Traitor's Field

by Robert Wilton

  ‘We’re exposed here.’

  ‘Mm. But we can see if anyone approaches. And we can be seen as three and no more. We are not here by chance.’

  A grunt.

  From the east, a wind was coming from the distant sea, unsettling the leaves and playing with the horses’ manes. Hands adjusted cloaks on shoulders, shifted on reins, stroked a restive animal.

  Then, out of the west and the last glow of the sun, a rider came at a canter, a shuddering shadow against the light and a pounding on the ground.

  The horses’ ears pricked up, and the men shifted too: peering, stretching, glancing at each other’s murky faces. The rider loomed quickly, the noise growing and the shadow shading into horse and man, arms on reins and a high broad body. At last the horse juddered to a halt in front of the three, and in the twilight they saw the ghost of Nottingham Castle, the memory of the mill.

  He looked at them individually, a brief but intent scrutiny. Balfour had got rid of the moustache.

  A nod to each, as if accounting their good order. ‘Vyse. Balfour. Manders.’ They nodded back, uncertainly.

  ‘My name is Mortimer Shay.’ The confidence bespoke a new beginning. ‘I’m glad to find you here, truly.’

  He sat up on the horse, stretching his shoulders. ‘You are crossing the bounds, gentlemen. I give you fair warning, and I urge you to heed me close, and make your choice with no boy’s bravado, for those days are gone from you for ever.’ Their eyes were fixed on him. ‘Ride with me now, and I promise you no protection of law or grace. I fight for what we know to be worthy and pure, but I fight in the shadows, and in those shadows I have lost sight of the scruples of justice and the little details of Christ’s morality.’

  Again the scrutiny of the darkling faces. ‘Ride with me now, and we shall try the mettle of this new world of theirs.’ He pulled at his reins in the gloom, and the horse jumped and spun and carried him away. A moment, a glancing and a swallowing, and then the shadows – three of them – hurried after him into the west.

  By the beginning of the third week in July, Thurloe was among the last ripples of the English Midlands before the terrain bunches up into the peaks and moors of the north. The road moved slow and listless through the humid morning, pulling itself up valleys and falling away invisible behind turns in the hills. He remembered from before the feeling of a place lost to the rest of the country.

  There were no signs or markers to show the road, and few other humans to guide him. The road drifted among the folds in the landscape, edged with scrubby hedge or nothing. Then the oak, as he remembered it, and an opening in the hedge and a track disappearing into woods. Buried within the hedge end a fallen stone marker, with the name of the house smoothed away.

  The track only turned past the woods – another trick of the gentle slopes – took him out of sight of the main road, then straightened. Thurloe and his horse were at the mouth of a perfect avenue of beech trees, not yet fully mature, but healthy and exactly aligned and spaced and drawing the eye instantly to a house at the end, its details blurred by the summer foliage.

  He’d come via Doncaster. The Adjutant was still there, glad to take a drink with another quiet, intelligent man and talk a little. He had told Thurloe of the chasing of the courier. The government man in Doncaster – that would be Lyle – demanding three soldiers for an errand one morning, follow a man and tell where he went – always these little errands, and the Adjutant had learned not to ask questions – a sordid side to a war that was already sordid enough, wouldn’t you say? Yes, Thurloe would say. The soldiers had followed their man as ordered, throughout the day; then, near Leek, as evening brought tiredness and gloom, a mistake and a scuffle and an exchange of shots, the man they were following escaping into the gathering night. Wounded, they’d said. For sure.

  Leek: the courier had been heading towards the line of march of the Scottish army that had been invading for King Charles. Thurloe had checked the dates: the courier had been tracked and lost just a day or two before the battle at Preston had destroyed that army and the King’s last hope. Was that significant?

  And was any of this connected to the strange suggestion in J. H.’s letter to the Reverend Beaumont? An association between Royalists and Levellers was surely improbable. But the suggestion was troubling enough. And – he’d checked – the suggestion had been made elsewhere, too; publicly. Border in The Kingdom’s Weekly Intelligencer had proposed it, and there had been hints elsewhere. What path is there through this?

  Alone as he was this time, the strict discipline of the beech avenue struck him uneasily. Out of the casual chaos of the English landscape, hidden in the heart of the country, someone had forced precision. It made the house at the end of the avenue somehow ominous. The brick and the yellow stone window frames glowed in the morning, but the windows were blank and dull. The beauty of the place, the harmony of the building within the scented silence, reinforced the idea of something illicit concealed among the hills, far from the dirty dangers of England at war. Thurloe stood under the warm frontage, watching the creeper as it started to explore the window sills and the moss blotching the flagstones, and trying to place it all in the same world as London, and Doncaster, and skirmishes in the twilight. Three shallow steps up to the door.

  An afternoon in an inn, with a map and a mug of wine. And memories. He’d been in the district himself, hadn’t he, not so long afterwards? His seedy work of scrabbling money from compounding Royalists. The Astburys. Astbury House was near Leek. A rattling of memories in his mind. Something in the records he’d had back then: one of the Astburys was somehow very close to the King; that’s why he’d been given particular instructions to press the family. The reference had been vague, but somehow – had it been copied from somewhere else? – taking for granted an understanding that it no longer gave.

  And flashing among the rest, another memory: the young woman. An Astbury daughter, he’d guessed. In memory, there were golden streaks among the waves of her hair, but it had certainly been long and waving, emphasizing the slender body. Burning hottest of all was the memory of her anger – had she even said anything to him, though? – something raw and human within the world of careful compromises and little deceits. Thurloe tried to see himself wryly – the healthy joke of a married man looking twice at a lovely girl – and tried telling himself that the memory of the lithe body and the face hadn’t distorted his logic.

  In the present again: the front door, large panels of cracked and fading grey wood, opened.

  It wasn’t her.

  A maid, pretty enough, but not her. Not as far as Thurloe could remember. He introduced himself in general terms, and asked for Sir Anthony Astbury.

  Sir Anthony Astbury had gone early to a neighbour. Perhaps the mistress would see him. Mistress? Astbury was a widower, surely. The door closed again.

  The blank panels of the door. The warmth of the morning across his shoulders. The distant bleating of sheep.

  The door opened, and Thurloe was ushered in, and up a flight of stairs to an open landing. ‘The mistress will see you, sir.’ The maid nodded towards a door. ‘She’s just in there.’

  The maid trotted down the stairs again, leaving Thurloe adrift on the landing. After a minute, he sat on one of two dark oak chairs that guarded a table under a portrait of a man in court dress from the previous century.

  After several minutes, he was still there, occasionally straining his head up to the portrait above him, more often glancing towards the door. Am I forgotten? Am I being tested?

  He walked to the door, and knocked.

  He knocked again, and from inside heard words, indistinct.

  He opened the door.

  It was her.

  Thurloe was cataloguing the details of the young woman against his memory – the hair – couldn’t see any gold in it – slender body – a face somehow passionate – before he realized that she was only wearing a nightshirt – or some kind of undershirt. Loose, translucent white, billowing with her body as
she’d turned. He hurried an apology and retreated, pulling the door closed softly, as if she might not have noticed, while her eyes still burned at him.

  Rachel Astbury let out a breath, and sat down on a stool. Then she stood again, and watched the door.

  What am I doing?

  She ran her hands down her flanks, clenched them, and released them.

  Some kind of Government man visiting the house. Some threat legal or financial, perhaps. How should she receive him?

  Should I have received him at all?

  She had no memory of her mother in the role. How would my father receive him? But she could not make his fussy politenesses hers.

  How would Shay do it?

  Shay the rationalist; the manipulator; the fighter.

  To receive him formally is respectful. But I do not wish to respect him. To put him at his ease is appropriate, but I wish him uneasy. The parlour has too much of women’s humility about it. My father’s study is a man’s room – it would be his more than mine.

  Joanna’s swallowed surprise as she’d instructed her to send the man up. Another of Miss Rachel’s peculiars.

  It is theoretically dangerous to be alone with this man. But the chances that he has come here to do me harm are slight. It is improper to be alone with this man. But I know what I do, and my family cannot think me any more wilful than they already do; so only he can feel uncomfortable.

  Thurloe, outside, heard this time a clearly articulated invitation to enter. Again he lifted the latch and stepped in.

  She was still undressed. The light through the window made the nightshirt glow white.

  Rachel saw the effect she had on the man, and it gave her a moment to look at him. Not a soldier; no uniform, no obvious weapon. Dark clothes, and simple, but the hair worn long – not the austere styling of the puritans. The face: open, no cheekbones but strong nose and jaw, and a high forehead. Something about the eyes: a depth, a melancholy.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘My name is John Thurloe.’

  ‘What are you?’

  ‘I work for the Government.’ What am I, indeed? ‘I am charged with. . . protecting the sec—’

  ‘Which Government? The usurpers and regicides and demagogues in London?’

  ‘If you wish.’

  ‘I did not think I had any choice.’

  ‘It is the Government. You may choose to accommodate yourself to it or not. You would prefer an absence of government?’

  ‘You people killed my uncle.’

  ‘I am truly sorry. I would gladly wish that there had been any milder way of settling the differences of this country.’

  Rachel watched him carefully, looking for a hint of superiority or insincerity, but she could find none. His eyes seemed even sadder.

  Did she remember him?

  ‘I am Rachel Astbury,’ she said. She stepped forward to offer her hand. He could see her thighs moving against the dress and, faintly, the suggestion of her breasts. ‘You are welcome to the house.’

  He took the hand, cautiously. ‘Sir Anthony Astbury’s. . .?’

  ‘Sir Anthony Astbury’s out visiting.’

  ‘I mean to say, what are you to Sir Anthony Astbury?’

  She smiled, and was lovely. The smile brought an extra spark into the large brown eyes. He remembered her anger; it was a face for life, for emotions. ‘How silly of me. I am his daughter.’

  She was toying with him, childishly. He made an instinctive ‘ah’ of acknowledgement, but doubt had made him thoughtful again. Is this girl some fantastical dream? Some natural naïf? The probability was low. So this is performance, and I am chosen as audience. Why?

  ‘Miss Astbury, I apologize for disturbing you. I was in the district and I had one or two questions for your father – perhaps for you.’

  ‘And if I refuse to answer?’

  ‘That is your choice.’

  ‘Are you going to torture me?’

  ‘Probably not. You might answer the question, though, just in case that I—’

  ‘We know all about it: the savageries of your Army; your prisons; the kidnapping of children for ransom.’

  Flirtation was becoming frustration. ‘Of course. How do you know all about it?’

  ‘Your practices are no secret. You are the shame of Europe. I’m not afraid to say it.’

  ‘Obviously not.’ Is this ignorance or spitefulness or both? ‘But whatever you say of the Government, as an intelligent woman you should consider basing your private opinions on directly experienced facts and testimonies, and not the mummery play lies of your penny news-sheets.’

  ‘You can without any difficulty contradict me, but it is truth which you cannot contradict.’

  ‘I don’t mind you keeping your pride up with fantastical propaganda at my expense, Miss Astbury. But I don’t like to hear Plato wholly misapplied to justify it.’

  Rachel’s chin lifted for the next defiant spurt, but she caught herself. Her attempted superiority was becoming silliness. She frowned, and Thurloe watched the thought in her eyes. ‘Well then,’ she said, and it was a quieter Rachel Astbury now. ‘Between your prison and your Plato you seem to have me. What is your question?’

  ‘You mentioned an uncle, killed. That would be Sir George Astbury? Who died in the battle at Preston last autumn?’

  ‘It would.’

  ‘Once again, I offer my condolences.’

  ‘I’d prefer my uncle, or your defeat.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind. Your uncle was very close to the late King, I think.’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘He served him in some. . . official capacity? Military?’

  ‘I don’t know. He wasn’t a soldier, particularly.’

  ‘What title did he have? In the royal household, I mean.’

  Back in the world of politics and family and men, Rachel found part of herself outside the conversation. ‘None that I know of.’ Why was everyone so interested in George Astbury? Shay too—

  The thought of Shay made her cautious. What would Shay think of her in this conversation? Will he be proud of my boldness and my cleverness? What if he heard her discussing Uncle George like this? Was there anything wrong in it?

  ‘As I said, Miss Astbury, I have to involve myself with little administrative details of the Army and security. I’m trying to clarify one incident from that time – last autumn – just before Preston.’ She was frowning again. ‘A day or so before, a soldier came here I think.’

  Why should he care about the soldier?

  ‘Wounded, perhaps.’

  Why should I care?

  ‘One evening. Perhaps you remember.’

  Why these games of mind and word? Suddenly Rachel wanted to be out of the conversation, to strip off the veils of meaning and posture.

  ‘Yes. What of it?’

  Thurloe’s heart kicked at him. ‘What do you remember of the incident?’

  ‘There was nothing to remember.’ She was colder now, indifferent. ‘He arrived in the storm, badly wounded. During the night he died.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’ Too distracted now even to care about the point.

  ‘What did he say? Had he any message?’

  ‘Nothing. Only my uncle spoke to him. Then he died.’ She shrugged, and it made her seem younger. ‘Now you must excuse me, Mr Thurloe.

  I – I probably shouldn’t have received you like this.’

  ‘I’m very grateful that you did. Thank you, Miss Astbury.’

  She offered her hand again – it brought Thurloe close to the top of her breasts in the open collar of the nightshirt, and close again to those eyes – but the life had gone from them, and the hand was withdrawn quickly and she had turned away.

  Sir Anthony Astbury walked in through the front door as Thurloe was coming down the stairs. The old man insisted on receiving him – by turns suspicious and scared and hostile and ingratiating. Thurloe contrived some trivium left over from his previou
s visit, which successfully unsettled Astbury and then relaxed him when it was not immediately threatening, and presented himself as a respectful clerk anxious merely to keep all in order, which he knew was exactly what suited Astbury. The old man chattered of his desire to be co-operative, pressed wine on the deferential young official, and became quite lax in his tolerance of the new ways. Thurloe assured him that his host’s absence had been no trouble, that Miss Rachel Astbury had offered him a very correct welcome, and repeated his condolences at the regrettable loss of Sir Anthony’s brother the previous autumn. Miss Rachel had told him a curious story of a soldier coming out of the night just before Preston, and he hoped it might clarify some little detail for the Army: soldiers – a moment of shared superiority – seemed to care about such things.

  Sir Anthony Astbury confirmed his daughter’s story exactly but, even over a second glass of wine, could add no more. Nor could he be tempted into any indiscretion on the exact role his brother George had played in the royal administration.

  The grey front door closed behind Thurloe, and he trotted back between the beech ranks, glancing over his shoulder at the house and wondering at its histories.

  Josiah Talbot was later home, to his damp two rooms in Shadwell, than he had planned. But what had he to do at this home, anyway, and what sort of home was it, anyway, close enough to the river and London for the stench and the mould, but just far enough away to remind him of his distance from success? Was there wrong in a man taking a drink of an afternoon?

  He did not see the two men as they saw him, nor as they followed him, nor as they closed in once he was into the little house. These days he never saw the mighty Tower of London looming over his house. But while he stood for a moment in the centre of the first room, searching for a reason to have come home, the back room produced a masked figure and behind him he heard the door and spun to see a second.

  These are the incidental perils of a life on the edge of politics and the edge of poverty; these are the expectations of his fate. Josiah Talbot had in him drink and despair enough for an edge of nasal defiance in his voice. ‘What from Satan are you, then, eh? What—’