“I have shown you my instruction sir, surely I need no higher authority?”
“He is away at the works,” Porthcurn repeated.
“Leaving you in charge? Just off the boat?”
“I am duty officer,” Porthcurn repeated. “And I have been in the King’s service these ...”
“Oh we have all served sir. At this moment in time I serve the King by supplying and victualling his forces. Why that ale you’ve been swilling, was shipped in on my waggons from my brewery in Chipping Marleward. That bread is from my bakeries. Your horse...”
“What exactly do you need from the Governor,” Porthcurn inquired, temper fraying. “Perhaps I can be of some service?”
Sir Gilbert looked doubtful.
“As I said, Lord Hopton had agreed to furnish my people with a pass. To Bath.”
Porthcurn considered this. As far as he knew Hopton hadn’t done anything of the sort.
“I thought you said Prince Rupert?”
“Hopton, Rupert, it’s all the same to me,” Morrison replied breezily. “Hopton invited me here, before Rupert took over. And here I am.”
Porthcurn considered this.
“Why would you need to bother Prince Rupert or Lord Hopton with such trivialities? The last I checked we still hold Bath for the King.” He grinned wolfishly. “So don’t let me detain you,” Porthcurn invited, dark eyes sliding sideways toward the door.
“I don’t need the pass,” Sir Gilbert sighed, “It’s for my daughter Bella.”
“Even so?” He picked up a scrap of paper, dipped a pen in the ink pot on the duty officer’s desk. “To whom it may concern..”
“She was hurt in the late fight at Naseby. Parliament has provided a coach and four and a small escort to deliver her across the lines, to enable her to take the waters. She is accompanied by the bodies of three of our officers of horse, all killed at Naseby fight. I am to proceed to the city to meet them, once their passage has been secured.”
Porthcurn chewed the end of his pen.
“Parliament has seen fit to deliver your daughter half way across the country in company with our dead officers?”
Morrison frowned.
“I don’t imagine they’ll stuff ’em in the carriage with her,” he retorted. Porthcurn’s dark features coloured.
“You go too far,” he breathed. Morrison realised his mistake, pushing this one. He drew a deep breath.
“I am informed they have already been placed in coffins. I have the names.”
Porthcurn let the merchant stew.
“These arrangements agreed by the rebels...you must wield considerable influence in London,” he observed.
His insinuation didn’t seem to concern this buffoon of a merchant.
Morrison raised his eyebrows, nodding modestly.
“You are quite right of course. It is true I have, in my time, wielded considerable influence with those rogues in Whitehall. But as is well known by the members of this garrison and many others, I cut those connections when I realised they weren’t about to follow the advice of Gilbert Morrison. Oh no. Refused to budge. Damn their rebel hearts,” he added.
“What road do they take?”
“I have no idea. Their letter was given in Marlborough two days ago.”
“Marlborough?” Portchurn wondered. According to their scouts the New Model had marched there from north Wiltshire, sending out strong patrols to baffle and confuse the watchers in the woods and downs.
The bastards were up to something. Feinting south before swinging round, a sudden descent down the London road before any further reinforcements could be brought up from the far west?
Or a wider sweep to the south to intercept those very same reinforcements before they could reach the safety of Bristol’s walls?
And this choleric rogue was proposing to ride out and meet their advance guard.
“Two days ago?”
“Indeed.”
“So they must be, what, somewhere north or east of Bath, depending which road they took.”
“I imagine so. I must send word when His Highness Prince Rupert has signed the pass.”
Porthcurn smiled to himself.
“Allow me to apologise for my impudent questions. I merely wished to ascertain the true nature of your interest – in Bath.”
Sir Gilbert nodded. “Think nothing of it my man. Now if you’ll...”
“We have no need to trouble the Governor over this matter. I will provide your pass.”
Sir Gilbert’s smug grin slipped a notch.
“My thanks, er, Colonel, but as I pointed out I have been instructed to obtain the pass from the Lord Hopton himself. Or his successor.”
Porthcurn stroked his beard.
“To whom were you planning to send word? And where?” Sir Gilbert considered this.
“The letter was delivered to the stage, outside Bath.”
“Where?”
“Marshfield,” Sir Gilbert replied, pondering the implications.
“Marshfield? On the London road?”
“Aye,” he replied, cautious now. “By footpost.”
“Well then I will ensure your petition is presented to his highness, the moment he returns from his duties within and without the walls.
““Look here Colonel…
““I fear I have detained you overlong. I shall present your request to his highness Prince Rupert, the moment he returns.” Porthcurn’s smiling declaration was clear enough to the merchant. Don’t push him too hard.
Morrison nodded.
“I am obliged to you Colonel.”
Jumped up Cornish whoreson. Bristol was full of ’em.
By Lechlade, Wiltshire, July 3, 1645
By Christ it was hot. The very country they were travelling through seemed to be shimmering and wilting in the fierce summer sunshine. Sparrow lifted his hat, wiped his brow on his grubby shirt sleeve.
He looked over his shoulder for the thousandth time, peering at trees and hedgerows, eyeing ditches and bramble outcrops.
But there was no bugger around.
True, they had taken the back roads out of Marlborough, screened by a troops of horse and dragoons kicking up as much noise and dust as possible.
That had been Black Tom trying to disguise his movements, leave the enemy guessing his intentions.
Whole regiments of horse, brigades of foot taking different routes before swinging around and resuming the southward march.
So much activity Sparrow’s party were well on their way before the dust had settled and the army had disappeared over the downs. Leaving their puny party at the mercy of any Royalist patrols as had stayed behind.
But there was no sign of enemy outriders. Nor those two numbskull apprentices Eagleton had promised would protect their flanks.
They had most likely buggered off while they had the chance. Sparrow could hardly blame them. First time away from the capital, the wide opens spaces had probably turned their soot-choked brains.
The coach rumbled and groaned, broad wheels creaking, making enough noise to wake the dead.
The dead themselves were stacked, three abreast, on the top of the coach, boxed roped and tarpaulined like so many sides of pork.
Sparrow had heard they were transporting invalids to Bath, not corpses, and had taken up the point with the commissioner before they had left.
*************************
Eagleton had looked pained when Sparrow had queried the health of their passengers the day before.
“Yes indeed, a sad business. All three of them, like to have fully recovered had God in his wisdom granted them the time to take the waters and recover their strength. Alas.”
“I was told prisoner exchanges were off,” Sparrow observed, spying the gaps in Eagleton’s web of half truths and deceits.
“Indeed.”
“Indeed what?” Eagleton looked even more exasperated than usual.
He had other missions besides Sparrow’s to oversee and he hadn’t wanted to
spend the entire day gossipping with sergeants, that is to say field-promoted captains.
Aye, and that could be taken away with a stroke of his pen, just as quickly as Eagleton had scribbled it.
“They were all sorely hurt and not likely to take up arms again,” he explained. “Parliament’s directive against further prisoner exchanges would not have extended to grievously wounded such as they,” Eagleton explained.
Sparrow wasn’t aware the nobs had made any such distinctions.
“So we deliver the widow Telling, three corpses and our best wishes to the garrison at Bath,” Sparrow observed. Eagleton noted his borderline insubordination but let it ride.
“Christian charity, no more no less,” he explained flatly.
The two men had studied each other, distracted by the hooting dragoons.
Eagleton had delivered a crate of new weapons for them that morning.
Firelocks, left over from the artillery guards. They had defended the camp on the day of the battle, kept Rupert’s kaleidoscope of cavalry at bay for more than an hour while the main fight raged out on Broad Moor.
By the time Rupert had called off his hounds, the battle had been lost. But so had upwards of a dozen of the camp guards. Parliament didn’t waste good firelocks.
Long Col Muffet and the blackamoor Applebys had examined their new toys with delight – thumbs working the simple flintlock mechanism. No more blowing on match cord for them. Francy Snow and his boys had handed over their muskets without complaint, recognising the immediate advantages offered.
No tell-tale glowing points during night marches. Or other excursions.
Butcher had held on to his fowling piece, unwilling to surrender his trusted firearm for such untested technologies.
Instead of a burning match the flint was clamped in place by a steel hammer. Pull the trigger and the flint struck a spark from the frizzen directly into the pan.
“Bang!” One of the Blackamoor Appleby boys – Sparrow couldn’t tell which under their shrouds of soot – providing gleeful sound effects. Eagleton had jumped, glared around in annoyance.
“Well, they look happy enough.”
“Makes sense. Firelocks work in the rain. And there’s no glowing match cord to give you away at night.”
Eagleton had nodded at Sparrow’s brisk assessment.
“Let us pray they serve your men better than their late masters,” the commissioner commented piously.
Sparrow watched the dragoons swing and aim their new weapons, working the cleverly crafted lock mechanisms.
“Amen to that,” he echoed. The moment had dragged.
Sparrow had an uncomfortable feeling Eagleton hadn’t revealed everything about their westwards jaunt.
He was right.
“Before I return to my duties,” the commissioner began, taking Sparrow by the arm and steering him away from the boisterous dragoons. “I feel I might not have made myself entirely clear as to the precise nature of your mission.”
Here we go.
“I didn’t imagine the widow Telling’s welfare alone could possibly have justified such an expensive diversion of army resources,” Sparrow remarked as blankly as he was able. Eagleton eyed him for a moment.
“Quite.”
“Given your obvious interest in my time back in Bristol, I imagine you are expecting me to use my local knowledge to collect information on the state of defences and troops dispositions between Bristol and Bath. For future reference,” he added.
Eagleton’s hawk features re-assembled in an instant.
“If your mission allows, such information might indeed prove useful, for future reference,” he allowed.
But that wasn’t it was it?
Sparrow glanced sideways, caught the commissioner nodding encouragingly.
“But we cannot rely on Sir Ralph Hopton granting you leave to tour the walls with paper and pencil,” he countered.
“So, keep my eyes open and collect what snippets I can from the locals,” Sparrow suggested.
Eagleton pondered this for a moment – as if Sparrow’s suggestions had only just come to mind.
A damned game, that was all this was. Sparrow knew full well Eagleton had dispatched upwards of two score missionaries, ministers, spies and saboteurs across the West to various nefarious purposes.
A paper-chasing matador, disguising his moves behind the New Model’s and the New Model’s behind his.
The enemy wouldn’t know whether to concentrate on the hammer blow to their vitals or the crafty blade to the neck. He was worth a brigade of foot, with all his mischiefs.
“All information you can gather during your mercy mission will be gratefully received. However,” he paused, looked over the courtyard at the coach and its curiously assorted passengers.
Edward Telling, black-suited guardian of the moral high ground, still fuming at his humiliation at the Phelps farm. His brother’s widow, sitting patiently on an upturned barrel with hands clasped demurely in her aproned lap. Arm in a sling.
A broad bandage visible beneath the borrowed bonnet as if butter wouldn’t melt.
The cavorting dragoons brandishing their instruments of death.
“The girl’s father,” he began, nodding at Bella, “has become something of a lynchpin in the Royalist war effort in the west.”
Sparrow frowned.
“We’re soldiers, not assassins.”
“Assassins? Nobody is suggesting that,” Eagleton protested. “We were thinking perhaps, your party might see a way, short of shooting the rogue on the spot, to prevent his return to Bristol. Indeed, to bring him back to the army.”
The army? The army he’d fleeced of upwards of a thousand pounds?
“Let us speak plainly, Sparrow,” Eagleton snapped. “Morrison’s various cottage industries are helping the King equip a company of men each and every week. In the month since Naseby that’s going on six or seven hundred men, aye, and horse and dragoons besides. His activities needs must be neutralised by whatever means possible.”
“Up to and including shooting him over his daughter’s sickbed?” Sparrow demanded. Eagleton paused, switched tack again.
“As you say, we are not assassins. But his industries are putting one new regiment into the field for the King every three months. By the time we can get to Bristol they may have replaced the majority of the foot lost at Naseby field. Smoke out this wasps’ nest Sparrow, and I guarantee a full commission, as colonel, and a full pardon for all previous offences.”
Smoke the old rogue out? What was he planning to do, send the Appleby boys down Sir Gilbert’s belching chimneys?
“There are ways and means, other than the measures you describe. Given his previous allegiances, it might prove possible to persuade the merchant to recognise and amend his wicked ways.”
“Bribe him?”
“The rogue purloined a thousand pound in coin from the Parliament not three years ago. He’ll get no more from us,” Eagleton snarled. “What I can do,” he went on in a gentler tone, “is offer to settle his previous offences.”
“An amnesty?”
“Compound, amnesty. Indeed. Believe me Parliament is finding such engagements far more productive than imprisonment and hanging. If he does not obey your summons, he will be facing both. In no particular order.”
“I see.”
“I wonder if you do Sparrow? This is a chance for you and your former master to vindicate yourselves. Start again, make a clean start.”
“Full Colonel, of foot or dragoons?”
“We have need of both. Serve me, serve Parliament well, and you shall not find us ungenerous.”
The offer had occupied his mind half way across Wiltshire.
*************************
The heat was stifling and Bella swore she could smell the bodies putrefying in the coffins above her head. Edward was nodding and dozing opposite, broiled like lobster in his stiff black suit.
William, angling the sorrel this way and that alongside the coach,
had kept one eye out for her as she leaned forward to catch what little breeze she could.
“For God’s sake…I can’t breathe in here,” she complained. Can we stop?”
Sparrow, hoping to press on while they could, peered over the neatly enclosed fields of ripening crops, squinted at every copse as if it concealed a brigade of Rupert’s horse.
Wouldn’t be the first time they had been caught out in the open by those bastards.
But the hills and downs seemed as deserted as Eagleton had predicted. The odd farm boy flicking a switch. They had clearly hidden any cattle they had left.
Snow and his boys were up ahead, the Applebys somewhere in the rear, trotting along like housebreakers caught in a fall of soot.
He pictured the trail they had left out of Marlborough. Deeply scored carriage wheels, half a dozen horses and a couple of barefoot rogues trotting behind.
“I swear I’ll faint away, stuck in with him,” she stage whispered, nodding at the dozing minister, big hands clasped over his tightly buttoned doublet.
“There’s a bridge over the Kennet a little ways along. We can pause there. But I want to be past Silbury by nightfall.”
The faery mound dominated the country roundabout – a magical landscape of long barrows and monuments from the olden times. Strange horse shapes carved out of the hillsides – broad avenues marked out by marching stones.
Eagleton had shuddered to think of it when Sparrow had described his chosen route.
But he knew the ground well. He had ridden out over the downs before the war, delivering papers and pamphlets for his old master back in Bristol. Bath, Chippenham, Devizes.
Every butcher, baker and candlestick maker had ordered bills of fare or somesuch from Greesham’s.
Sparrow sighed to himself. His domestic existence seemed as remote and meaningless now as these stones and tombs.
Sparrow whistled Snow to turn in by the little hump-backed bridge, gratified the corporal told off a couple of his boys to ride on to watch the road from the stand of trees at the next bend.
There was no sign of the damned blackamoor Applebys. They were supposed to be watching the rear.
Black Tom's Red Army Page 27
