Traitor's Field

by Robert Wilton

  Dawn in the copse, and then it had started to rain, and still they could not move – ‘This’ll dampen the searchers’ enthusiasm’ – but the King was lost in a permanent shivering cold. Later in the day they emerged, mounted up again and hurried away with talk of Wales. More pounding exhausted miles, legs and back a constant ache, avoiding human contact as much as possible, stopping to rest, a blissful moment of ease on solid ground in warm sunshine and then a challenge barked out of the shadows and they were up and away again, and all the Severn crossings were guarded. Words muttered to him; they dared not risk it. So back again as they had come, the hours and the miles passing as distant figures on the horizon, half glimpsed as he lived with the aches and the deep tiredness. They rode through the night, and came to some new destination at dawn; but it wasn’t new, it was the place they’d left the day before. Familiarity made it a kind of comfort, but now there was talk of soldiers nearby. A day in hiding, and at last in the evening he was allowed into the house.

  Sleep and wakefulness were no longer distinct states. Instead he lived in weary haze between them, emerging once to voices.

  ‘. . . White Ladies here, and then to the border, but the crossings were guarded so we returned. We hid him today—’

  ‘Where?’ A voice he recognized, old and hoarse.

  ‘In an oak on the—’

  ‘In a tree?’ It was the voice of the man called Shay. ‘God’s sake, this is no game!’

  ‘We thought to make for Wales.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  But Shay could not be persuaded to explain why not Wales, and the military presence at the Severn crossings had spooked them all.

  Finally, hustled into a secret room: a fumbling in the corner of panelling, the snap of a sprung catch releasing, and a section of the wood coming loose. A candle pressed into his hand, and some bread and a pot. The urgent voices, telling him to hide, hide quickly. Then stumbling forward into the hole, the panelling pushed close behind him and the candle guttering and threatening to go out.

  This then is monarchy in England. A sordid past; a body to be buried. This is my inheritance, and I am the last relic of it.

  They were frustrating, tiring days of travel and waiting. Thomas Scot had been to London and come back again, a dogged old man determined not to lose clutch of possible victory over the Stuarts. Thurloe had made the same journey twice, and was feeling almost as old as Scot. Tarrant and Lyle came and went on searches and investigations and interrogations.

  Tarrant was as tired as the rest of them, but movement was his instinctive demonstration of relevance. He stepped to the table where Thurloe was reading papers, and knocked on it. ‘Military law. That’s the answer.’ He was looking at Scot.

  Scot and Thurloe glanced at him warily. There was a young Army Captain with them, and he looked startled – as if, the only representative of the military present, they were offering him the Crown personally.

  ‘Until now we’ve made no fuss. We must put the whole country on alert. Everyone must be looking for Charles Stuart.’

  ‘I disagree,’ Thurloe said. Tarrant’s volume always made his own words instinctively quieter. ‘We’ll make his sympathizers as active as his detractors.’

  ‘No time for half measures. Whole country must decide which side it’s on.’

  Scot said uneasily, ‘But military law? The Army?’

  ‘We just make a list of the most prominent Royalists and round them up. Make the pretender unpopular, too.’

  Scot: ‘Stuart’s protectors won’t use the obvious contacts, surely.’

  ‘We put pressure on them regardless!’

  Thurloe thought: I have such a list.

  While the conversation continued, he pulled from an inside pocket the sheaf of paper retrieved from the hearth in Worcester, placed it inconspicuous on the other papers in front of him.

  His closest examination of it had been the first, in the thrill of discovery. A list of names, presumably contacts for the Royalist network he’d been fighting. Names divided into groups, distinguished by letters or pairs of letters. Names followed by two or three letters, and then crude symbols – lines, circles, curves. But until he could decypher the symbols and letters, it was just a list of probable Royalists, and most of them would hardly be a surprise. He had put the sheaf away, looking forward to a quiet evening that had not yet come.

  Now he began to scan the pages again, absently.

  Lyle arrived, with reports of Royalist activity in the aftermath of the defeat at Worcester, and actions to suppress it. Scot listened without much interest. Thurloe glanced up at them. I have such a list, and I do not think I shall share it.

  It was instinctive, and his conscious mind caught up with it only slowly. The private correspondence with J. H. The investigation of Astbury, of Pontefract and Doncaster. The conversation with a Royalist agent in The Hague. The assault on Scot’s private ledger in London. And now he felt the pages under his fingers. Somewhere I have crossed a line.

  Lyle finished, and Tarrant picked up his theme. ‘This cannot be hard. They can only use the most trusted people, and we know who they are. Look, you – Captain – this is your part of the country – you too, Lyle – who are the most prominent Royalists ten miles around? As an example.’

  The Captain hesitated, but no one had anything else to say. ‘I – I don’t know. Havisham at Lichfield. And Smythe. Palmer at Rugely. Sir James Bohun near Cannock. The Giffords at Boscobel. There’s—’

  ‘Boscobel?’ Lyle said.

  ‘Near Stafford. There’s an old priory there; the White Ladies. But there’s only servants looking after the estate now.’ Tarrant started to speak, impatient, but now that he’d started the Captain was determined to carry on. ‘Marley at Wolverhampton. Whitgreave at—’

  ‘What name was that, Captain?’ Thurloe had looked up.

  ‘Whitgreave, sir. Thomas.’

  ‘You know him, Thurloe?’

  Thurloe shook his head, and buried himself in the paper again.

  A little petulant, the Captain finished. ‘Sir John Yates, and old Purvis, in Telford.’

  Even Tarrant felt that his idea had lost momentum, but repeated his push for prominent Royalists to be arrested to make life more difficult for the escaping King. Scot agreed to suggest it to Cromwell.

  The conversation petered out, and Scot left, followed quickly by Lyle and Tarrant.

  Unemployed but keen to seem active, the Captain remained standing, and then began to pace back and forth in front of the window until Thurloe asked him to stop.

  Thomas Whitgreave. There was a Whitgreave on his list. Surely worth a little wager. Thurloe looked again at the adjacent names. ‘Captain: do you know anyone – potential Royalist sympathizers, that is – named Brownlow, Hogg or Wolfe?’

  ‘There’s a Brownlow in Wolverhampton, sir. I don’t know the others.’

  Two lines away there was an unusual entry. Not a name, like the others, but the single letters W.L.P. An abbreviated name? A place?

  Some immediate memory of the conversation was calling to him.

  The dreams of the young Charles II:

  ‘There are soldiers at Boscobel again; searching the house and the White Ladies Priory. We barely got him out in time.’

  ‘They’re striking at random.’

  ‘So why come to a place twice?’

  I am a burden on the world. I am a burden on life.

  ‘You are more than these soldiers, surely.’

  ‘We must assume that there are men of wit against us. We must assume that men’s loyalties are known.’

  ‘We’re safe here with Whitgreave. He’s not been active for years.’

  Then a heavy hammering from below, and shouts, and swearing from the men near him, then one was lunging at him and pushing him into hiding and the noises from the world outside were muffled and all he had was darkness and the senses of his own body: heart, cold, bladder, his fingers in his hair.

  Then a burst of
light, blinking and confusion, and a word of reassurance, and somehow they had come through but now they had to move again. Another change of clothes, the King dressed as a servant, embarrassment and attempts at polite humour. Then riding again, a woman sharing his horse, plucky but dull-faced and her hand uneasily around his waist. Yellow Cotswold stone sickly sweet against the landscape, confinement again – another unfamiliar house with polite and wary strangers, a man and his very pregnant wife – and more consultations – talk of Bristol, of a ship – silence again, and more tedious waiting – and more consultations – no ship to be had in Bristol, and had the young King been recognized? – and soon they would have to move again – and through the thin wall the screams of the young wife, in some terrible pain.

  Tarrant slammed through the door and jumped into speech and pushed a paper onto Thurloe’s table. ‘Council’s had enough of these games. No more waiting and hoping. A public order for the apprehension of Charles Stuart. There it—’

  ‘This is idiocy!’

  A sly smile. ‘This is the Council of State, Thurloe. In case you’d forgotten, you work—’

  ‘This will put twice as many men against us as for us!’ His fist clenched, and he dropped it in impotent frustration onto the table. ‘I warned them. We have to—’

  ‘Do what you like. Doesn’t really matter.’ And Tarrant turned and left, without closing the door.

  Thurloe hissed out his anger, and dragged himself back into the map.

  If I was wanting a boat from here, where would I look? His finger followed the jagged line of the coast on the map.

  The young Captain had watched the exchange silently from a chair in the corner; an educated man, it transpired, who found working as Thurloe’s go-between to the Army a gentler and more pleasant task than the alternatives. ‘Can we try to guess where they’re headed, sir?’

  He looked up, irritable. ‘That’s what—’ We do not guess, Master Thurloe. Another glance at the map. ‘I’d rather do better than that.’

  ‘But how?’

  I have been trying merely to block this man: I am blindfolded, trying to get in front of him and flailing clumsily for his head.

  I must get beside him. I must get inside his head. I must see.

  Hypothesis: I have a network of loyalists. The purpose of this must be to give me practical support. I have spent years helping men like Langdale and Morrice and Blackburn escape; I know what contingencies may arise. I have this so arranged that if I find myself in, for example, Dorset needing a ship to the Continent, I have contacts who will help me.

  He reached into his coat, and pulled out the sheaf of papers.

  Do not try to break it. Try to understand how to use it.

  A contingency will arise in a particular location, not in the abstract. Potential supporters are relevant because of proximity. A list of supporters will most usefully be given geographically. So the individual or double letters dividing the list are most likely. . . counties.

  More than one ‘D’. Devon, Derbyshire. Dorset is Do.

  More specificity is required for this to be useful. So the double or treble letters after each name are likely the towns or villages where they live. But what then are the strange symbols that follow?

  Don’t try to break it. Try to use it.

  Hypothesis: I am in trouble. I need help. A blacksmith is no use to me if I need gold. An Earl is no use to me if I need a horse re-shod. So the list of my network tells me the practical benefit of each. What might a man in trouble need? Money. Food. A place to hide. A horse. A weapon. Or, of course, a ship.

  Thurloe tried to make the crude symbols mean something. A short vertical line: the mast of a ship? Or a musket? Or a man to give protection? Did two vertical lines mean the same as one, but just with greater capacity, or were they something different?

  ‘Sir?’

  I cannot outrun the fox, but I may out-think him. Do not chase the answer; anticipate it.

  I am in Dorset, and I seek a boat. I do not seek it in Yeovil or Dorchester, miles inland. He ran his finger across the map again. A boat would be sought at Weymouth, at Bridport, at Lyme, at Ware, at Sidmouth.

  Then through the entries in the list for Dorset. Can ‘Wy’ be anything other than Weymouth? ‘Ly’ anything other than Lyme? There were five names followed by ‘Wy’, and they seemed between them to use all of the symbols. Two entries for ‘Ly’, one followed by a flat ‘u’, the other by a short horizontal line.

  The short horizontal line featured frequently in the list. It featured after two names in ‘Yv’ – presumably Yeovil; inland. It was unlikely to be a boat.

  The flat ‘u’? He looked for entries offering only this symbol. One in Weymouth. One in Lyme. One in ‘Sdm’ – presumably Sidmouth. He checked through the rest. Only a handful, and all in places that seemed to be on the coast.

  Thurloe started to copy names onto a separate paper. The soldier watched him. After two minutes, Thurloe looked up, and took a breath.

  ‘Your instructions are these. See the names on this list. Higgins in Weymouth, Cobb in Abbotsbury, Marsden in Bridport, Limbry in Lyme, and so on and so on.’ He handed over the paper. ‘Each of these men is to be found, and watched.’

  The dreams of the young Charles II:

  A place called Trent, and the grim faces of his protectors, murmurs of a new order from Cromwell’s Government. A soft bed, and then an explosion of bells and shouts, someone hurrying into his room: ‘Your Majesty; thank God. The town’s alive with the news that you’re killed; someone claims they shot you.’ Am I so hated? Am I so invisible, that even alive I am dead? An attempted witticism. Another figure in the room, an argument: stay, away from the confusion, or go, while no one thinks the King alive. Stay, and the tedious days stretch past, long hours of boredom, dull cold room and dull cold men. Talk of boats. Shay, the dark ghost, appears and disappears, making arrangements as usual.

  Then they must move again. In the middle of the unreal, unresting, uneasy weeks, an insane fantasy of masquerade: disguise, a wedding party, ‘Majesty, this is Juliana Coningsby’ – a fresh pretty face shining out of the huddle of dour men, a flash of excited deference on her face – I am a man after all, and something more – and the suggestion of a curtsey and the pale warmth of her breasts over the lace – ‘she’ll be your bride for the day’ – and for one wonderful moment the possibility of a normal emotion, I will enjoy this because she is a pretty girl. Then again the hustling and the worry, the pretences and the sidelong glances, and the furtive looking behind, but beside him the young female body and a coy smile, and at the end of the day when the game was over, the peach cheeks and the red lips still close beside him, and a smile and a thrill and a gasp and he kissed her, and her eyes went wide and she sighed a breath into him, and then she was gone, and there was another huddled arrival at the back door of an unknown house.

  ‘Our priority is a boat. We must wait for him.’

  ‘He’s overdue, and badly. We can’t risk it any more.’

  ‘You said you trusted Limbry.’

  Shay, dark, grim: ‘Yes, I did. Perhaps he’s dead. Perhaps he’s frightened. Perhaps he thinks he’s being watched. We can’t risk waiting any more.’

  So on again. Bridport, a tired arrival in twilight, turning the final corner with the promise of an inn and a bed, and suddenly their horses were swamped with soldiers, a troop of them milling around and joking and complaining in the darkness. A murmur in his ear – ‘On, Sire, show no care’ – and nudging their horses through the men – ‘Way please, brave gentlemen, and leave some ale for us if you please’ – and so into the yard. Slipping down off the horse, holding himself up against its heaving flank, and being ushered away in the darkness towards the inn door, movements and voices around him, eyes watching, a pair of eyes frowning and following and then he was inside.

  Slumped in a chair by the fire. Have I never slept? And still the murmurs around him, the physicians with their patient.

  ‘We can’t stay in a pla
ce alive with soldiers.’

  ‘We can’t show that we care.’

  ‘He was recognized! In the yard. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Shay’s arranged a boat. The coast is only a mile off. We must wait.’

  Another arrival, heavy boots, bringing Shay’s voice: ‘Ill news. My man was watched; followed. I’m sure of it. If they think we’re here we can’t trust to the bluff.’

  So up again and out into the yard and out through a different gate, and behind them murmurs, and then a shout, and a hiss in his ear and the horse bucking and lurching and they were plunging into the night and someone had grabbed his rein and pulled them away into a lane and then eased them to a halt, and they waited in the darkness, begging the horses to breathe quietly and waiting for the sound of life coming into the lane that would mean capture and death. Then on again, another town, another arrival, more soldiers in the streets. A bed at last, and fitful sleep, and through the door and the light-chinked floorboards came the raucous jollity of the soldiers relaxing in the room beneath, the men hunting him.

  ‘We found an ostler, Mr Thurloe. Former soldier. Swears he saw the King – the young Charles Stuart, that is – in the inn yard.’ So close.

  ‘And there was someone who was desperate to get away from us, that’s certain.’

  Thurloe found himself oddly untroubled by the near miss. ‘They know the net is closing on them, and that will make them more hasty. The man you were following – Marsden. Arrest him – now. He’ll have something to tell us of this network, at least.’