Popham nodded shortly. “Aye. Before all our hopes came to naught at Roundway.”
“And of course Colonel Robert Pye, from Parliament’s Army New Modelled,“ he reported.
Eagleton watched the clerk fetch a bottle of wine and pour two more cups.
“Gentlemen, your very good health! And our late victory at Langport.”
“Langport!”
Langport? What victory? Sparrow took a long draught anyway. This was no alehouse slop that was for sure.
“Well now gentlemen, let us to business. Perhaps, Major Sparrow, you could briefly outline the principal points of interest resulting from your mission to Bath?”
Sparrow eyed the commissioner, wondering what to leave in and what to leave out. If they meant to make him Major permanently he’d best watch his tongue.
The two officers listened gravely to his colourful account. Eagleton nodded at his clerk, who scratched the occasional note. Telling favoured him with the occasional nod of agreement as he outlined the bare bones of his experiences since they had ridden out of Marlborough.
The clerk didn’t seem overly concerned at the pitiful state of Bath’s defences. But they had perked up when he described Porthcurn’s men being turned away from Southgate.
“Plague you say?” Pye inquired. “A dozen dying every day?”
“According to reports sir. The Bath garrison was convinced enough to refuse to let Porthcurn’s reinforcements into the town. On account they had marched from Bristol I mean.”
“And the defences, is it possible they are as poorly maintained as you say? It seems strange Rupert has not attended to the essentials, or at least ordered Bridges to place the town in a proper posture of defence?”
“We will need a plan of the works about Southgate,” Eagleton encouraged. Sparrow gave the commissioner a sideways look.
“I imagine your chimney sweeps could furnish precise details, sir,” he replied, just this side of outright insolence.
Eagleton accepted the comment - with all its implications. He pursed his non-existent lips.
“There were elements of your mission, we thought best to shield you from, Major Sparrow,” Eagleton responded. “Right glad we are there were no unfortunate consequences.”
Sparrow held his tongue for once, but there was little mistaking his resentment.
The bastard could have got them all killed!
Aye, Mary Keziah and Callum and all.
“Our decision was based on strategic necessity Sparrow. It was best you weren’t informed of some of the less savoury aspects of the expedition.” He smiled shortly. “Which as we have heard, was an unqualified success. Praise God.”
Sparrow decided to hammer home what little advantage he had.
“I am told the enemy works around Southgate have been particularly ill-prepared. The loopholes have been cut too high to allow the musket barrels to be adequately depressed.”
“Yes. I have made a very careful note of that Sparrow. Rest assured your efforts will be communicated to the highest levels.”
“And Reverend Telling here, as well as persuading the local clubmen to remember their allegiance to Parliament, has word of the bigger prize, that of Bristol itself.”
Sparrow glanced at the minister, wondering what secrets he might have uncovered under Rupert’s nose.
“I regret I was not able to remain in Bristol long enough to draw any conclusions to reinforce Cap…Major Sparrow’s report. His Highness Prince Rupert did not accept the merchant’s explanation, that I…that is, my presence was required to re-assure his daughter.”
Sparrow noted the Reverend’s momentary stumble, an unexpected chink in Telling’s newly polished armour.
“I must admit I am surprised you managed to persuade this Porthcurn character to allow you to complete your journey with Morrison and his daughter,” Eagleton fished.
“As I was,” Telling said shortly. He didn’t elaborate any further. The silence stretched.
Eagleton smiled, replaced his notes on the table.
“As I have already said, you have both rendered a considerable service to Parliament and can be assured the House will receive a full account of the risks and dangers you have hazarded in its service.
“In the meantime, Major Sparrow, you will remain here to assist with the proper supervision of the temporarily displaced population. You will select any suitable and able-bodied man from the populace with a view to enlisting them in your company.”
His company? The commissioner meant to go through with his promised promotion then?
“You will supervise their equipment and basic training, until you can be rejoined to your parent unit. I am assured this will not be delayed long.” Eagleton gestured at the lacquered knight.
“Sir Alexander Popham, given his long experience and knowledge of the local area and population, will take charge of the clubmen roundabouts, with a view to directing their efforts, steering them more closely to our purpose.”
Telling’s leaden features remained impassive.
“Minister Telling, having established a particular rapport with the clubmen in these parts, will act as his liaison officer in Wells with a view to selecting and dispatching drafts of the better armed clubmen wherever we are instructed by his excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax. Gentlemen, I bid you a good day.”
Eagleton made a hasty note and brandished it at one of the clerks.
“Your field promotion, as we agreed.”
Sparrow eyed the scrap of paper. Eagleton frowned, held it up.
July 18 1645. Field promotion. Captain William Sparrow to Major, Okey’s regiment of dragoons New Model Army.
Signed Eagleton, commissioner to Parliament.
“Is it possible I could have a copy,” Sparrow inquired innocently.
Grinning broadly, Sparrow followed Telling out into the bright summer sunshine. Before Eagleton could change his mind.
He straightened his hat at a jaunty angle against the afternoon glare and tucked the precious scraps of paper confirming his promotion into his doublet.
They strolled back across the hoof-pocked lawn bordering the palace.
“So, what exactly happened in Bristol?” he asked casually. “You didn’t seem keen to elaborate. And Porthcurn was in a black enough mood, when he got back to Bath after seeing you off.”
Telling had regained something of his self-control, favouring him with the briefest of smiles.
“I had my eyes opened to the ways of this wicked world, Sparrow. I was tested and found wanting.”
Sparrow frowned. Was he really going to stand there and spout platitudes? He thought they knew one another better than that - after the dangers they had shared.
Telling was looking closely at him.
“I mean it Sparrow. I watched you marry that girl.”
That girl?
“Mary Keziah, aye,” Sparrow growled. “What’s your point?”
“The point, Major Sparrow, is that you loved Bella as much as I did,” he announced baldly. Sparrow froze, stunned the minister had dared to speak his mind. Prising open the mussel shell he called a heart.
“You have known her far longer than I. I would guess you have loved her all that time. Since you were children, I wouldn’t wonder. And yet,” he continued, blithely ignoring Sparrow’s pop-eyed astonishment, “you found the strength to put her to one side when you were required to do so. And marry your…and marry your Mary Keziah,” he intoned. Sparrow said nothing, appalled he had been so grievously exposed.
“I watched your face, saying the words at your betrothals. You found the strength to marry her and…”
“And you walked away as well, is that what you’re saying?” Sparrow demanded, loathing the way Telling could trample and smash his finer feelings with such bland self-assurance.
“Not at all. I admired your strength of character and realised I would struggle to match it,” Telling admitted. “I only found the strength you had shown, when I saw her and Porthcurn. Together.”
>
Sparrow turned cold as if the sun had just vanished behind a broiling storm cloud.
Bella and Porthcurn? Together in what way?
That’s what the Cornishman had been so incensed about the evening he had escorted them from Bath.
“We were at the hot baths. I realised she had wandered off. I came upon them, alone in the Queen’s Bath..” his voice trailed off. He sighed. “Scene of many an infamous encounter, according to the Governor.”
Sparrow stared.
“I thank God I saw them, I thank God he opened my eyes to her betrayal. And to my own infatuations.”
Sparrow was still trying to put the pieces together. Bella and Porthcurn, by Christ what was it with strutting, beaver-cocking Cavaliers that made the merchant’s daughter go weak at the knees?
Aye, weak knees would be about right and all, he thought luridly.
“He tested me, using her. He had the merchant offer her up like a rack of chops on the block. Aye, in front of that devil Rupert. He said I had developed an affection for her. And worst than that, he was right.”
Sparrow could barely believe Telling’s bland - but clearly heartfelt - revelations. Uncomfortably exposed to this calm and measured emotional onslaught.
What else had he missed?
“I am…she has been taken away from me, from my sight, as she was from yours.
I am persuaded God has made it so.”
Sparrow shook his head.
God? God had nothing to do with it! He’d married Mary Keziah, the mother of his child. He’d made amends, put all to rights. Just as Eagleton had instructed. He hadn’t thought about Bella. Not in that way. Not since they had stopped the coach outside Holt, at any rate.
But he wasn’t about to acknowledge that.
“So you two, fell out over it?” he diverted.
Telling chuckled.
“Fell out? Aye, we had words. He is a fornicating hound, that much is true. She is,” he shook his head, “she is beyond the pair of us, I think.”
Sparrow lapsed into silence as they resumed their march back toward the Swan.
Beyond the pair of them. Aye, maybe the Reverend had that about right.
The sun slipped behind a veil of cloud.
He felt strangely comforted, relieved even, by Telling’s acute assessment of his former sweetheart’s true character.
Character he had worried on, denied, recognised and denied a thousand times in the past years.
Bella wasn’t interested in him. Or Telling. Their faces would never blur her mirror.
“Is the merchant aware of their, liaison?”
Telling pursed his lips.
“I doubt it. But if they found the time and opportunity in the bath house, amongst a wandering crowd of people, I don’t doubt they would find similar opportunities back in Bristol, now the rest of us have been escorted off the premises.”
Sparrow studied the reverend for a moment. He didn’t seem overly distressed by this horrifyingly sudden exposure to the real world. The world Sparrow had been inhabiting for the past three years.
“But it is of no importance. Bella was set before me like a lure for a lark, to test my faith. Or at any rate, to discover whether I had enough. I have passed the test,” he declared piously.
Passed? He would have been panting after her like a lapdog if he hadn’t caught Porthcurn and Bella fornicating in the baths.
In the baths? Like peasants let loose?
Sparrow felt a poisonous stab of resentment, to think of the two of them together.
Did she imagine she could ride around the country bedding whatever damned Cavalier she liked? By Heaven, Porthcurn wasn’t the first. Hugo Telling, then that rogue lordling who had sold them all into slavery?
How many more had she bedded along the way?
Sparrow couldn’t decide whether he was outraged at her wayward morality, or simply jealous it had been Porthcurn shagging her and not him.
Was he deluding himself as well as Telling?
Bella. Whore. Wanton. Slattern. Because it was easier to condemn her than admit his own weakness? By Christ, he was jealous. But Telling, for all his bland smiles of assurance, would never, could never admit to such human frailty.
And yet he had found this strength, this overwhelming self-assurance, from somewhere. Sparrow eyed him, tried to prise open the minister’s secrets as he had so ruthlessly exposed his.
“You don’t appear to be completely distraught,” he accused. Telling raised an eyebrow.
“I am not. I have been tested and endured the temptations of the flesh. In order to prepare myself for a higher purpose.”
Sparrow nodded inquiringly.
“I am God’s instrument Sparrow. I have been set down here, to bring these country folk, these wayward children, back to their duty. To the Parliament. I conceive they have a role to play in our final victory.”
He turned to Sparrow, his leaden features lit up by self-righteous fire.
“God has willed it. God has appointed me Sparrow, to carry out his work. In Bath and Bristol and across the West. Eagleton and the rest will come to the same conclusion as I have, aye, by and by.”
Sparrow said nothing.
Had the reverend lost his mind in the rout beside the close?
Or had he found himself, found something within himself.
By Bristol Keep, July 26, 1645
You didn’t have to be a member of Rupert’s sadly constricted inner circle to see the way the wind was blowing that summer. Morrison could sense the wind changing, the slick silts which lined Avon’s banks shifting and sliding around the keep with every new tide.
Unseen currents shifting the treacherous sands beneath his feet into unwelcome, unfamiliar, uncharted territories.
Sir Gilbert frowned over his ledgers, squinting at Starling’s spider-fingered script. Weighed his profits against the potential loss.
Aye, and Morrison had a sight more to lose than his colleagues along Bristol’s waterfront.
Never mind what the cocksure Cavalier news-sheets insinuated from every street corner and ale house. The merchant knew better - the King’s men were being driven west like boar before beaters. Slowly but inexorably. And their ebbing power threatened to leave him high and dry once again.
Well he wasn’t having it. He’d built up his fortune, not once, not twice but thrice. And he wasn’t going to see it washed down into the Avon along with the rest of the city’s shit and derision.
They had cashed in what they could. Unloaded muskets, pikes and swords without the usual haggling with the garrison authorities. Well, not as much as usual.
That robber Rupert would smell a rat if he started giving it all away like a man with no arms.
Starling had liquidised everything he could from the wharves and warehouses along the docks. They had locked up the smaller shops and smithies and boarded the windows. Starling looked like some bad-tempered jaoler, weighed down with Morrison’s enormous key rings.
Half the city was busy battening down the hatches and Morrison reckoned the King’s men might miss all his forward planning in the general confusion. And overlook his one way trip to the outside world.
Where to go, was the question which was troubling him now. Kilmersden Hall was a dozen miles down the road - well within range of a vengeful Rupert if he took it into his head to see what had become of his most civic of servants.
Anywhere else he would be running in to New Model Army patrols - and having to explain previous unfortunate misunderstandings to the incoming powers that be.
His options had been chronically reduced, now Telling had been escorted out of town. He had been banking on deploying the Reverend as a handy counterweight to the charges which might be brought against him.
High treason. Theft of the regimental payroll. Collaborating with the enemy.
And that was just for starters.
But Telling had been snatched from the board, if, indeed, he had ever been on it.
He remembered the look o
f surprise on the Reverend’s usually granite features as Morrison had announced his obvious infatuation with the slowly recuperating Bella.
Morrison loathed having to improvise as he had at their interview with Rupert, throwing the clergyman into the mix without properly preparing the ground.
It had been a long shot, imagining Telling might marry his recently widowed sister-in- law in order to save her from further shame and degradation.
And present Morrison with the flimsiest opportunity to re-align himself with the Parliament.
He estimated he owed them a thousand pound - plus interest. Morrison reckoned he might compound.
Aye, for ten times that.
Telling might, might just have been able to put in a good word for him back at Whitehall.
But his clumsy attempt to hang on to the one bargaining counter he had left had backfired in spectacular fashion - and ignited Bella’s notoriously combustible temper.
*************************
The house on Canon’s Marsh rang to the rafters with her furious accusations. The neighbours imagined the siege must have begun there and then.
“How dare you? D’you have no sense of shame? Telling? Edward Telling? I thought I’d die of embarrassment!“ Bella shrieked.
Mary Keziah poked her head around the door.
“Beg pardon Miss Bella, but the shouting’s upsetting Callum,” she said, nodding sympathetically. Bella turned, held up her finger.
“Thank you Mary,” she said warningly, modifying her tone somewhat. “I am not some chattel you can buy, sell or swap like a bar of soap! What were you thinking, offering me up, in front of Rupert himself?” her voice broke, shrill as a startled cat, hoarse as sandpaper.
“He’s treated me like a pox-diddled harlot these past two years, and you go offering me up all over again! What is he supposed to think of me?” she exclaimed. “What do you imagine he makes of you?”
Morrison winced at her colourful invective. By God she had spent too much time around the camps for her own good. He frowned, fingers drumming the back chair he had deployed as an improvised barricade.
“He thought very highly of you,” he defended, feebly. “He would have looked after you, despite all your…troubles.”
Black Tom's Red Army Page 45
