“Where in God’s name have you two been? You were charged with guarding our rear! We haven’t seen hide nor hair of you since Marlborough.”
“Oh we were that sir, beggin’ your pardon. We’ve been wiv you every inch of the way sir.”
“And what was all that nonsense about the coffins? You could have got us all killed!”
“Master Eagleton’s compliments sir, but he said you were better off not knowing.”
“Not knowing what?”
“About the powder sir. They took it for soot see sir. Never had any idea what we were about, lugging it to and fro.”
Sparrow was more alarmed than ever. What mischiefs had Eagleton arranged? What orders had he given these pox-spawned chimney-larks?
“Powder? What are you blathering about?”
“The powder as was loaded in the coffin sir. Twenty pounds, give or take. Small sacks. Under the dead hofficer sir. Him being the smallest of the three like. We carried it off in the coffin, no bugger thought of stopping us.”
Sparrow closed his eyes, chilled to his marrow by the appalling possibilities.
Eagleton had set them loose in enemy territory with a coffin loaded with gunpowder? If Porthcurn had taken the trouble to inspect their cargo at Holt they would be there still. Six foot under. And who could blame him?
“What have you done with it?” he croaked.
“We reckoned, all things considered, best spot was under the privy up on that Southgate sir,” the idiot youth replied, imagining Sparrow was tickled with their handiwork. “At the far end of the bridge.”
“They thought it was soot see sir, us being sweeps and all, in a previous life, as you might say,” his brother chimed in.
They hadn’t had a peep out the brothers since Marlborough. Now he couldn’t shut the buggers up.
“You’ve blown up the Southgate?” Sparrow exclaimed.
“Oh no sir. Not yet sir. Hidden it around the privvy.”
Eagleton. This was Eagleton’s work.
He’d throttle the bastard with his bare hands when he caught up with him. He’d used them, played them like the fools they were!
“He ordered you to watch our rear,” Sparrow growled. “When did he mention blowing up Southgate?”
The young fireworker looked hurt.
“He didn’t tell us to blow up the Southgate.” Sparrow let out a sigh of relief. “We was told to scout around the place, find the weak points in the defences.”
Aye, well Eagleton had told him to do the same.
“And hide the powder away, where it could do most hurt sir.”
“Where it could do most hurt?”
“That’s it sir. Stray ball, grenado, burning torch would do it.” Sparrow couldn’t believe his ears.
“Fire arrow from the opposite bank. That might do the trick,” his brother suggested.
God almighty. If Porthcurn had taken his damn suspicions a step further - they would be facing the firing squad. Or worse.
“And then there’s the looopholes. Tell him about the loopholes Silas,” Sylvester urged his brother, mistaking Sparrow’s mortification for grateful admiration.
“Loopholes? What have you done with the loopholes?” Sparrow wondered.
“Nothing sir. Not yet anyways. They’ve cut ‘em too high sir. We could get right up to ‘em, crawlin on our bellies sir. They’ve cut ‘em too high, right through the gate, but can’t point their musket barrels down low enough to hit a body, coming at ’em crafty like.”
Sparrow swallowed, chilled to his core by the desperately gathered intelligence.
He’d spent the entire week there, all he could report was a marked shortage of men on the walls and a couple of small guns in the half moon beside Southgate.
That wasn’t going to impress Eagleton now, was it?
It turned out these boys had mapped every inch of the place, aye, and prepared it for demolition into the bargain.
Wouldn’t they be popular with the bastard commissioner?
Muffet shook his head.
“God’s bones,” Sparrow groaned.
“Well if they’re right, Will, we’d best get back and tell ‘em.” Sparrow covered his eyes, mortified at the desperate intelligence.
They could have got them all killed, all of them!
He’d been this close to Porthcurn, and the Cornishman had suspected them from the beginning!
“What I want to know,” Sparrow began slowly, “Is what would have happened if Porthcurn had opened the damned box back in Holt, or when we arrived in Bath?”
“We were watching out for that sir,” Silas replied, bashful now. “We was told, by Master Eagleton sir, that if anybody went anywhere near that coffin, we were to drill ‘em a new eye-hole.”
Sparrow closed his eyes. Aye, including him, he shouldn’t wonder.
“We had your back sir. Every moment.”
*************************
Edward Telling had cantered the beast as hard and fast as he dared without killing the big cob. Or himself. He reached a crossroads, a decrepit fingerpost pointing to Wells. The reverend let the cob drink at the trough, then stepped up on the rim to boost himself back into the saddle.
He ignored the monstrous aching inside his thighs, the red raw saddle sores widening with every step.
Telling wasn’t bothered about a bit of pain. Not now.
He knew the road he should take.
Wells. Then Glastonbury. Then Taunton. With luck he would cut across the New Model’s line of march, sooner or later.
He brooded. He seethed. He rode on as fast as he was able, imagining the bloody vengeance he would take on Scipio bloody Porthcurn, malignant whoreson.
Fornicator!
A pistol ball to the eye would do it, if he could get close enough, duck beneath the Cornishman’s sword.
Or a grenado, dropped into his bedchamber. Aye, and blow Bella Morrison to pieces and all.
He rode on, relishing his revenge, adding a subtle blade here, a cruel cut there.
Telling devised ever more fiendish tortures for him every mile, ratcheting the pain he imagined inflicting as his own pain threshold buckled and quivered.
The next time he climbed down from the saddle, he could barely walk.
He cared not. All he had to do was water the horse, get himself back to the army.
May God have mercy on Porthcurn. Because he wouldn’t.
*************************
The gunpowder grey cob took lame at the top of the next hill. He cried with pain, biting his lips bloody as he half slid, half climbed down from the saddle.
He reckoned he might have covered thirty miles. Thirty miles since Porthcurn had released him from purgatory.
His legs buckled, he held himself straight by hanging on to the stirrup leather. The cob whinnied.
By Christ, he couldn’t move!
And that was how the clubmen came on him, bow-legged and broken on the Glastonbury road.
By Wells, Somerset, July 13, 1645
They had to fetch a wain in the end, to lift the chaplain on in to the town. Not exactly the entrance he would have expected, carried in to the cathedral precincts lying on his belly in a damned dung cart.
But there was little he could do to protest. He had lost the feeling in his legs. But that was a blessing compared to the raging state of his thighs and backside. He felt as if he’d been squatting for hours over a pan of hot coals.
He wept with helpless rage as they carried him up to the wagon and laid him out as if they had just discovered some plague-ridden corpse lying in the gutter.
“Is he a Roundhead then, another bloody straggler?”
“Aye, but this one’s no soldier, or I’m a Cornishman.”
“Bliddy rebels,” one of the goodwives called, shaking a bony fist at the improvised ambulance. “They’re all the same!”
“Rebel? He’s not even armed!”
“They don’t need to be. They’ve sent him in to spy on us,“ one of his bearers asse
rted, giving Telling’s arm one final twist as they laid him out flat.
“I am no spy,” he snarled, drifts of spittle hanging from his fleshy, pale lips.
He looked more like a codfish on a slate, truth be told. But the black suit meant clergy and the clergy meant authority. And that’s why the clubmen hadn’t simply knocked him on the head and rolled him in the nearest ditch.
“He’s run his horse lame,“ one of the farm boys commented from the rear of the iconic carriage. He had bent over to examine the prize, the grey’s foreleg tucked between his knees. “He ain’t gone nowhere on this poor beast.”
“We’ll take him on in. We can’t afford to hang around here all day.”
“Aye. You go on. We’ll bring his horse.”
The party formed up around the wagon brandishing pitchforks and sickles. Telling held on grimly to the well-worn ribs as it clattered into life beneath him.
By God above, whatever these rogues had in store for him it would be preferable to this abject humiliation.
They marched on, torches glowing evilly up ahead.
The farrier dropped the grey’s foreleg and straightened up, handed the reins to one of his sons.
“Get this ‘un home and hidden away with the rest. ‘Bout time we had us some compensation back from these robbin‘ bastards.”
The youngster’s face dropped to think he was going to miss all the fun. The rendezvous had been declared the morning before - with whole troops of ill-armed clubmen arriving by the hour.
But he knew it was useless, standing between his father and a gift horse like this.
“Yes father.”
“Good lad, top copse with the others. No point in leavin’ good ’orses standing about with all these thieving’ magpies marchin’ where they bloody please.”
“No father,” he replied, dejected. The youth departed with the limping grey.
The farrier, well pleased with his bargain, hurried on after the creaking waggon.
*************************
The town square was packed, and every lane leading in to the town choked with new arrivals. Torches blazed, horns blew. The inns were doing a roaring trade and most of the population were hanging out of their windows, taking full opportunity to offer their opinion on the future conduct of the war in Somerset.
Crudely stitched banners hung listless from newly hewn pikes.
“Death to the looters! They shan’t have our cattle!”
“Hands off! Chop their robbin’ hands off!”
Telling raised himself as far as he could, peered at the sea of grubby faces, lit up like pumpkin lanterns with unlicensed excitement as the wagon stalled against a reef of unwashed humanity.
As many in smocks as in tidy working suits. Clay-clogged boots and buckled shoes.
“Stand clear, make a path,” their unofficial sergeant called, standing up on the running board and waving his arms.
“Move along, make way!”
Most of the population of Wells and the surrounding hundreds had turned out for the rendezvous, magistrates and the better class of farmers, local gentry and professionals attempting to assert some sort of authority over the dangerously fickle mob of peasants, clothiers, weavers, brewers and farmhands who had poured in from the surrounding hills.
Wouldn’t do to let them too far off the handle. The local parishes were playing a dangerous game, opposing fiercely troops of well armed horsemen - whatever cause they served.
But it wouldn’t do to give the peasants the idea they could decide everything for themselves. Hence the unexpectedly well-to-do turnout.
Squire and surgeon, schoolmaster and stonemason.
The local associations couldn’t hope to defeat or even distract an entire army, or the odd regiment passing through. The only advantage they had lay in combining their numbers with their neighbouring associations. Putting thousands of men and women into the field at chosen points.
Such as the far-seeing heights above Wells. The key crossroads dated back to the Roman times, well maintained, ramrod straight roads angling off to all points of the compass.
The rapid march of the New Model Army into the West had galvanised the populations all over again, encouraged each village or district committee to take up the cudgels.
Now, the Somerset clubmen had been joined by contingents from southern Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and even Devon, iron filings to a lodestone.
A few of the better sort of gentlemen had brought horses, although they wouldn’t be much use in this crowd. The rest had turned up with whatever came to hand. Hoes, hayforks, fowling pieces and duck guns.
A couple of the hillmen had even brought bows and arrows.
Their spokesmen and captains were crammed into the Swan Inn, furiously debating their next move. The bulk of the New Model had already marched by, safely to the South.
Much to the relief of the locals, their fearful approach had not resulted in the widespread depredations they had suffered in past summers.
Nine times out of ten the New Model troops had either paid for the goods they had used, or left notes to be presented to the following commissariat teams.
Even more surprising, the commissariats had honoured the notes.
Nine times out of ten.
Better still, they had driven the King’s unruly horse and despised tax collectors further into the west, well away from their house and hearths.
Some of their officers suggested dispersing to their homes, arguing against any confrontation with regular troops. But the armies had preyed on these villages for three years now, driven the locals up to and beyond mutiny.
Now, the sheer numbers of clubmen appearing at the appointed rendezvous across the western counties had tended to support bolder counsels - quieting fainter hearts.
“Come on Reverend, up you come!” They hauled Telling out of the wagon and manhandled him up the worn steps into the inn, inquisitive country folk making way as if he were some brand of warlock.
“Stick him out with the others! We’ll hang the lot of ‘em!”
“Get your paws off you daft crone, can’t you see he’s a minister?”
“They’re just as bad!” one of the farm boys called from the safety of the crowd.
“Hang ‘em all!”
“Back off! We’ll have no lynching here!”
“Shame!”
Telling was thrust into the snug, eyes stung by clouds of acrid tobacco smoke and the reek of stale beer and ripe bodies.
“Whoa now, steady on steady on!”
Telling stumbled forward, bible dropping to the flags. He retrieved it and straightened himself as far as he was able, regarded the packed public gallery.
More of the local gentry, better sort of tradesmen, smallholders and professionals.
“And who might you be?” one of the round faced leaders wanted to know. Lamb, the town schoolmaster turned soldier-in-theory, wearing his schoolroom-stained suit with a wide and off-colour collar.
“My name,” Telling growled, still in agony from his midnight ride across the counties, “Is Edward Telling. Minister by the grace of God to Montagu’s regiment, New Model Army.”
The surging, pulsing crowd didn’t seem overly impressed.
“New Noddle robbers!”
“Drunks!”
“Hang on, hold your water! I know him, I know him!” Telling peered up under the brim of his black hat, took a moment to recognise the lard-bellied trader from Holt.
“Thomas Blunt, Wiltshire clubmen. We saw the Reverend a week ago, riding through with a carriage-load of coffins,” Blunt called, “Isn‘t that right sir?”
“Coffins? Thinking ahead was he?”
Blunt elbowed his way through the tribal chieftains, examined the scowling cleric to confirm his identity.
“That’s him! He had a pass, signed by the Parliament!”
“A pox on Parliament. Stuff him and his bloody pass!”
“It is you, Mr Telling sir.”
“Aye, it’s me. Althoug
h what you think you are doing apprehending a minister of the church about his lawful business, I have no idea,” he accused.
Blunt seemed taken aback. The rest shook their fists and shouted.
“You’re not in charge here, you fat crow!”
“That’s enough. Jacob, give the man some room, let him talk.”
Telling produced Porthcurn’s note from his doublet, handed it over to Blunt.
“My pass, signed by the commander of the Bristol garrison, authorising safe passage for me back to our army, presently outside Taunton.”
“Presently looting the ruins of Taunton, more like! They’ve killed everyone who didn’t fight on the walls!”
“Hold your water Mungo,” the schoolmaster advised.
“It’s the same army as has bled us white these last years!”
“Looters! We’ve had it up to here with your free quarter and tax assessments!”
“Whose side is he on anyway?”
Blunt held up his arms.
“Don’t all shout at once! He’s not a damned looter, that’s for sure.” He waved the note. “It’s as he says. Signed by Porthcurn out of the Bristol garrison!”
“That robbin’ Cornish bastard! He’s got his finger in a few pies around here!”
The mob subsided for a moment as Blunt and his confederates held a hasty council of war. The round faced schoolmaster from Wells waved for quiet.
“Friend Blunt’s right. This one’s out on a pass signed by Parliament and for the King. We can’t upset one without the other, if you take my meaning. We’ll need to interrogate him properly, before we make up our minds.”
There was a chorus of protest and approval. Telling, beyond caring, scowled into the middle distance.
*************************
The snug in the Swan, an oasis of calm after the riot in the public bar. Telling had been offered a seat but preferred to stand. He wondered his raw thighs hadn’t set a fire in his breeches.
The pain had been sent to try him, harden him, sustain him.
“Master Blunt has vouched for you. But you had better tell us what happened to your party, and these coffins of yours.”
Black Tom's Red Army Page 41
