Plague Child

by Peter Ransley

  The one person who was unmistakably and thoroughly cheerfully awake was the baker. I wanted to hurry past, wrapped in my silence, but Eaton stopped to buy a loaf and a small beer. I sullenly refused both. Eaton raised his eyebrows, for I normally had a fearsome appetite. He shrugged and sat on a bench outside the baker’s, smacking his lips as he swallowed the beer, declaring he could taste the nutty, Oxfordshire barley which made real beer, not your London piss.

  There is nothing like the smell of newly baked bread in the morning, particularly when you have had little to eat the night before. The loaf was so hot Eaton jiggled it from hand to hand as he divided it with scrupulous fairness. The delicious, eddying steam made my mouth water and my stomach contract, but it was the mocking way he broke it, as if, God-forsaken as he was, he was aware of doing a parody of the Last Supper.

  ‘I will not break bread with you,’ I said.

  He shrugged, put the rejected portion carefully in his pack and munched the other, with great sounds of enjoyment as we walked along.

  It was as if I had woken in the middle of a nightmare, and was now walking through a parable. The rising sun seemed to pale and weaken, the houses become hovels and the hovels waste ground on which nothing grew as we approached the plague pit. Seeing a cart nearby Eaton struck off the path, up the track towards the pit. When I did not follow him, he called back. The bread and beer had put him in great good humour.

  ‘Do you not want to see what you were saved from, my lord?’

  I hung back. I felt the urge to run but my legs had turned to water. Eaton reached the rough fence, smeared with crude red crosses. The smell of lime, sharp as a knife, was carried to me by the thin wind, but it was not sufficient to obliterate the under current of rot and decay, or keep away the flies, which hovered round the head of the carter who was laying down more lime. The man doffed his cap.

  ‘Mr Eaton! Got anything for me?’

  Eaton looked back slyly at me. ‘Not today, Bryson. Bit late in the season.’

  Bryson agreed, and declared it had been a bad year, but things were picking up. Fever was spreading through the troops, and there was good business in burying them. He was heading north, beyond Highpoint, where the two armies were circling.

  ‘They had better begin, while they have some men left,’ he joked. Their conversation sickened me, but at the same time I felt a great thrill of excitement that this noble conflict that would settle the fate of England was about to begin. I determined to be there, to distinguish myself or die. If I lived, I would write the greatest pamphlet on the war ever printed.

  Fired with these thoughts, I turned from them and hurried away. Where the greenery began to grown again, beyond this charnel ground, I saw the inn where we had stabled our horses. I had no idea where Chipping Norton was, where I was due to meet Will, but God would put me on the right road.

  I heard Eaton hurrying behind me, and quickened my pace. ‘Tom . . . what is it?’

  There was something I had never heard in his voice before: concern. But I knew it to be as counterfeit as a faker’s coin. I stopped so abruptly he almost bumped into me, and I rounded on him. ‘I saw you leaving the Stonehouse Arms last night.’

  To my amazement he laughed and readily admitted it. There was almost a kind of relief in his laughter. ‘I thought I heard someone following me. Is that all?’

  ‘All? When you go into an inn where the Stonehouse brothers and Captain Gardiner are staying?’

  ‘I see. I see.’ He walked for a few steps in a deep, penetrating silence. ‘And you think I am laying a trap for you, do you?’

  ‘What else am I to think?’

  ‘Yes, what else are you to think? You’re as little trusting as I am, Tom, and I like you none the less for it.’ We were now at the inn and he pointed to a bench, but I would not sit down. ‘Did you see me go into the inn?’

  I had to admit I did not.

  ‘Talk to Richard Stonehouse or Gardiner?’

  ‘No.’

  He told me he went to the stables to talk to Lord Stonehouse’s spy about Richard’s movements, so we would not cross them.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going there?’

  ‘You were asleep. And I knew you would have this reaction.’ He spoke suddenly with all his old violence, his harsh voice charged with contempt, but whether it was aimed at me, or perhaps himself or life in general I never knew. ‘After I killed Crow, and all I’ve said about Richard destroying the estate, do you really think I would work for him?’

  ‘Yes. If you thought he was going to win.’

  His scar throbbed as if it was going to leap out at me. Then he turned away, struggling to control himself. He picked up a stick from the hedgerow and slapped his side continually with it. ‘I thought I was the strangest of God’s creatures because He left me to the devil and I was happy with that, for it was very simple. People were afraid of me and I knew where I was.’ He turned and levelled the stick at me. ‘But He made you stranger. He made you honest Tom Neave, or whoever you are. Honest, but not stupid, a combination I have not seen before.’

  He tossed the stick away. ‘Going off, were you? You’ll need this.’

  He gave me my knife and strode back to the stables, where our horses were saddled. If I could not make him out, I could scarce make myself out either. While he went into the inn to pay the bill, I could easily have escaped, but I was now loath to part from him.

  When he came out of the inn, I said: ‘I went to where Kate Beaumann stayed in London.’

  He mounted his horse, listening intently while I reported what the Countess had told me. He stared over the browning landscape at the twisting road. ‘Ah. She is ahead of us. Thank you.’

  He said not another word, staring at the road ahead, and might well have been riding alone, for all he said or acknowledged me. We crossed meadows and forded a river until we struck what I believe was an old green way, a drover’s road over the downs. I remembered what the shipwright had told me about Matthew taking the green road, and felt a surge of excitement. This must have been the way he came when he escaped with the pendant, years before, high over the downs, a way marked with mysterious cairns and crosses. In the far distance, a white horse cut into the chalk seemed to move with us in the swirling mist. Eaton pointed his whip towards it, and said that was where the Highpoint estate began.

  We dropped into an area disputed by both parties. There were sounds of gunfire and the boom of cannon. In the valley below us a castle was under siege. As we descended, coming near the main way, Eaton rode into a copse, gesturing me to keep silent. In the distance rode a party of about twenty, wearing the red favours of Cavaliers. Eaton, whose eyes were keener than mine, said one of them was Richard, and urged me along faster.

  In that God-forsaken valley we rode through a village where Parliamentary soldiers were stripping the lead from a church to make bullets. They wanted us to join in their ‘pilgrimage’ to liberate the church from papism. But it was one thing to hate bishops, another to watch books – which to me were living things – and crucifixes being thrown into a fire round which drunken soldiers danced. We hurried away through the churchyard. Eaton stopped by a gravestone, inscribed with the name Sir Henry Pearce and bearing a coat of arms on which was a wildcat with a raised paw.

  ‘The Pearce arms,’ he said. He pointed to the wildcat. ‘An apt symbol for your mother.’

  He went into one of his silences, refusing to say more, except that the Pearces were old nobility who, a century ago, owned most of the valley we rode through.

  Back on the green road, I was shocked to find that, while the soldiers were celebrating, Eaton had stolen a couple of pistols with balls and powder. He shrugged and said we were too ill-equipped to have scruples; we were only plundering the plunderers. That at least was true. In the pack of one soldier I had seen stolen plate, while a cottager pleaded in vain with an officer for the return of the hams she had cured for winter, for she and her children could not eat the ticket she had been given, wh
ich I read out to her when I tried to help her: To be Redeemed by Parliament Three Hammes. Sgnd J—— (Cpt). I was told by the captain that everyone must make sacrifices for the good of all. I had no answer to that, for I had said exactly the same thing in pamphlets, but with a great deal more fervour when I wrote it than I felt now.

  There was no news of Will and the unit, but the captain told us that Chipping Norton, where we were to have met them, was held by the Royalists, so we pressed on towards Highpoint.

  What little breaks we had were more to rest the horses, for we could doze on their backs. It rained steadily, but Eaton found dry hollows that smelt rankly of foxes. Though we had a leather under-sheet and a scrap of blanket, we depended on each other for warmth. The main torment was lack of food. There were troop movements all round us and Eaton would not shoot a rabbit or light a fire; instead we ate berries, which he said he had lived on one winter as a child, before he learned to hunt, and they gave him the strength he needed, but all they gave me was the flux.

  I awoke one morning, the sides of my stomach cleaving together, to hear a sound in the undergrowth. I felt for the pistol under my pack as I peered through the leaves. The horses, tethered nearby, reacted to the sound and I followed their gaze to see a stag alertly sniffing the air. With a full stomach I would have admired its magnificent antlers and praised God for the beauty of its creation but, famished, I could only see meat, a gift from God. Eaton was asleep. His warnings held me in check, but we had seen no soldiers the previous evening. My mouth filled with water and I could almost smell the venison steaks sizzling over a fire. I cocked the pistol under the pack to kill the sound, but it still alerted the stag. His head was taut, his ears shivering. In a moment he would run. I fired, but as I did so the pistol was knocked up from my hand. The stag fled, twigs and leaves raining down and a host of roosting birds rising up squawking.

  Eaton snatched the pistol from me. ‘Damn you, sir! Would you shoot your own deer?’

  ‘My my own . . .’ I stuttered.

  ‘Lord Stonehouse’s. Stonehouse or no, he would have had you strung on a gibbet if you’d shot that stag.’

  ‘Are we at Highpoint?’

  ‘We crossed the boundary yesterday forenoon when we left Barrow Down and entered the Great Forest – hist!’

  He clapped his hand over my mouth. At first I heard nothing, but as the birds swooped and settled, in the still morning air picked out several voices. Wordlessly Eaton made a stirrup with his hands and got me to climb a tree while he swept everything into our packs and untethered the horses. It was the birds fluttering up again that led me to their movements. I glimpsed a bloodstained bandage on a head, a red favour.

  ‘Cavaliers. About five of them. One of them wounded.’

  ‘Mounted?’

  ‘No. They have seen our tracks.’

  He swore softly. ‘They want our horses.’

  I was mortified at my stupidity in bringing this on us after Eaton’s warning but he said not a word in recrimination. We were among tightly bunched trees and bushes where it was impossible to ride. Eaton led us along a narrow track. With the difficulty of managing the horses, we could hear them gaining on us.

  ‘Stop! In the King’s name!’

  ‘Half a mile and we’re in the clear!’ yelled Eaton. ‘Mount up!’

  Throwing myself on to Patch’s back I ducked as low as I could, following Eaton weaving between the trees, branches whipping at us, the bigger ones almost knocking us from our saddles several times. It was a fallen tree that did for us. My horse, with its lighter weight leapt it, but Eaton’s stumbled and threw him. He was up almost immediately, but the delay cost us vital time for a clear run across open ground, which I could see temptingly through the trees. They were not far from us, yelling and whooping like hunters closing in for the kill.

  I would still have gone for it, but Eaton had a cooler head for calculation than me.

  ‘Reload your pistol.’

  He tethered the horses, flung himself down before the fallen tree and brought out his own pistol. Whether he left the horses in full view as an irresistible temptation, I do not know. Certainly the fact that their blood was up and the prospect of two horses between five men made them reckless. A man with a sabre was ahead of the rest, shouting he would have the black gelding. Eaton left it so late to fire he was almost on us, swinging his sword. The ball caught the man in the chest, but his momentum was so great he ran on for another couple of steps, the blade of his sword clanging down close to Eaton. I stared in horror as he coughed blood, his eyes fixed on me with a glazed stare, but Eaton rolled him over, taking the flintlock from his belt. He aimed it at one of the retreating Cavaliers, but it clicked uselessly against the charge. He flung it down and began reloading his own.

  ‘That will make them rather more cautious,’ Eaton said. His eyes gleamed. His habitual moroseness had gone and he seemed almost looking forward to them coming on again. There was silence among the trees, but I caught a movement on one side, then the other.

  ‘They’re surrounding us,’ I whispered.

  ‘Aye. If they’re sensible, we’re done for. We have two shots against four. If the bastards go off. Untether the horses. Keep down as I showed you.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Cover you.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Go!’

  I wriggled away from the fallen tree as he had taught me, using what cover I could, skirting the bush to which the horses were tethered and untied them. I grabbed the reins but the movement of the horses raised a cry from one of the Cavaliers.

  ‘They’re running for it!’

  As the Cavaliers broke cover, Eaton stood up with his pistol. ‘I have one shot and my friend has another. Which of you fine gentlemen wants the balls in their hearts, to give your good friends the pleasure of the horses?’

  Eaton’s putting the matter like this so divided the Cavaliers they stopped, glancing nervously from one to another, staying just out of range of the pistol. The scar which had once so terrified me must have been, to them, every much a weapon as the pistol. The nearer we got to Highpoint, the more he had picked and rubbed at it, until it was a weeping sore. Now he looked a fearsome sight, a man with a contempt for death, standing in the open, holding them with his gaze while backing imperceptibly towards me. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Is my stirrup free, Tom?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Put your foot in yours.’

  One of the men made a move for his flintlock. Eaton fired, missed and ran for his horse, leaping on with the agility of a far younger man.

  ‘Stay low on the horse – they will not shoot at that!’

  We careered forward, weaving between the last of the trees. Across a valley, like a mirage, I saw statues that seemed to dance round a fountain as I was bounced this way and that, and beyond them a great white building whose endless pilasters and chimneys flickered through the trees. It was my first view of Highpoint and almost my last. I felt the wind of a shot and Eaton fell right in front of my horse. I tried to swerve round him but the hooves caught him.

  I dismounted. He was quite still. His forehead was bleeding. His jacket was torn at the back and blood was soaking through. There were a number of shots, one striking a nearby tree. I bent over him, feeling his breath on my cheek and struggled to drag him into the shelter of a tree. Eaton’s black gelding had bolted, to be seized by two of the Cavaliers, who were arguing over him. I could not see the other two, but there were more shots as I managed to get Eaton behind the tree, next to my horse.

  His eyes opened. ‘Leave me! Let them have your horse and run for it!’

  I crawled to get his pack and there was the crack of another shot. Either they were reloading incredibly quickly or more had joined them. The pack had been split open in the fall and I pulled out his spare shirt. He tried to get up to protest again, but gasped in pain and fell back. I turned him over and ripped the back of his jacket open with my knife, winci
ng at his wound, which was steadily ebbing blood. I stuffed the shirt over it as tightly as I could and turned him back so his weight would help stop the flow. His eyes began to glaze over like those of the other dead man and I could not check the sobs as I knelt there, remembering that once I would have given anything for him to be dead, but now I would give anything for him to live. I prayed Our Father – what I could say of it, for the words choked in my mouth.

  The prayer brought some life back to his eyes, but not I fear to his soul, for it was an angry spark of life. ‘None of that! Leave me to die – it’s better for you! Go!’

  He pushed me away. I overbalanced and as I scrambled up saw a movement in the trees. One of the cavaliers darted to a tree not far from me. Eaton’s hand was quivering above his body as if he was still feebly trying to push me away. Through the last of the trees I could see the fountain, which seemed to make the pilasters of the house shimmer in the air. He was right. I could leave the horse and slip away through the trees. But instead it was as if he had infected me with some of his detached, bitter anger at life. I picked up my flintlock and wriggled behind Eaton, who was now quite still. I lay as if dead, using Eaton as a convenient rest for the pistol. When the Cavalier ran forward I waited as Eaton had done and shot him with some of his cold anger.

  As I watched him fall I heard a sound behind me and turned too late to avoid the pistol butt coming down on my head.

  Chapter 28

  The sky had miraculously changed to an aching blue, across which perfectly formed white clouds floated. Nine muses rode on clouds blown by Cupids with pink, fat cheeks. They, in turn, were being chased by goats. Goats in heaven? One of them appeared to be eating a cloud, wispy fronds of it clinging to his beard. I could hear it munching, its hooves rapping on the sky as it gripped another piece of cloud. Surprisingly, there was pain in heaven. The light was so bright it forced me to shut my eyes and I struggled to turn my body, indeed discover whether I still had a body, then wished I hadn’t as a wave of nausea swept over me. I had a body, but it consisted principally of bruises.