Like all peat-diggers they had been lean, hard-looking men, bent over in their wide wet trench, treading spades into the turf, and their having no possessions worth stealing made them doughty enough as Mun and his ragged troop had ridden up. But their leader, a grey-bearded man, the creases of his face black with earth, was no fool and answered every question Mun asked of him. The man could not be sure because the column had been a distance off, but some of the riders, he said, had seemed to have orange scarves about their waists or across one shoulder. And orange was Parliament’s colour.
And so Mun had turned his troop south and the day had turned vile and it had not been long before they had picked up the tracks the column had scored into the soft earth. Amongst the hoof prints there were wheel ruts, which had pleased the men for two reasons. First, it meant that the column could not outrun them, and second, it meant that the chances were their cart carried something worth having.
‘With any luck they’ll have a barrel or two of ale,’ Allen Godfrey said, rain dripping from the wispy tuft sprouting from his chin, ‘or better still beer.’
‘In Heaven, boys, there is no beer,’ O’Brien sang in a deep, round voice, ‘and that is why we drink it here.’
Mun smiled. ‘You think you’re going to Heaven, you Irish rogue?’ he asked, looking ahead, eyes ranging along the treeline, for if the column knew they were being followed the trees would make a good place to spring an ambush.
‘And why not, I ask you?’ O’Brien said. ‘It is my aim to get into Heaven a full day before the Devil knows I’m dead.’ There were a few low chuckles at this and O’Brien gave young Godfrey a smile and a wink as Mun raised a hand to halt the troop.
The trees ahead were mostly oak, birch and beech, and their leaves being gone there was little cover in which to hide, but that did not mean there were not men with loaded firelocks behind the wide trunks or hidden amongst the pollarded boughs.
Mun swept the sodden cap off his head and stuffed it into his left bucket-top boot. Then he took his helmet from its leather wrapping behind his saddle, sweeping his long wet hair back before putting it on and tying the leather thong beneath his chin with freezing fingers.
‘Shall we take a look, O’Brien?’ he suggested, tapping his heels against Hector’s flanks and drawing his sword, for he did not trust his powder to be dry. The stallion tossed his head and moved off, hooves trudging through downtrodden russet bracken.
The Irishman had already put his helmet on. ‘I’ll save you a drop, lads,’ he said, urging his mare forward and pulling his poll-axe from its scabbard against his saddle, ‘if I’m not so drunk that I forget.’
Entering the woods Mun noted the slant of the rain and checked the wind’s direction.
‘It’s sweeping behind us,’ O’Brien said, bringing the poll-axe up towards his own face, ‘then coming up in a twist right into our faces.’ He lifted his buttocks and farted loudly. ‘An awkward, if not damned impossible wind to stalk in.’
Mun leant over, forcing a globule of spit through pursed lips. The wind dashed it off past his right ear.
‘At least they won’t smell us coming,’ he said, which would have been a very real risk had the wind been blowing the stink of his thirty unwashed troopers into the woods.
A handful of wet leaves slapped into O’Brien’s face and he cursed, pawing them away. ‘With any luck we’ll hear them before they hear us,’ he said.
Mun nodded. Squinting against the whipping wind his eyes scoured the wood either side of the new tracks that led into its depths. A pair of ravens croaked somewhere out in the gloom and the wind began to keen. Despite the lashing rain, old wind-blasted snow lay frozen on the leeward side of beech and oak trunks. There was no sign of danger, nothing to suggest the column they were tracking even suspected it was being followed. But Mun could not risk his men. They had fought like devils for him, endured cold and hunger and filth, and he would not lead them into a trap.
‘They’ll thank you for it,’ O’Brien said, and it occurred to Mun that the Irishman was becoming altogether too good at reading his thoughts. ‘As my da used to say, a hundred times careful is better than one time dead.’
‘Remind me how your father died, O’Brien,’ Mun said, tearing his eyes from the woods to look at the Irishman.
Beneath the dripping rim of his three-bar pot O’Brien’s eyes widened. ‘He was labouring on a castle in County Clare when a cartload of limestone upset,’ he said. ‘A wheel hit a divot, as they do. Da put his shoulder into it, thought he could stop the thing tipping.’ He shook his head. ‘The daft bastard. It crushed him.’ He shrugged. ‘He was a wise man, my da, even if now and then he forgot that he was.’
‘At least there’s no fear of you forgetting that you’re a wise man,’ Mun said. The Irishman frowned at that, trying to pick the insult out of it, and Mun was about to turn and ride back to his waiting men when a blur half a stone’s throw away caught his eye. It was a stoat, pure white but for its pitch-black tail, dashing across their path and then stopping dead, its head turning every which way. Then the creature must have caught the scent of its prey for it sprang away and vanished down some unseen hole.
‘That little bugger’s coat would have been fit for the King,’ O’Brien said, red brows arched. ‘’Tis not often you see a pure ermine like that. I’d call that a good omen, if I wasn’t such a God-fearing man.’
‘It will be dark soon,’ Mun said, glancing up at the leaden, rain-filled sky. ‘We need to hit them now before they make camp and set a watch.’ He had been wondering if it might be better to wait until nightfall and attack his prey then, but he knew that driving rain makes men careless, for they are too busy being miserable. Besides which, while it was still on the move the column’s own noise, along with that of the wind and rain, would cover his approach until they were upon the enemy.
‘It’ll be a steel job.’ O’Brien gestured with his poll-axe. ‘Half the firelocks won’t bloody fire in this mess.’
Mun nodded, clicking his tongue and turning Hector back towards the rain-flayed moor. Where his wolves were waiting.
CHAPTER SIX
‘THEY’VE SEEN US,’ John Cole said, pulling his sword from his scabbard. It was a brutal-looking weapon, its curved blade ending in a falchion-type point, and Mun had seen Cole kill with it many times.
‘Hold!’ Mun looked left and right along the crescent his troop had formed so that they could sweep in on the enemy and hit them all together. ‘Wait for my word,’ he said, peering through the gathering gloom at the column up ahead, roughly mapping the route Hector would take when he gave the order to charge. The wood thinned here, larger trees – oaks, beech and elm – giving way to patches of dogwood with their last stubborn blood-red leaves and old berries, and slender birch. Which was why this was the place to strike, for horses could gain momentum here. Blades could slice down.
Mun’s heart was pounding. Suddenly he was no longer cold, could not feel the freezing damp against his skin.
‘We’ve got to do them now!’ Cole hissed.
‘Shut your mouth, Cole,’ O’Brien growled.
The long note of a nuthatch pierced the moaning wind.
Mun could feel the blood coursing through his limbs; it thrummed as though full of bubbles, as though it were simmering up to the boil. But still he did not give the order.
‘What are we waiting for, a bloody invitation?’ O’Brien mumbled to his right. ‘They’ll be preparing us a nice welcome.’
Mun ignored his friend. ‘Who’s got good eyes?’ he called, the rain drumming against his helmet, Hector’s breath pluming upwards like that of all the other horses.
‘Milward,’ a trooper named Henry Jones called back. ‘His eyesight is so good he reckons he can see the future.’
This raised some laughter but from throats not bellies, the sort that winds men tighter like a spanner on a wheellock, rather than dispersing tension.
‘Tell me what’s happening, Milward,’ Mun called, his own eyes fixed on
the rear of the column one hundred paces away that was a confusion of movement. Noise too, Mun supposed, but most of that was being caught by the storm and hurled up into a world of tempest and wind-whipped leaves.
‘They’re waving a banner but I can’t make it out.’
‘I can see the bloody banner!’ Mun barked, yanking his reins, curbing Hector who wanted to be released to the madness. He knew every moment wasted could mean the death of one or more of his men, but something was staying his hand.
‘Permission to cut them up, sir!’ a trooper called Rowland Bide called.
‘We go now, Mun, or we’ll lose men,’ O’Brien hissed.
So Mun hauled his heavy sword from its scabbard and held it aloft for all to see. He pressed with his left knee and tapped the foot against Hector’s hip so that the stallion performed a side pass and he heard O’Brien offer up a prayer to the Virgin.
‘For God and King Charles!’ Mun yelled, and Hector neighed like a prince amongst horses and all along the bowed line naked steel glowed dully in the rain.
And then he heard it.
‘Hold!’ he yelled, his left hand holding his reins tight as Hector whinnied in complaint.
‘Hold, damn you!’ O’Brien roared to those men who a heartbeat before had given their spurs and now fought to halt their mounts. The Irishman glared at Mun. ‘Bloody drums?’ he said. ‘With a troop of horse?’
Mun was hauling Hector left and right, the beast snorting and squealing as Mun kept snapping his head round to front, straining to see through the hammering rain what was going on in the clearing up ahead. The men of the rebel column had dismounted in the way of dragoons, their horses being led to their rear whilst they arrayed themselves amongst the trees, finding what cover they could. But not a shot had been fired and Mun assumed that his enemies’ firelocks would be just as unpredictable as theirs in this downpour.
Then two men came forward, each beating a drum which he wore high up on his left side, suspended by a leather belt over his right shoulder.
‘It’s the Parley so it is,’ O’Brien said through gritted teeth, fighting to control his own mare.
‘I know what it is,’ Mun growled, for he had been with the King’s army long enough to recognize the calls of war, those distinctive rhythms that beat out amidst the chaos of battle, relaying orders that were otherwise lost in the snarl of it all.
‘So are you going to talk to them?’ O’Brien asked, thrusting his poll-axe through the deluge towards the enemy. ‘Or are we going to ride in there and gut the whoresons?’
Mun cursed under his breath. His indecision had already cost them the advantage. He could not know exactly how many men made up the rebel column and he had lost the element of surprise. If he gave the order to attack now he would lose men. And their blood would be on his hands.
‘Yes, I’m going to talk.’ He rammed his sword back into its scabbard and urged Hector forward. ‘If it’s a trap, kill the bastards, Clancy,’ he said, as rain lashed against his helmet, running in streams off the lip in front of each cheek piece, and along the rim, pouring down onto the neck of his buff-coat. And the drummers walked towards him, the deeply resonant beat of the Parley almost bewitching in that gloaming world in which a damp fog was rising, beginning to curl amongst the trees. The air was cloyed with the sweet scent of rotting wood and the tang of the wet metal against his face, as he walked Hector towards the drummers, not looking at those men but rather beyond them, trying to get an idea of his enemy’s strength.
Then the drums fell silent and one of the drummers stopped but the other kept walking. Mun recognized in the man an air of steadiness, a quality required of drummers who, if they were to panic or run, could fatally compromise their regiment’s cohesion.
The only sounds now were the hiss of the rain and the whinnies and snorts of horses, as Mun walked another fifteen paces and then stopped, leaving the drummer to make up the remaining ground.
‘God and the King!’ the drummer declared, holding Mun’s eye as he pushed the big drum round onto his back and gripped the sticks in an easy fashion across his waist. ‘Sir Edmund Rivers, I presume.’ He gave a curt nod of greeting, the face behind the neat beard firm, showing no sign of fear.
Mun was taken aback. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘How do you know me?’
‘I am Sergeant Cuthbert Boxe, drummer in Sir Jacob, Lord Astley’s Regiment of Foot,’ the man said, and the rain was not so loud on Mun’s helmet that he did not hear the hard edge of pride in the drummer’s introduction, as good an indication that the man was telling the truth as Mun could hope for.
‘Then you are supposed to be in Oxford with the King, Sergeant Boxe,’ Mun said, picking out the man’s comrades amongst the birch trees and brambles up ahead, seeing none of the orange scarves the peat-digger had spoken of.
‘We have been looking for you these last four weeks, Sir Edmund,’ Boxe said. ‘Naturally we went to Shear House first. Lady Rivers fed and watered us but could not say where you were, only that you were out hunting.’ The ghost of a smile flashed in the drummer’s eyes. ‘My master assumed that fox was not your prey.’
‘Lord Astley assumed right,’ Mun said.
‘Not Lord Astley, sir. We are under another’s command. Temporarily.’
Mun shrugged. ‘Whilst Essex recruits in London and His Majesty waits out the winter in Oxford, Lancashire remains the battleground. We bleed the rebels at every opportunity.’
Boxe’s montero-cap was soaked through, water running from it into his beard, from which it dripped in a fast rhythm the drummer would have been hard pressed to mimic.
‘Will you give up the hunt long enough to speak with my master, sir?’ Boxe asked, cuffing rain and snot from his nose.
‘That depends on who your master is,’ Mun answered.
Boxe’s brows knitted together. ‘Truth be told, I haven’t a bloody clue,’ he said, ‘save to say he told me to tell you that you have met more than once, and that you have a mutual friend.’
‘That’s it?’ Mun asked. Hector snorted and Mun understood the stallion’s derision.
Boxe nodded. ‘If you would be so kind as to follow me, Sir Edmund, I will take you to my master.’
‘What’s in your cart?’ Mun asked.
Boxe frowned. ‘Provender for man and beast. Some powder and shot. Nothing too exciting. Your Major Radcliffe at Shear House said we would never find you out here. Said that you would find us. So my master had us bring the cart to lure you out. He reckoned it would make us look a tastier morsel.’
‘Had you been rebels the cart would have made no difference. I would have killed you anyway,’ Mun said, patting Hector’s wet neck. ‘Have your master bring a barrel of ale when he comes to meet me. You do have ale?’
‘We do,’ Boxe admitted, almost smiling.
‘I will be waiting with my men at the wood’s edge,’ Mun said, then turned Hector and walked back through the mustering gloom, the blood in his veins slowing and turning cold again now. Because the men they had tracked were not rebels and there would be no butchery that night.
‘Prince Rupert is taking the fight to the enemy,’ the man said with a sniff, dragging a sopping sleeve across his hook nose. They sat on blankets beneath a crude canvas shelter rigged between four birch trees and Mun regarded the man opposite him. He looked utterly miserable and Mun saw that he was shivering though trying to hide it. ‘Whilst the peace talks continue, Rupert strikes into the enemy heartland, determined through his vigour and martial zeal to win political advantage on the battlefield.’ Those hawk’s eyes bored into Mun’s. ‘He fights whilst you and your men roam the moor like common brigands.’
‘And yet I hear the rebels call him Prince Robber,’ Mun said, raising a cup of ale to his lips and sipping the bitter draught, savouring the taste of it on his tongue. ‘The ones I meet tend not to live long enough to insult me.’
‘So I have heard,’ Hook Nose admitted with an expression that held neither admiration nor condemnation. All arou
nd them Mun’s men were busy making what shelters they could, ground sheets and bad-weather gear strung up to keep off the worst of the rain. They talked in low voices, moaning about rust on helmets, back-and-breasts and sword scabbards. They complained about the lack of hot food, decent beer and the want of women, so that Mun thought for all that they looked like a horde of murderous thieves, they sounded just like any other soldiers.
‘My men were nervous, I don’t mind telling you,’ the man went on, shifting out of the way of a torrent of water that was pouring off the canvas onto the muddy ground by his left leg. ‘They feared you would simply attack without warning or first allowing us to offer our surrender.’
‘I would have done if not for this damned weather pissing on our powder,’ Mun said, choosing not to mention that there had been other doubts, or at least some unexplained feeling, which had stopped him falling on the column as he had on so many others.
Prince Rupert’s man sneezed three times, his face gripped in a strange rictus as he anticipated a fourth explosion, which never came. Mun had recognized him straight away, unlike when last they had met. That had been at Oxford and the man had been in Rupert’s company the night the Prince had given Mun leave to ride north home to Shear House which was then under siege. But Mun had seen him once before that, on the road to Lathom. Lord Denton’s son Henry and some others had dragged Minister George Green from his house, accusing him of being a secret but practising Catholic. Mun, Tom and their father had tried to stop Denton, but they had failed and Green had been hanged. And worse. And the shivering man before him, this agent of the Crown, had been at the heart of it all, had played his part conducting an exemplary campaign against Catholics and those suspected of spreading papism. Likely he had been at George Green’s hanging. On a colder day than this.
Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) Page 7
