Traitor's Field

by Robert Wilton

  ‘He didn’t go for Rainsborough himself?’

  ‘Not at first. He said he needed to be flexible. To command the situation where needed. I remember him saying to his brother, and to Mr Teach, to listen out careful for the signal.’

  ‘So who actually went for Rainsborough?’

  ‘Captain Thomas Paulden, Lieutenant Austwick and Mr Teach. And me, too. We rode to the inn, where Rainsborough was, all quiet and innocent-like through the centre of town, and nobody knew what we were after. Then Captain Thomas rode on to the north bridge to prepare our escape there.’

  ‘So there were only three of you for the deed itself?’

  ‘Had to be.’ Blackburn temporarily rediscovered some of his superiority. ‘Had to be inconspicuous. And now we’ve to get into the inn, see? The Lieutenant, he knocks and says, all confident, “We have urgent letters for the Colonel, from General Cromwell.” We’d talked about this earlier, and it worked just to plan. The sentry, he was half-asleep, and he doesn’t give much attention to us. Lets us into the yard, and then waits in the gateway. He’s not looking at us any more. He doesn’t know he’s already admitted the biggest threat he’ll ever face!’

  ‘What then?’

  Blackburn’s eyes were alive, intent. ‘Rainsborough’s Lieutenant meets us, and he gets the same story, and swallows it, and he leads Lieutenant Austwick and Mr Teach up to Rainsborough’s room. I stay in the yard – with the horses – someone needs to keep watch, see? Minute or two later—’

  ‘Who was giving the orders?’

  ‘Orders? No one, in truth. Mr Teach, perhaps; we’d got used to him as a man for a tight game. Few minutes later they’re down again, Rainsborough and his Lieutenant being pushed ahead. Mr Teach says to me, “Get him in!”, him meaning the sentry, and I immediately grab the sentry in and put him down and the others go into the street, and I put the horses out after them, and everyone’s sort of milling around a moment, and then I see that the sentry is up and looking to interfere and I only had time just to put him down again, nothing fancy, knock him on the nose, always slows them down and makes them think a bit.’ There was part of the young Blackburn that Shay was warming to considerably. ‘But somehow it’s started off in the street now, behind me, and I’m watching the sentry and trying to get out and still wanting to make sure he’s staying down and then it’s shouting and swords and we’re all in God’s hands. In the muddle Rainsborough and his Lieutenant go down.’

  ‘Who actually killed them?’

  ‘Couldn’t say, sir. The others between them. Captain William Paulden, he’d turned up now. Mr Teach, Lieutenant Austwick – but I couldn’t say which. Everyone was armed and angry, and maybe you know what it’s like.’

  Shay nodded slightly. He knew what it was like. He was lost in the scene for a moment. It had indeed been a bold and tight game. He watched Blackburn subsiding uneasily, tongue licking at lips still, the energy of the exploit echoed in the describing, and saw decades of young faces like him, uncowed by experience and the sentimental over-attachment of the old to life.

  And he couldn’t overcome a sense of unreality about the scene he’d heard described.

  April 16. 1649 – Mary, d. of Sir Anthony and the late Isabelle Astbury, m. Sir Henry Lowell, Baronet, of Leicester.

  Astbury House: the study: Sir Anthony Astbury seated at his table, straight-backed, eyes switching constantly from the words appearing tiny under his hand in the flyleaf of the family Bible, and the couple in front of him.

  Sir Henry Lowell, Baronet, of Leicester returned his father-in-law’s glances with indulgent respect. A decent man, Astbury: a generous dowry, with the prospect of the house eventually, and a handsome daughter, who would be a loved and loving wife and a fine mother.

  Sir Henry Lowell had come through the 1640s well enough. Enough bravery at the start; enough prudence at the end. He had the wounds, heroically won, to impress a daughter; and the contacts, carefully cultivated, to impress a father. In recent years Lowell had kept his focus firmly in Leicestershire, and done solid and generous work with the militia, and the new men in the county knew him for a dependable man.

  Lady Mary Lowell was silent, a little sentimental at this last formality of her father’s, a little anxious at what Henry might be thinking, and newly alive and purposeful and happy.

  Rachel sat in the corner, forgotten and futile and a little jealous.

  Mortimer Shay, Colonel Morrice and Cornet Blackburn, now shadows in the dusk at the edge of a spinney, a grey-green world. The animals of evening were beginning to emerge, with odd calls and rustles among the leaves.

  ‘This is the Preston road. Travel wisely and in the shadows, but as fast as you may, until you reach the inn. There a wash and a shave, and be gone before dawn. After that you may go more carefree; try to act so. You should have mounts by noon tomorrow. You may try for a boat in Liverpool or Lancaster, depending which road the wind blows you.’ Shay looked into the two gloomed faces. ‘You have the words I gave you safe in memory? The locations?’

  A residual awe kept Blackburn silent. Morrice nodded. ‘We do.’ He reached out his hand. ‘We owe you all thanks, sir.’

  Shay grunted, and shook hands with both. ‘These days His Majesty can give you little enough of glory or gold for your loyalty. God speed.’

  He turned and vanished into the greyness.

  The regiment in camp at Banbury, day retreating pale from the sky. As evening became colder and slower, the men huddled closer together, kicking at the ground with practised glances as they thought of sleep, warming themselves with convivial chatter. Life, in this evening, a dry coat and good men around you, seemed gently rather grand. Men sat in clumps, shoulders pressed together, the aloof habits of individuality long forgotten. Cards and knucklebones were produced and peered at with quiet concentration and laughter. Pipes emerged long and frail from inside pockets. Tales were told, chronologies repeated; history can keep you warm.

  Hewson’s regiment refused to go to fight in Ireland – and didn’t that show the Generals at last? – one man told me a Major got punched in the face – musket it was, right up his nose – no more fighting until our Leveller demands get met – pay first – of course, pay first – except they can’t pay first, pay ever, because they’re bankrupt in the wars. (And didn’t it feel strangely, wildly good that the real confrontation had begun?) Kicked them all out, though, no pay – so what? – no pay anyway. Whalley’s regiment wouldn’t turn out for their officers – seized their colours, they did – dug in – like a siege, they said – and tell us about Scrope’s regiment. I heard the Colonel was in tears when they wouldn’t obey. Not so smug now, are they?

  And here we are. All the regiments of true believing men starting to gather, and then we’ll see what the Generals say. The Army is now about men like us: we’ve reclaimed it from the hands and ideas of the politicians. Fellowship has become our cause, and the Army is fellowship.

  The evening heavier. Eventually sleep.

  Then the nightmare: the earth shuddering and the heads screaming and the drowsy clusters of men dragging themselves awake and somehow up, and staggering and clutching for shoulders and weapons and clarity and the nightmare is on them. The nightmare is Cromwell, vast leather-and-metal men on rampaging horses, exploding dark out of the night, monstrous grey-brown shadows with banshee swords and a madness of noise. The stupid stumbling self-protecting surrendering men are knocked spinning aside like clods of mud under the hooves. It’s not even a fight: a rampage, a rout, a rounding-up of cattle.

  Shay and Teach came to a fork in the road, a choice of muddy lanes.

  ‘We part here, I think.’ Teach’s voice made nothing of it, and the face was blank as usual. ‘Ireland’s this way. I think I smell it.’

  Shay smiled, and nodded. He took a long look at Teach, sure on the horse and implacable.

  Then a whim. ‘Teach: a last fancy, if you’ll indulge me.’ Teach waited. Shay pulled from his inner pocket the letter found on George Astbury’s body
, and stretched over the two horses’ heads to pass it. ‘You recognize this? One of yours?’

  Teach took it, frowned, glanced at it, and then looked up warily. ‘Yes. From Pontefract. How did—’

  ‘It was among Astbury’s papers. I wondered if there was some significance, above the ordinary. I couldn’t see a hidden message in it. Some special cypher?’

  Teach glanced at the page again. ‘You couldn’t see it because there isn’t one. If the Pauldens or I had anything secret to pass, the letter would begin “Sir, I write. . .”, and the hidden message would be encyphered in one of the normal ways.’ He handed the paper back to Shay. ‘This is – no more than it seems. Why?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’ Carefully, Shay folded it again and replaced it in what had become its customary place in the pocket. A thump of gauntlets. ‘Come safe back, Teach. Ireland isn’t worth a man of your quality.’

  Teach grunted, grim. ‘I come pretty cheap, Shay.’ Then he turned, and was gone into the mud.

  Colonel John Morrice, dangling at the end of a rope, seeking a composure to counter the burning of his shoulder muscles, and not finding it in the unbidden memories of how he had come to be where he was.

  The journey to the coast so much smoother – their confidence growing with each warm day in dry clothes, each magical provision of horse or bed with the words provided by Sir Mortimer Shay. The decision – a quieter road – Lancaster rather than Liverpool or Preston – and so smoothly onward to the town. Then the misunderstanding – dusk in the Three Mariners – a watchful man – unease – the word – the confusion – suspicion – escape. And so back to the wandering and the fear – a different inn – cold and desperation and how stupid can a tired man be? – the pushing and the begging and the suspicion worse – and the watchful man again and then the sentries.

  Capture – and sleep – and bitterness – and anger – and determination again – and here he was, dangling halfway down the curtain wall of York Castle.

  A last scalding clutch of strength in his arms to hold himself at the end of the rope – I am a man yet and all my years will be worth something to me in this moment – toes kicking against the smooth stone and eyes scrambling for some steady glimpse of the ground beneath – flat? grass? – and now he was falling, the stupid infantile bewilderment of the fall, and then the thump, somehow heard before felt, and then felt in elbows and shoulders and aching leg-bones.

  Old bones. Old joints, and fraying old muscles, pulling the body together and up against the wall, to gasp for breath and count its blessings and bruises. I am a man yet.

  What next can fate bring me?

  Fate could next bring him Cornet Michael Blackburn – a younger man, fitter, lither, but not as experienced in these little feats – Blackburn scrabbling down after him, frantic clutching at the rope, feet slipping desperately on the stone, shoulders spasmodically stopping him on the descent but not controlling him, and now – dropping down the wall and jostling Morrice as he came and landing hard, some click or crack of stone on stone. But no, not stone. In the grey huddle of Blackburn, collapsed at the base of the wall, a single sharp beam of whiteness lances up into the night towards the moon: his shin-bone.

  Morrice swallowing his revulsion, while his instinct started to test and comfort and work at the body beneath him. The young man was moaning miserably. Head held, cushioned, arms moved, back – the moaning of other aches coming as descant – other leg, and now the mess of the broken leg.

  ‘Colonel. . .’

  My mistake.

  ‘Leave – leave me he—’ It swung into a cry as Morrice straightened the leg out.

  Fate wants me here after all.

  ‘Don’t worry, lad, couldn’t get far without you anyway.’ Somewhere there were shouts and boots in the night.

  ‘Colonel, you must. . . I’m so cold. . .’

  ‘All’s right, lad. We’ll stick here together for now.’

  Politics and religion: at dawn, a man stands alone beside St Paul’s Cathedral. The first of the sun is far above him, trying to kindle something from the broken stump of the cathedral spire. The man’s hands are tied behind him. Beside him, the buttresses jag thin into the sky like so many impassive pikemen.

  The city has been edgy for several days now. There have been wild stories; rumours and portents. There has been a toing and froing of soldiers, angry and afraid. Sometimes a shouting, and the animal and metallic sounds of skirmish, half-heard among the warren of lanes like a fishwife’s tale, and doubted. London’s citizens are quieter these days. Riots are an eternal feature of city life, and the Army coming to crush them; but it’s becoming hard to distinguish the Army from the riot. People stay at home. Business is down.

  A volley of musket fire crackles across the morning; the bound man staggers as if trying to stay upright in the wind, and drops.

  Another church, soft honey stone in the heart of the little market town. It’s Thursday in Burford – market day – but only a few wary traders are setting up stalls and carts. It’s been heard that the Army has hundreds of mutineers locked in the church. The lanes around have become forbidden places, places of mysterious danger like the nights, with noises heard distant and strange. As the sun starts to warm the stone, and a few valiant cries come from the marketplace, three men are stood up against the thickest yew in the churchyard and shot to death with muskets, one after the other, shivering and wild, slumping onto the body of the man before and then all dragged away.

  Cromwell’s Army is at war with itself.

  The deaths of Leveller leaders in London and Oxfordshire had become papers in Mortimer Shay’s pocket by the time he trotted through a warm afternoon to Astbury. The brick frontage glowed in the sun, and something of the grandeur of the house – the ranks of mullions and the high gables – caught his mood.

  He held back his question until after supper, when Anthony Astbury was flighty with wine and warm by a fire in his study.

  ‘A book? George was too much in books, and not enough.’

  ‘This would be a particular book: goodly size. It’s. . . an account book – from the King’s household; you might have seen him marking it very occasionally.’

  ‘He was a great reader, and he thought too much, when it were better that he were out hunting. Then when the time came for prudence, and restraint, when he might sensibly have buried himself in his books, he must be off like some empty-headed knight on a quest.’ Astbury stood, and picked up a dark volume lying on its side on his desk. ‘The only book we ever shared a concern for was this, the family Bible.’ He brandished it, two-handed, at Shay and then placed it carefully in a chest next to the desk. ‘The word of God and not too much of it, and the chronology of our family and our times.’ He locked the chest and stood, pocketing the key. ‘You are probably mentioned yourself, once or twice – my wife would have put you in.’

  It certainly wasn’t what Shay was after – not with Astbury checking it every other minute – but he’d break into the chest later just in case George had done something clever.

  ‘Quite right. Nice to keep up these traditions.’ Neither of them thought Shay believed it. ‘No matter. Probably destroyed or lost in the chaos after Preston.’

  In a dim corridor between the back of the house and the front, Shay found Rachel. But she hadn’t seen the book either.

  ‘If he had it, and wanted it to himself, it would have been in that study room. Your room. And you obviously haven’t found it.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘But I never saw him with the like outside. Even near the end – when he was more. . . frantic. It’s important – or you wouldn’t be after it so hard.’

  ‘Royal accounts.’ It wasn’t a bad lie, and he decided to stick to it. ‘These things are best kept together. Hardly means much now, does it?’

  He walked with her a few steps, his bulk next to her slender glide, and she stopped at a window in the corridor. Outside, the evening was making an early experiment with summer, the last dusty
light encouraging the birds.

  ‘You said he was more frantic. You meant just before Preston – before his death.’

  She was watching the lilac-green-greys of dusk through the window. ‘It was almost as though he knew he would die. As if he had to tidy up his life – do all the moving, and the thinking, and the worrying that he wouldn’t otherwise have time for. Bustling around, striding to and fro in the garden – sometimes with Jacob; usually on his own. Riding off for an hour or a day.’

  Surely I don’t have to search the whole bloody garden. ‘Did he talk much? Did he say what he worried at?’

  Rachel looked up at him for a moment, as if for inspiration. ‘No. But I remember him discussing the – the Levellers – these men in the Army. More than once he started a conversation with my father about them. Their principles. Whether they couldn’t be somehow loyal to the Crown.’ She looked up at him again. ‘Father told me of the fighting between Cromwell and the Levellers. Is that what George wanted? Was he. . . aiming at this?’

  ‘I can’t imagine what George wanted. The idea of some compact between the royal interest and these radical egalitarians seems lunatic. But. . .’ – Rachel watched Shay’s face as he spoke, now gazing into the evening and momentarily less sure – ‘George was foolish, but not stupid. This obviously meant something to him.’ He shook his head. ‘What else?’

  She shrugged, the pale shoulders held up for a second in a girl’s imitation of the gesture. ‘That was – oh, and there was Pontefract.’

  Pontefract again?

  ‘He referred to it two or three times. There was fighting there – the siege. And then, of course, the soldier came.’

  ‘What soldier?’

  Rachel glanced up, and back to the window. Then she raised the fingers of one hand and ran them deliberately down the window, watching them bump over the lead veins. ‘That was a. . . a terrible evening.’ Her fingertips were cold now, and she pressed them against her bodice. ‘A storm, and then when we were at supper, John coming in to say that there was a messenger for George. A soldier, it turned out, from Doncaster; but it was to do with Pontefract, he said. And badly wounded. George sat with him a while – Mary tried to help nurse him, but George would only take advice, not help – and then the soldier died, during the night. We barely saw him. Anyway, that was George’s last night here. The next day he went off to the war. To die.’