by Jason Beech
Jacob examined his own shuffling feet as if they could provide an answer. “I … I … I can’t remember, sir.”
“I think you probably can, but I’ll remind you. You told me you could get me inside these walls.” He gave them a rap with his knuckles. The boy examined Samuel’s hands until the man moved them behind his back.
The boy nodded and concentrated on his feet again.
“Hold out your hand.”
The boy’s gaze shifted to his elder’s dancing eyes.
“You fear me?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“You don’t?”
“I’ve heard stuff … about you. But here you are smiling at me. I dunno what to think.”
“Hold out your hand.”
Jacob lifted his hand inch-by-slow-inch. When the boy’s hand finally rested open and upward, Samuel placed a coin in his palm. He kept his fingers tight on the currency as Jacob’s hand grasped.
“That’s half, Jacob. Well done so far. Now get me in.”
He released his hold to allow the boy to scurry the coin away from retraction. Samuel waited for him to turn to the wall before he cast a squint westward. He’d had too many close calls with Royalist troops on his many missions. After this one he would take leave of these cold slate shores and sweat happily on a Caribbean plantation with his mulatto mistress, Rebekah.
He watched between the boy’s grasps, slips and clambers, and the forest behind. He hoped some woodland beast caused those occasional snaps in the undergrowth. Jacob threw down a rope, knotted at intervals to ease Samuel’s way up. Another snap in the trees forced him to pick up pace. Jacob helped him over the edge. Samuel fell onto the boy, stood, straightened his pants, and pointed at his boots.
“Clean them.”
“Sir?”
“Clean them, and you will get rewarded further.”
Jacob searched about him for something he could use as a rag. He popped his head over the wall and bit his lip at this man’s blanket, useless in the long grass below. Samuel knew the boy understood his mistake. He had forgotten it himself, but he liked to use everybody’s disadvantages as a foothold. He thumbed the boy’s shirt. His lifted eyebrow told Jacob what he needed to do.
“Sir… this is my only shirt.”
“I can see that.” Samuel smiled and noted the tear in the boy’s shirt, caused, he presumed, by a snag of a nail, or a thorn while he poached rabbits. “My coin will buy you two. Fresh and clean. Imagine that.”
Jacob snatched and ripped at his shirt to pull it free from his body. Tight muscles. Probably a blacksmith’s apprentice. Knows how to get about outside these walls. Knows how to feed himself. The boy got on his knees. A slap on the boy’s back made him shuffle back on his haunches.
“Don’t spit on your shirt. Use nature’s resources, boy.”
“Sir?”
“Rain … use the rain.”
The boy acted quick, Samuel had hope for him yet. He soaked the shirt in the sop of moss which hugged a protruding stone like the crown of hair on a bald man. He moved back to Samuel, kneeled, and scrubbed the mud from his boots.
As he laboured, Samuel surveyed the town – the boy would need to work regularly on his boots. The few people who milled about in the muddy streets slouched like meals didn’t come easy. A girl carried a bucket like her legs might snap with the weight. She stood tall enough for a teen, but undeveloped enough to guess she was a child. An old man sat by the tavern rocked back and forth, possibly inebriated, maybe mad. He guessed mad: how could the taverner import beer past the besieging army?
Soldiers patrolled the top of the castle walls as demoralised as the girl and man. The slouch in their shoulders suggested they wouldn’t resist much more force, and he’d heard this town had been battered a few times in the last few months already. Samuel patted the little black Bible through his sombre black coat and assured himself that all the town needed was a bit of God-fearing to straighten their backs.
“There.” Jacob stood.
Samuel eyeballed his work and nodded approval at the boots and for the lack of puppy-eyes for payment. He pulled a coin from his purse, flattened it against his own palm and transferred it to Jacob’s with a handshake. He held his hand firm. The boy kept his eyes down – resented the need to show humility. He should start it now, and freely. It would take him far. Samuel had pulled ropes on ships and lined his hands with cuts and countless abrasions. He had lifted enough barrels to gain the strength to overpower any blacksmith’s grasp. Samuel had reached his current position without a need to show off his superiority to the men of a higher breed.
Samuel pulled a thick-bladed knife from beneath his coat and rested it on the boy’s wrist – pressed sufficient to draw blood if Jacob had the gall to withdraw from his hold. Samuel felt the slightest pull, enough to show Jacob’s fear. Still, the boy impressed his elder for recovering his calm. The boy steadied his eyes and kept them latched to Samuel’s. Such cool could come in use.
“I could have thrown you over the wall for the stunt you pulled down there.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it, sir. I didn’t try to trick yer out of any coins.”
“I see that.” He placed his knife back in a silver sheath wrapped around his waist by a chain. “I could use a lad like you.”
Jacob’s eyes pierced into him. He had a bit of fervour. “Then use me.”
They turned to greet the soldier who had come to welcome them.
3.
Elisabeth massaged and rubbed her hands as if she could squeeze out all her trouble. She had sat on this hard bench for the last five days, with minimal food and the odd sip of water. It made her dizzy to stand.
What did this unintentionally comic man, Mr Billingham, want? She had met him a few times in the tavern, always in relation to Jack. Her lover said the Captain always warned him about her. Mr Billingham stood shorter than her. She bent her knees in a slight squat so she would appear smaller than him. Otherwise he rested his eyes on her breasts in his refusal to lift his head. His jaw would work silently, Elisabeth unsure if he cussed at or wanted to get involved in them.
Now, through the iron bars which connected floor to ceiling, he still had to pull hard at the reigns of his minimal power, never in control of it as he would wish.
His nose lifted in disgust. “You should confess now. Before he comes.”
Words stopped still at the end of her tongue before they leapt off the edge of the cliff. Her silence offended the man further. Forced his dignity to pull his sword and clatter the cell with a strike. “I warned Jack. I warned him plenty. And now he’s dead.”
Elisabeth turned away and wrapped her arms around herself. She sunk into the wall. A guard entered.
“Sir, he’s here.”
Captain Billingham sheathed his sword and straightened. Pulled his collar up and down. Cleared his throat. “Then let him in.”
The guard nodded, left, and returned with a man and his apprentice. Elisabeth lifted her eyes while she kept her head down. The man gave the Captain the briefest of lip-smiles, but his eyes continued to show amusement. He laughed at Mr Billingham, she knew. The man failed to lean down into the Captain. Instead, he stood straighter and dropped his eyes down his nose onto Billingham.
“Mr Harrison, so glad to meet you at long last. We feared each day without you would make the town fall.”
“Mr Billingham –”
“Captain.”
This Mr Harrison let the moment slide into awkwardness before he replied. After he straightened his moustache, his luxurious moustache, his almost-Royalist moustache, he said, “Captain Billingham … you give me too much credit.”
“Not enough, sir. Not enough. I’ve heard great things. Any delay in you reaching us could have seen ... well, disaster.”
“Possibly. But let’s get to the facts first. What do you have?”
He nodded for his apprentice to leave. The boy left with an aristocratic incline of his head. She knew him – she couldn’t quit
e name him. Her vision, along with her mind, had sharpened and blurred in relay over the last couple of days. The self-protective hug which had been all the comfort she could garner weakened. This new man came here to torment her.
“I haven’t checked anything yet, sir, except for the veracity of our informant, who is highly reliable.”
“How so?”
“She’s this woman’s sister.”
Elisabeth’s moan turned their heads for just a moment.
4.
Jacob splashed mud up his back all the way, without care for the shirt he couldn’t wait to replace. He knew the town well and it didn’t take long to reach the woman’s home, the tavern – a place he’d never entered. He rapped on the door, worried it might crumble if he hit it any harder.
Nobody answered on the first knock, and the second returned an equal silence which made the boy worry for future reward. He tramped to the tavern’s only other opening and peered in.
“Can I help you?”
He stepped back. His mouth clamped shut. Shoulder-length black hair shivered in the wind, and eyes which had seen a world he couldn’t imagine stared at him. She demanded news as if she knew him already.
“Where is my sister?”
She stepped from the entrance into the mud’s slurp. He worried how her shawl would get dirty. A woman like this should never have dirt ruin her. Slaves ought to carry her on a fine throne above the muck.
She rushed at him and grabbed the shirt he would have defended fiercely only a few hours before.
“Where is she?”
“I … I …”
“I’ll give you a reason for that stammer if you don’t talk, boy.”
How she tagged him as a boy hurt something he hadn’t experienced before. A burgeoning manhood, perhaps. His depths stirred and he could only grab her forearms to balance himself from a fall backwards from her thrust.
“Cap’ain Billingham has her. In one of his cells.” He wanted to say something more, but he couldn’t forge his thoughts into sound.
5.
Elisabeth’s hunger slumped her into a ball. Every fibre had numbed, coming to vibrant life every so often when she screamed for her freedom. She would thrust her face into the gaps between the bars. Quickly exhausted, she’d curl up again and stare at this new man, who ordered Captain Billingham about as if he knew him as the nobody she recognised. The tall man would examine her for a moment as he would a fly, then return to the paper he wrote upon. Billingham occasionally headed out at some command and come back like he had fetched a bone.
She let a few tears drop when the sun drew the clouds apart like curtains and shone bar-stripes upon her. Hoped God had answered her silent prayers. She pounced up and reached for the sky, only for the clouds to shut out the rays again. God had taken a peek and decided her unworthy. She collapsed to the ground and sobbed.
She had only enough energy to open a single eyelid when the door creaked open. The apprentice had returned with a woman.
6.
“What have they done to you, Elisabeth?”
“We have done nothing yet. Only observed … and that has shown quite a lot.”
Mary swivelled on this man. She heard he had arrived, but never considered all this could relate to Elisabeth. She reached for her sister’s hand through the bars and shook at the one half-opened eye which stared back without much focus.
“Release her. She’s done nothing.”
“We shall see.”
Elisabeth’s hand lied too far to receive Mary’s kiss. Mary squeezed it once and let go. She stepped to this man. He failed to rise from his seat. Twiddled the quill in his right hand. He had a certain quality. New. Didn’t reek fusty like old money. His boots sparkled, in a season like this. Appearances mattered, and his lackey, the boy who brought her here, followed his coins. The stranger weighed her up, a small smile about his lips, his thoughts on gold, no doubt – Elisabeth’s imprisonment his apprentice’s mine.
“Who are you?”
He rested the quill in the ink. “I can see in your eyes that you know my role exactly.”
“I can see in yours that you’re a chancer. Sir.”
He tried to avoid narrowing his eyes, as if she had not hit the mark, but he failed. She could see he knew her recognition. He stood to tower above her. She stood firm and lifted her chin to meet his gaze.
“I don’t know why you’re surprised, madame.”
“I’m no madame.”
“Sorry, madam. I see you have an education, of sorts.”
“Only that which I have learned by myself.”
“To be admired.”
“You are not a lord, neither.”
“No. I am not.” The agreement squeezed through his teeth.
“Release my sister.”
“Why would I do that?”
Gunfire smashed the air. The man peered out through the window.
“The Royalists are taking new heart, I see.” He turned back to Mary.
“The town will not fall. It has withstood this siege for months now. And we know what will happen if we give in.”
He stepped close. Invaded her senses with his and his boots’ leather scent. He circled behind her. If he thought he could intimidate by inspecting her from behind like an animal, then he mistook her. She turned with his every step, as if they danced, and furrowed some lines in his forehead. The man clearly expected, and usually got, obedience. She had dealt with worse in the tavern.
“Take a look out of the window.” His eyebrows directed her.
She stepped backwards all the way. Kept her back to the wall. Turned her neck to see.
She whispered “Peter.”
“Is that his name? I didn’t know.”
She could see Peter shake even from here, as two guards led him up steps to the wooden platform. One of the guards checked his hands remained bound behind him, while the other fitted and tightened the noose around his neck and placed a hood over his head.
The stranger joined her by the window. “I have seen him by your tavern each morning, muttering obscenities about surrender. Shaking like a madman, so thin you could almost hear his bones shake. He brings down the morale of a skinny town where every starving man is looking for a way out.”
She held her breath, nervous any escape might let him know how she now feared him. She bolstered herself against the snake of an index finger he used to curl her hair.
“Though nobody knows me in this town, I am nevertheless known about. One word from me,” he nodded to poor Peter, “and look what I can make happen.”
7.
“Get this woman out of here.” Captain Billingham stood in the doorway, wild-eyed at Mary.
“Captain.” Samuel smiled as he would to a pet.
“Get her out.”
“Why? What happened? She is a witness. From your own words.”
“The enemy is preparing to storm the walls. We must start the process and rid the town of evil.”
Samuel noted how the Captain looked around the woman, never at her. He clearly wanted to lift her skirt, but he wouldn’t know what to do with what he found there.
“Jacob.”
“Sir?”
“Take … this woman.”
The woman had a tear for this Peter. It washed away her former ferocity. Her palm painted defiance across her face again as she wiped it away. “My name is Mary, and I will not leave without my sister.”
“Mary … a name which went out of fashion with the last bloody queen to bear it. So be it. The other cell looks lonely. You can fill it.”
“For what reason?”
“The same reason as for your sister: witchcraft.”
8.
“This is quite the banquet.” Samuel sat on a decorative chair padded by plush velvet unbecoming of a Parliamentarian general. Various game and red meats invited his eyes and pulled his tongue across the front of his teeth in anticipation.
“We need to keep our spirits up.” The General held court to the to
wn’s great and good, whose black, sombre attire didn’t match the table’s splendour. “These are tough times.”
“Certainly.” Samuel couldn’t make his eyes join in with the smile. The woman had got in his head. Her defiance bit into him. Would she show it to a lord, to such a man as the General?
“The world has gone a little mad. We have men walking around like they own the place. A few coins in a finely tailored pocket does not give a man breeding.”
Samuel refrained from snorting like an impatient horse. He occupied his hands with stabs at slices of beef from the communal plate.
“Sir, we are fighting a war against a king.”
A sip of wine dripped down the General’s immaculately trimmed beard. He placed the goblet carefully, precisely, by his plate, and folded his fingers together. “Your point?”
“That the people are all a little more equal than before.”
“Have you been reading Thomas Hobbes’ filthy literature?”
“Ideas get about, sir.”
“Ideas get us where we are today, shivering behind these bloody walls, starving to death.”
Samuel kept his gaze from the many and varied foodstuffs. “You’re right, of course.” He raised his wine to the man.
“You’re a much-soughted man, Samuel Harrison.”
“I have talents men like you seek.”
“Not me. You mistake me for a superstitious wretch. I only allowed you in because I have to deal with superstitious wretches. You’ve met Captain Billingham?”
Samuel nodded. “An interesting man.”
“You’ve lived a far too varied life to consider him an interesting man. He’s an imbecile who sees evil everywhere. A small mind collapses under pressure. Though … what greater pressure than what we face? If we fall, we’ll all be massacred. Every man, woman and child.”
“It won’t come to that, General, I’m sure.”
“It better not. You deal with your witch – I’ve heard it is now witches, plural – and allow the people their sacrifice. Then we can get on with surviving until Newcastle or Fairfax, or that upstart Cromwell, comes to our aid.”
