by pistols, by a fall from his horse, and by a strange and terrible pox that crept over his flesh in the course of one night and left his whole body cankered and grotesque. His last words were for God, and against God, for a King and for a Republic, of defiance and of fear, and when he opened his mouth only a vile grey phlegm oozed out.

  He was left a blooded, broken mess in the Doncaster street, and carried into the sky with face perfectly unmarked.

  Angry men in mobs tell their own truth, and thousands of them – it may have been two thousand or it may have been ten thousand – marched through London in Rainsborough’s funeral. It had rained for two days, and continued to rain, drooping the rosemary sprigs in their hats and the soggy ribbons of remembrance. The roads were mud, an oily treacherous swamp under their boots that only encouraged them to huddle closer together, arms around shoulders or hands clutching the coat in front. Snaking through the ancient streets, the crowd steamed and splashed – a stumbling, cursing, seething organism looking for a way.