Telling, as usual, was watching her from the staircase, monolithic, almost menacing. Like her long lost Puritan conscience.
He’d been there though, at Naseby. He had stopped what he could. Roundhead scouts and scavengers, transformed into savage beasts and rutting goats the moment the officers and clergymen had loosed their grip.
She shook her head at Mary’s heartfelt observation. Bella wasn’t used to hearing anybody sing her father’s praises. Not unless there was something in it for them. Mary, dear kind loving sweet loyal Mary, did not fit that category.
The question remained though, heavy, leaden. Where were they going now?
*************************
The King’s Bath, as it turned out.
Forty miles they’d come for this and it tasted like warm cat-piss. Bella poured the healing water back into the fountain, looked up quickly to ensure her father hadn’t spotted her surreptitious manoeuvre.
Sir Gilbert, deep in conversation with the governor, glanced over his shoulder as if to ensure his daughter hadn’t thrown herself in to the livid emerald pool.
Bella smiled, held up the empty glass.
Her father steered his scowling counterpart along the poolside, just in case Sir Thomas was in the market for a young widow - sold as seen.
“There you are my dear, what did I tell you? You’ll be as good as new, a few pints of this remarkable brew in you! Wouldn’t you say so Sir Thomas?
“Indeed,” the governor allowed, studying the architecture, the reliefs, the gargoyles. Anything but the merchant’s knacker’s yard nag of a daughter. Bella thought Sir Thomas had looked particularly distracted throughout the afternoon - notwithstanding the noisy wedding celebrations at the Three Tuns.
“Another?”
“No thank you father, I’ve had quite enough.” Sir Gilbert eyed her for a moment, trying to work out whether she was being unusually demure or coldly sarcastic.
Bella had noticed the lacklustre governor had had several heated conversations with Porthcurn as well as her father - but she hadn’t been able to comprehend about what.
Perhaps the continued presence of half a dozen Roundhead troops in an already fragile, marginal garrison had discomfited the governor somewhat.
Bella had wondered what would happen now their thinly veneered mission had been completed. They had, as warrantied, delivered herself and three Royalist corpses back to Bath. Surely it was time for Sparrow and his soldiers to go back the way they had come? To rejoin their mighty New Model Army to complete the conquest of the far west?
Sparrow seemed content to pass the time supping ale with his new friend Porthcurn, but Bella couldn’t see what was in it for the Cornishman, hanging around here.
It wasn’t as if he looked likely to turn his coat - the rest of the garrison might be pissing their breeches at the prospect of an imminent siege, but Porthcurn looked as if he would charge the New Model’s finest on his own. For a shilling or two.
It occurred to her Porthcurn might be planning something more subtle. Luring poor old Will into a comfortable sense of semi-inebriated security before disarming and detaining his newly married guest and his troublesome crew?
And packing them all off to the Bridewell, Mary Keziah and all.
Bella couldn’t very well intervene if that was what Porthcurn had in mind. But perhaps she could offer some kind of distraction - discover exactly what the piratical colonel had in store for her friends.
Which was why she had suggested adjourning to the Hot Baths in the first place. She was, after all, supposed to be there to take the waters and build her health, not spend her afternoons supping cider at her friend’s wedding.
Torches were burning in the ancient alcoves around the main bath, glimmering flame casting shadows into the alcoved loggia. The peculiar reflections seemed to be enjoying a subdued half-life which reflected her own existence.
The governor had escorted them around the King’s Baths, pointing out the various artefacts unearthed over the years. Goblets, spoons and chipped tablets all more than fifteen hundred years old. Pagan relics, Gods framed by writhing rising suns. Sir Thomas had put aside his squabble with Porthcurn long enough to serve them all cups of the healing waters, although Bella had struggled to disguise her distaste.
The cloudy brew made her feel quite sick.
The packed hostelry had been far more to Bella’s liking, although she had felt very tired by the time the various contingents had begun to relax. To give him his due her father hadn’t stinted, providing food and drink for the entire congregation.
Building bridges with Bridges and his influential - but sickeningly spineless friends.
She wandered on, unaware she had left the half-cut crowd behind. Exploring the darkened alcoves and smaller baths tucked away into the fragrant, torch-lit recesses.
They called this new one the Queen’s Bath. Half a dozen or so miniature thrones set about the fuming waters.
It seemed to Bella the damned war would be settled far more quickly, if the multitude of faint hearts, half hearts and no hearts at all stepped aside and let the hardliners sort things out - winner takes all.
Sir Thomas and her father had wandered off along the far side of the baths, nodding and whispering as they paced out the mossy loggia.
Scipio Porthcurn appeared at her side, swirling a glass of water under his nose.
“It smells as if they use it to wash out the sewers,” he commented. Bella eyed him, rudely aware they seemed to have the torch-lit bath to themselves. She smiled, on her guard in his powerfully fragrant presence.
“It’s supposed to cure plagues. Maybe you ought to march the Bristol garrison out to try some,” Bella suggested.
Porthcurn’s guffaw bounced and echoed about the baths, as if the statues and gargoyles were sharing his amusement.
“I’ll suggest that to his highness Prince Rupert,” he answered, casting the girl a sideways glance. In the flaring torchlight she looked transparently angelic, despite the unbecoming bonnet she had worn to disguise her startling Roundhead crop.
“The next time I see him.”
Bella sensed he was making more of a point than appeared.
“Which will be?” she asked the inevitable question. Porthcurn tossed the glass into the bath, his dark face lined with distaste.
“Soon. Very soon. He was very insistent, very,” he paused, “concerned as to your welfare. It was almost as if he shared some understanding with you?” he raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“An understanding, with Prince Rupert?” Bella exclaimed. “Me?”
“Perhaps he is determined to pass on his condolences, after your loss,” Porthcurn suggested mildly.
“He would needs must be a busy man, if he determined to pass on his condolences to every wife and mother - for each man he lost at Naseby field.”
True enough, Porthcurn mused. She was a sparky little witch, this merchant’s daughter he had heard so much about.
The Reverend Telling, drop jawed and devoted to her. Sparrow, hopelessly, boot tanglingly distracted by her mere presence.
And that sprat Hugo, riding about the country beside her like Prince Rupert and his bloody poodle. Poor Boy, dispatched by a soldier ‘who had skill in necromancy’ at his Highness’s previous disaster at Marston Moor - according to the scurrilous Roundhead news sheets.
To tell the truth, Porthcurn could see why they had lost their minds to her. She reminded him of some lingering faery queen, risen from the waters to steal his mind. And soul.
Bella had taken a seat beside the pool, leaned over to dip her hand in the dark green waters. Sitting there quietly as if she had just risen from the pool, gilded sword in hand.
“When do we leave?” she asked, bringing him back to the point in hand. Porthcurn raised an eyebrow.
“We have left it rather late today. I think tomorrow morning, first thing. I shall escort you all back to Bristol.”
“But not Sparrow and his men.” It was a statement rather t
han a question.
“No. Of course not. Their warrant was signed for Bath.”
“And they’ll leave in the morning?”
Porthcurn eyed her, smiling sweetly beside the bath. As demure but provocative as some couch-sprawled whore.
His clothing prickled. The sulphurous stink swirled in his nostrils. Ah, she was a stealer of men’s souls alright. He would have to take care around this one.
“I have made the necessary arrangements with the governor,” he allowed.
“That’s not what I asked. You are planning to send them on their way?”
“I am planning to ensure His Majesty’s affairs are not jeopardised by their immediate resumption of hostile activity,” Porthcurn spun freely. Bella froze.
“You don’t mean?”
“What, hang the lot of them from Southgate?” he shook his head. “I’d be well within my rights, according to all the articles of war. Sparrow’s no fool, for all his bumbling. I saw him checking the defences, the number of men on the walls, the fact my Welshmen were sent packing by their own fuck…damned garrison,” he exclaimed, darkening. “I would not wish him to carry such details to his masters back in Whitehall, or Marlborough or wherever in hell Fairfax has got to.”
Bella watched him pace to and fro, sensing the Cornishman hadn’t quite made up his mind what to do with his troublesome guests.
“You’ll take them back to Bristol then?”
“Where I can keep an eye on them? Aye, I’m tempted. But there’s more to this damned mission than delivering you here,” he accused. “Three corpses and an officer’s widow,” he went on, “Why would Parliament go to so much trouble? If it wasn’t for his highness’s strict instruction, I would have had the lot of you thrown in the Bridewell!”
Bella had resumed tracing patterns in the water. He hadn’t, so he was bluffing.
“But you didn’t, you haven’t,” she observed.
“Sparrow’s acting under a warrant and I’ll not break it. I would never be able to issue, or act under, any such warrant again. I would sacrifice my good name, if I forsook him, entirely,” he added archly.
“Entirely?”
“He has been warrantied to come to Bath, to Bath he has come.”
“But he has not been warrantied to return to the New Model. Is that what you mean?”
Porthcurn nodded. “Aye. That was my thought. I don’t know what the rogues are up to, but whatever it is they can think on it here, rather than in Bristol.”
“You mean to detain them here?”
“I mean to keep them out of mischief. For a few weeks. Until we can work out what they were up to and who with. God knows there’s more than enough bastard turncoats around here to keep them in business.”
Bella wondered if he was including her father - the template for turncoats everywhere - in that equation.
“I don’t understand. Why not take us all back to Bristol? If you fear they may be minded to plot with the locals?”
“Because he has a pass for Bath, which I needs must respect. I’m not about to lose my honour ignoring the proper articles, otherwise, where’d we be?” he asked. Didn’t she see that? Hadn’t Morrison taught her anything? He had answered his own question.
Porthcurn straightened up, regarded her. “And besides that, if I were to bring them in, to Bristol, Sparrow and his crews will be treated as spies. And spies get shot. Aye, or worse.”
The pleasantly warm baths chilled.
“So you mean to lock them in the Bridewell?”
“What alternative do I have? Should I let them ride out and inform their masters Bath could fall like a ripe pear? Like this?” he clicked his strong fingers. “That by definition, Bristol must be in a similarly poor posture of defence?
““Sparrow hasn’t been near Bristol. We came from the..
““I know all that, Mistress Telling,“ Porthcurn over-ruled, “Do you think I would have seen my men sent home with their tails between their legs, if Bristol were properly manned and provisioned, with reinforcements to spare? If we were in a proper state of defence, do you imagine I would be asking the governor if he could see his way clear to do his duty, rather than dragging the rogue to the nearest gallows?”
Bella said nothing, watched him turn and pace along the loggia as if he could stamp and grind the ancient paving into impregnable fortifications.
“Sir Thomas fears I have been sent by his highness Prince Rupert to take over his command,” Porthcurn informed her. “He won’t rest easy until I am away to Bristol. We will have to trust Sir Thomas remains at his post, and ensures Sparrow and his men are detained. I have my own duties to think about.”
“Indeed.” The torches flared, casting monstrous shadows about the pool.
The bored bathing attendants who had stood by, idly brushing corners or gathering soiled linen, had wandered back to the main complex. They were quite alone. The rest of the wedding party had either gone home or returned to the more inviting atmosphere at the Three Tuns.
Porthcurn paced, trying to fathom some way of remaining in Bath to stiffen the chronically under-enthused garrison, while obeying Prince Rupert’s strictest instructions to return Bella and her father to Bristol.
He had wondered what the Prince wanted with them. A turncoat merchant and a wounded widow? How could they figure in Rupert’s war plans?
Porthcurn turned on his heel, wondering where the girl had got to. He squinted into the gloom, startled to see the widow had collapsed beside the bath.
Then he realised it was merely her gown, shift, sling and bonnet. His dark eyes flicked to the left, spotted her cropped blonde head break the surface of the perfectly still green waters.
He watched her, ghostly pale, kick out in an awkward, one-armed breast-stroke. She gave up, straightened and found her feet. She was naked, candle-white in the torchlight.
“What in heaven are you doing?” Porthcurn exclaimed, rocked to his boots by this lamia, as she slid beneath the waters once again.
“I’m taking the waters,” Bella called. “Are you coming in, or would you prefer to stand there and stare?”
Porthcurn’s eyes widened, mesmerised and energised by her bold-eyed challenge.
He threw his hat into an alcove and began tearing at the buttons on his doublet.
In for a penny.
By Isle Moor, near Yeovil, and elsewhere, July 8-9, 1645
Bad tempered, argumentative, insubordinate. And that was on a good day. Goring heartily despised his brother-in-law and had been glad to see the back of the bumbling imbecile.
The general had reckoned even the insufferable Porter should be safe enough, marching a brigade of cavalry across the Levels toward Taunton.
And for once, Lieutenant General George Porter had obeyed his instructions to the letter.
His brother-in-law had made a fine show, leading his brigade out of the Royalist camp near Yeovil making as much of a racket as possible. He had detailed riders to peel off from the noisy, jangling, snorting column, ride back down the byways and concealed trackways to re-join the rearguard. The New Model’s dragoons and scouts would have counted them out troop by troop, doubling, trebling their real number.
Porter had no more then five hundred men - made up of a dozen and more undernourished Royalist regiments - but Fairfax would hear that Goring had dispatched at least two thirds of his horse away to the west - towards the smouldering ruins of Taunton and its long suffering townsfolk.
“That’s it boys, kick up as much noise as you can!” Porter called, sitting on a prancing chestnut as his troops passed a lonely crossroads in the middle of the featureless moorland.
He turned his horse, studied the distant hills with his perspective glass.
He could see tiny black and tan specks moving across the verdant slopes. Red and orange guidons fluttering in the morning breeze. Porter recognised Fairfax’s outriders, no doubt puzzled as to where Goring’s main strength lay.
Goring had ignored every principle of warfare - spre
ading his army on the widest front, confident his bluff would confuse Fairfax long enough to get the bulk of his army away safe.
The general had posted his army along the west bank of the Yeo, guarding every crossing. Ranks of reeds and massed musketeers, stands of trees and blocks of pike planted behind deeply-rutted tracks.
It would be difficult to discern what was what and who was where, without risking a closer reconnaissance which might have brought the busybody rebels within range of Goring’s sharpshooters.
Porter’s cavalry shouted, clapped, drummed and trumpeted as if they were marching around Jericho, loudly advertising their march on Taunton while Goring dispatched his guns and baggage toward Bridgwater.
The officers and scouts on the hill beyond lowered their glasses, marvelling to see such masterful manoeuvring. Goring moved troops with the grace of a dancer across a ballroom. He had radically re-deployed his entire army, using the poorest roads, in less than half an hour.
“He means to hold the river line, see there? While his horse doubles back on Taunton!”
“You’re right! Riders to Sir Thomas. Goring’s on the move! He’s screening us here, thinking to catch the garrison unprepared! For the sake of Christ, hurry man!”
*************************
“Quarantine?” Sparrow thought at first Porthcurn was jesting. He sat up on the bed, Mary Keziah tugging the bedclothes back over herself in a somewhat belated display of modesty.
Before he’d had time to collect his wits Porthcurn’s men had lifted his sword and pistols. Porthcurn picked up Sparrow’s discarded breeches and doublet, flung them on the counterpane. Sparrow grasped for them, levering himself out of bed in a drunken fluster.
“What d’you mean quarantine? All of us? Mary Keziah too?”
Callum sat up in his improvised crib - a blanket box in the corner. He clambered out and trotted over to the bed, Mary Keziah hauling him to the safety of the sheets.
“The governor gave instructions your wife should return to Bristol with the Merchant and Miss Bella. I argued she could stay here with you, aye, for a few days.”
Black Tom's Red Army Page 35
