Green Earth Shaking: A Fantasy Adventure Series (Gunpowder & Alchemy Book 3)

by Dan Davis

  Eventually, she couldn’t put off going back to her camp for sleep. She put a blanket over Artemis’ back and gave her a bit more of the honeyed oats that she’d stolen when Sergeant Gore wasn’t looking.

  ‘Night, Artemis,’ Weaver whispered to her new friend. ‘Love you.’

  This is the life for me, Weaver thought as she pulled her blanket over her head back at camp. Soldiering is what I was made for.

  She felt happy.

  Writer’s Power

  ‘You look nervous,’ Cedd said to Writer.

  ‘I have never met a King before,’ she replied.

  They were in a small chamber awaiting their audience with the King in the city of Coventry. The building was the Alchemist’s Guild Tower. The actual tower part of it was at one end of a vast complex of buildings and grounds that covered a quarter of the walled city. The Main Hall had been where the High Alchemist had conducted Guild business. King Charles had used it for much the same purpose since he had moved his new army to the city.

  Writer sat with Cedd and Bede by those huge doors leading to the hall. Though the doors were closed, Writer heard voices from inside, sometimes raised in argument. Also, the occasional smattering of applause.

  ‘I have conversed with many kings,’ Cedd said.

  ‘You’ve mentioned it before once or twice,’ Writer said.

  ‘No need to be witty,’ Cedd bridled. Bede was slumped snoring in the chair next to Cedd, his long legs stretch out and his bony head flopped back and his mouth hanging open. ‘I was going to add that I’ve met many kings over the centuries and I must say that Charles strikes me as one of the strangest.’

  She did not know much about kings. For her they were things from stories. The Vale had never had a king. They had only ever had Bede. Yet, for some reason, she felt incredibly nervous at the forthcoming audience.

  Everything that was going on around her was because of this man. All the soldiers outside the city, all the officers with their absurd moustaches and bright clothing, all the messengers and servants hurrying through their waiting chamber and the cannons on the walls and the endless activity. The whole war that had been going on for years was because of this man, this king. And she was going to meet him.

  ‘You said before that he is weak,’ Writer pointed out.

  Cedd shrugged. ‘I don’t know the man. But I think he must be. He is not merely a physical weakling, which often infects a man’s moral character. He is also easily influenced and indecisive. But also he must be incredibly stubborn and proud.’

  ‘Those traits seem contradictory,’ Writer said. ‘What about his action leads you to you to draw that conclusion?’

  Cedd gestured to the walls and ceiling of the room they sat in. ‘Look where we are. He has been beaten in battle time and again. Once again, he is outnumbered. The New Model Army, his enemy, is low quality but it appears to be disciplined and highly determined. All the King has to protect his kingdom and his crown is this cobbled together army, from the kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland. He has been forced to borrow vast sums to hire German and Dutch mercenaries. His advisers are always arguing with each other. And here we are, Cedd and Bede, two of the greatest assets in Europe offering our services. Yet he keeps us waiting. Why would he do that, do you think?’

  Writer had no idea. ‘Perhaps he is busy with the war?’

  ‘You do not always have to think the best of everyone, Maerwynn,’ Cedd chided her. ‘No, Charles is attempting to demonstrate to us that he does not need us. He’s exerting what little control he has left, which is access to the royal person.’

  ‘You will enter shortly,’ a herald had called out from by the huge doors. He was finely dressed and carried a long black lacquered staff with a silver head on it and it was his job to let people in and out of the hall beyond. ‘Please prepare yourselves.’

  Cedd nudged Bede awake. ‘We’re going in soon. And remember, we’ll have no lip from you, Bede, please. Let me do the talking.’

  ‘As if anyone else could get a word in,’ Bede mumbled and stood up to stretch. His knees and back popped like the sound of stepping on a bundle of dry twigs.

  ‘Speak only if asked a direct question by the king,’ Cedd explained to her. ‘The last thing we want to do is offend him.’

  ‘Might be difficult to avoid,’ Bede said.

  ‘Quite. Watch out for Earl Digby and Prince Rupert. They are quite opposed to each other and will seek to use our appearance to bolster their own arguments.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Bede muttered. ‘Why should we not simply destroy the entire nobility? Surely, we could do it in a trice? I’ll throw up a barrier and you can blast the entire hall to ashes and dust.’

  ‘Quiet, you fool,’ Cedd whispered, standing up. He was a foot shorter than Bede but she knew who would win in a fight. ‘The slower way is better. Surer.’

  ‘I hate these people, Cedd,’ Bede moaned. ‘They’re the enemy.’

  ‘No more talk like that,’ Cedd hissed. ‘Stand up, Maerwynn. Brush down your dress. You are about to meet a king. I think I shall rather enjoy this.’

  Writer took a deep breath. Her heart was racing and her mouth dry.

  The herald came over and asked them to accompany him. He rapped the head of his staff on the huge doors. They opened from the other side and the herald led them into a long room with high ceilings and a bright blue carpet. Enormous windows down the right hand side let in a vast amount of mid-morning sunlight and cast huge shadows from the window frames over everyone inside.

  Richly dressed people lined the walls four or five deep, murmuring and whispering and hiding grins behind their hands. Dozens of them, a hundred or two hundred, she was not sure.

  At the far end sat the king. He had big curly hair and he sat on an engraved, shining gold throne upon a low stage. His wife the Queen sat by his side on her own lesser throne that was smaller and lower and slightly further back than his own.

  Next to them stood a great many others on either side of the raised stage area. Most of the men wore swords. Most of the women wore lace and embroidered silk dresses that puffed and shimmied like water in sunlight.

  Writer could not believe the richness of the cloth on everyone, the jewels and precious metals that sparkled and shone.

  The herald next to her thumped his staff on the floor and announced their names so loudly that it made her jump.

  ‘The rogue Alchemist Bede and the rogue Alchemist Cedd!’

  Cedd strode up and Bede followed half a step behind. Writer was irritated that they had not announced her and was not sure whether she was supposed to go with them or not. The herald nudged her forward with his staff so she scurried forward behind the two alchemists.

  ‘Your majesty,’ Cedd said as he stopped ten paces from the King and bowed deeply. Bede nodded, scowling. Writer curtsied as best she could, drawing titters from the ornately dressed women either side of the hall.

  ‘So you have come at last,’ King Charles said.

  He had bulging eyes in a sunken face, a long straight nose with a big moustache and long beard on his chin. His long hair curling over a high lace collar. The King was a small man, and short and she could tell because his feet barely brushed the floor beneath them. She was disappointed, too, that he was not wearing a crown and he had a huge forehead which, in her opinion, could have done with one. It was a long, thin, tired, miserable face but not entirely ugly.

  Writer knew almost nothing about kings but she was certain that he did not look much like what she was sure a king should look like.

  ‘We have indeed, sire,’ Cedd said and bowed again.

  ‘You have taken your time about it, haven’t you,’ the King said, gripping the arms of his throne and leaning forward. His voice rose in pitch, almost to a squeal. ‘I believe you have advised every one of my predecessors since King Lear and yet you have never once attended me.’

  The Queen, who she knew was called Henrietta Maria, reached one of her dainty hands over and placed it on her husband’
s. She had dark curly hair and a long nose. Her face was quite nice to look at, though she had droopy eyelids, a tiny pointy chin and full lips. She was somewhat drowned in a puffy dress of shiny blue silk and she was wearing a string of pearls round her neck, long pearly earrings and somehow she had pearls dotted in her hair.

  ‘And yet they are here now, my dear,’ the Queen said in a very strange accent.

  Charles seemed to deflate and sit back in his throne. ‘I suppose so. But I must say, I was surprised indeed to hear you had both arrived. It was my understanding that you were supporting that traitor Cromwell.’

  Cedd did not speak but merely smiled the same slight smile.

  A man on the king’s right spluttered. ‘Well? Answer your king, alchemist.’

  ‘My apologies, Earl Digby. I was instructed to speak only to answer a direct question from the king. And I had no such question.’

  Earl Digby’s face turned red. He had chubby cheeks, long auburn hair and a straggly moustache. His skin was shiny, as if he’d had it polished with wax. ‘You mock your king?’

  ‘I assure you I do not, Earl Digby. In truth, it has been hundreds of years since I have been in the presence of royalty.’

  ‘Did you not advise the Tudors?’ King Charles asked. ‘The Plantagenets?’

  ‘Mere rumour, sire,’ Cedd spoke smoothly.

  ‘The Lord High Alchemist told me differently,’ the King said then glanced over his shoulder at an ancient, wizened man standing behind him with a bent back and drooping head. ‘I mean, of course, the previous High Lord Alchemist. This one tells me nothing.’ The old man’s head creaked up, blinking as if he had just woken.

  Cedd cleared his throat. ‘I have heard that the Alchemist Dee likes to tell the story of how he ousted me from the court of Queen Elizabeth. Perhaps he has told you that story himself, sire? Before he was... lost to your service.’

  ‘He did indeed,’ the King said. ‘And what say you to that?’

  ‘The truth is, sire, I was never at the court of Queen Elizabeth. I was never once in her presence. My belief is that Dee thought up that story in order to impress others, counting on my continued absence from politics and there being no one to contradict him.’

  ‘But you have been seen with Cromwell, man,’ King Charles said. ‘We have had many reports. Reports, I say.’

  Cedd spread his hands. ‘I sought merely to dissuade him from this war, sire. I am long out of practice and perhaps that is why I failed to get through to him. Or perhaps the madness that has gripped so many is more powerful than ordinary sense or reason. I see now that I should have foreseen this failure and instead come to you years ago. But we are able to look back on the past with the perfect vision lacking in the present and second-guessing your own actions leads to endless self-recrimination and often stagnation in the present. I content myself with the fact that I am here now and I pledge my services to you.’

  The King looked at Cedd or a long time, as if he were thinking hard. Then he shifted his attention to the other alchemist. ‘And you are the famous Alchemist Bede? How much we have heard of you and your independent kingdom within my own. You have emerged from your enclave for the first time and you do so in order to pledge your allegiance to me. I must say, I appreciate your zeal.’

  Bede opened his mouth to speak but someone else spoke before he could say anything.

  ‘The single reason that he joins us,’ a very tall man on the King’s left said. ‘Is because Cromwell overcame his magic and conquered his Vale.’

  ‘And who are you, you young upstart?’ Bede said, drawing himself up to his full height.

  ‘This is Prince Rupert of the Rhine,’ the King said. ‘My nephew and commander of all my regiments of horse.’

  Prince Rupert looked amused and offended at the same time. He was as tall as Bede was but where the alchemist was all bone and loose skin, Rupert was broad at the shoulder and narrow at the waist. He had the long curly hair that most every other man in the room did but he had no moustache. In fact, she thought he was so young that he could not have grown a moustache if he’d wanted to and his cheeks were smooth and pink. She could see the family resemblance between him and the King but Rupert was handsome where the King was unpleasant. Prince Rupert looked like a King should look, Writer thought.

  ‘Apologise,’ Cedd whispered to Bede.

  ‘I will not,’ Bede said in his normal, peevish voice. ‘I came here to win a war, not to bow and scrape to talentless cretinous lords.’

  There was a muted uproar around the room. The men around the King looked horrified. Rupert put his hand on his sword and looked at the King as if awaiting an order.

  ‘I do apologise, sire,’ Cedd said, hurriedly. ‘My old friend has not been in good company for hundreds of years. He has been shut away since before good manners existed and simply does not understand. Please forgive him, much as you would a small child for speaking its mind. And accept a thousand apologies.’

  Bede scowled down at Cedd but managed to hold his tongue.

  ‘No need for apologies,’ the King said, surprising what seemed like everyone. ‘You are quite right, Alchemist Bede. You came here to win this war for me. And I am sure that you will do so in the coming battle with the foul rebels.’

  ‘Uncle,’ Prince Rupert said. ‘We are grateful for our new allies, of course, but this changes little. We remain outnumbered and it would be prudent to...’

  ‘Ah, this again,’ Earl Digby said, shrugging elaborately. ‘Sire, I would never suggest the Prince has so much as an ounce of cowardice in him. He has proven himself fearless at charging headlong into the rebels. I can only conclude that he instead underestimates the quality of our men. We have fewer than Cromwell, it is true. But every one of ours is worth two of theirs. We have vastly more experienced musketeers. Our horse, under the Prince’s leadership, has become the greatest mounted force since Alexander’s Companions routed the Persians two thousand years ago. Our battlemages have grown from strength to strength and with Cedd and Bede to oversee them they cannot fail. We must fight now. Bring them to battle and crush the traitors once and for all time.’

  Choruses of ‘Hear, hear!’ echoed around the room and the King looked pleased.

  ‘Our army grows by the day,’ Rupert said to the king. ‘More men and horse and ordinance pour in from Ireland and Scotland and Wales. We should pull back and continue to increase our strength while their fails the further they push into our lands. Our battlemages are still unskilled and it will take time for our new allies to train them.’

  The King looked troubled. Uncertain. Writer thought he might even cry a little bit.

  ‘If I may speak out of turn, sire, I may have something which may sway your decision,’ Cedd said. Everyone turned to him. ‘Behind me here is Maerwynn of Straytford.’

  She felt all eyes in the room fall upon her. Gasps echoed around the room and whispers filled the air.

  She did not know what to do with her hands. She grasped them before her then let them go, then grasped them again, twiddling her fingers.

  ‘She was, ah, created by Bede. Her bloodline has been honed and tended for hundreds of years, much as horse breeders create thoroughbred warhorses. And not merely is the magic in her bloody, she was herself then trained in spellcraft and incantation by Bede. She particularly excels in both transmutation and elemental magic.’

  ‘I do not understand,’ said the King of England. ‘This is just a girl. Are girls not excluded from the study of alchemy and practice of magic?’

  The old man behind him cleared his throat. ‘Indeed, your majesty, indeed. Excluded. Highly irregular. But then these rogue alchemists never obeyed the Alchemists’ Guild rules.’

  Charles stroked his chin. ‘This is highly irregular.’ He looked at his wife. ‘This is highly irregular.’

  The Queen patted the King on the hand again and looked very sympathetic.

  The King looked down at her very closely. She held his gaze.

  ‘Why are you here, girl?’
the King asked her. ‘He says Bede made you. That you are a warhorse, if I followed correctly. Does he deceive me? Are you truly of the magi? Will you kill Cromwell’s traitors for me?’

  Writer glanced at Cedd. His eyes were full of pleading. She knew that he wanted her to say that she was committed to the war, that she would fight for the King and so on.

  ‘I am here because I have no choice,’ she said. Muttering bubbled up around her and the King looked shocked.

  ‘But since I am here,’ she continued, having to speak louder over the hubbub. ‘I shall become the best battlemage I can be.’

  The King seemed dissatisfied. ‘Hardly heartfelt commitment, is it, Cedd? I suppose one more battlemage would be of use against Cromwell’s landships. But I am not sure how that materially improves the calculations we generals must undertake.’

  ‘I see that my explanations have been inadequate,’ Cedd said. ‘Sire, I speak no lie when I tell you that this girl could win the war for you, your majesty. For she is the most powerful mage I have ever seen. She was made for this, quite literally. A few days more to hone her skills and integrate with the other magi and she will be able to crush the landships as easily as your majesty could crush a beetle.’

  The King looked shocked but happy. ‘Truly? This girl? As powerful as all that? Fighting for me?’

  He turned to the Queen and she patted his hand. Prince Rupert scowled at her.

  Writer heard Earl Digby clap his hands together.

  ‘Battle it is,’ Digby said.

  Writer decided that she had to escape.

  Archer’s Rifles

  Archer led the patrol northwards through the woods, with Sergeant Jones beside him.

  The King’s Army was out there somewhere and Archer could almost feel it. He had been reassured by his Colonel and his Sergeant that the enemy was still many days and dozens of miles away. Yet he could not rid himself of that feeling.

  His twenty men plus Sergeant Jones were all sharpshooters and all carried rifles. They patrolled on foot, not on horseback. In truth, they did not expect to meet any enemy. The patrol was supposed to be like practising together for when the proper fighting started. It was for learning how to move together, how to take up firing positions designed to cover each other.