‘We’ll not get into Oxford looking like this, Will,’ Penn had said, rapping his knuckles against his breastplate.
‘We’ll never make it to Oxford at all without bloody steel and shot,’ Weasel had said through a grimace.
‘Once inside the city you will be supplied with arms. Thomas has received the necessary instructions,’ Crafte had said, and all eyes had turned to Tom then.
‘We’re to keep our mouths shut in company.’ Tom had laid the greater weight of his gaze on Weasel. ‘The masons we’ll be travelling with are French and—’
‘French!’ A yawp from Trencher. ‘Why don’t we invite the Pope along while we’re at it?’
Tom had ignored this. ‘By keeping our mouths shut and letting our companions make any necessary introductions, we shouldn’t arouse suspicion.’
‘The last thing we want is your being recruited into a company of the King’s musketeers,’ Crafte had explained humourlessly. ‘Being French should spare you that particular indignity.’
‘I think I’d rather be taken for a Cavalier than a Frenchman,’ Dobson had muttered, raising his brows at Trencher.
‘It’s not too late to change your minds,’ Tom had said, glancing at each of them in turn and not caring much either way, for he would go to Oxford whatever their decision, alone if it came to it.
Trencher had folded stout arms over his barrel chest. ‘Oh yes, and stay here locked up till you’ve either clobbered the Cavaliers’ newsbook or been strung up by your ballocks?’ he suggested. ‘No thank you, Thomas. And more to the point, if we’ve got snail-gobblers running around the country someone needs to keep an eye on them.’ Then he had looked back to Captain Crafte and held out a meaty palm. ‘Where’s my damned mallet?’
Next day, Tom, Trencher, Penn, Weasel and Dobson had been introduced to Guillaume Scarron and his men. Captain Crafte had found the masons at a sandstone quarry in Godstone village some thirty-something miles to the south-east. The Frenchmen had been living in a draughty, timber-framed, bracken-roofed lodge built into the semi-circular, scarred wall of tawny stone, and the main reason Crafte had chosen them for the mission – other than their being French – was that they had appeared the least drunken of a very drunken company. It was not hard to imagine the scene that must have greeted Crafte, for Tom had seen such a travelling band working on Emmanuel’s house in Shevington. That ruin had belonged to Cockersand Abbey, before King Henry had changed all that, and Tom had not disagreed with his father’s assertion that the masons labouring in Emmanuel’s employ might be reckoned the lewdest and worst-conditioned fellows that one could expect to meet.
‘They will drink more in one day than three days’ wages will come to,’ Sir Francis had warned Emmanuel, ‘and you must all but take up your crop to rouse them from their drunken stupor.’
And now Tom and the others were to imitate such men so as not to provoke suspicion amongst any that they should meet on the road to Oxford and on entering the city.
‘At least it’s not raining,’ Penn said cheerily, slapping Dobson’s back, so that a cloud of yellow stone dust puffed up from his tunic. ‘I’ve got no drill and no corporals yapping in my ears and that’s good enough for me.’ In the meadows either side of the worn track, sheep bleated, dogs barked and shepherds whistled. Clusters of men and women were still out in the fallow fields spreading manure and others were strung out in lines, bent over, dibbing peas and beans by the last of the light.
‘If you don’t mind looking like a crump-backed bloody shabbaroon,’ Trencher remarked, taking a swig from his leather flask. For Crafte’s ruse was more elaborate than simply having Tom and his companions dress in dishevelled, dust-ingrained breeches and doublets. Like all the stonemasons Tom had seen, the three Frenchmen were lopsided in appearance, Scarron most of all, the muscles of their mallet arms being overdeveloped from years of hard use. So Crafte had made them wrap swaths of linen round their upper right arms and shoulders beneath their shirts to create the masons’ disproportional bulk. Scarron and de Gombaud wore tough leather gloves, but the rest had bound their hands in grubby linen rags or thin leather strips and all had rubbed stone dust into beards, faces and hair, so that Tom thought the only apparent characteristic they did not share with the real masons – one which afflicted Scarron more than the other two, he noticed – was the cough that announced itself all too often, caused by years of breathing the airborne gritty powder of the quarry.
Dobson let go the cart’s handles and the thing thumped down, rattling the assortment of mauls, gavelocks, kevels, and chisels within the canvas knapsacks stowed in the cart bed. Scarron cursed at the tools’ treatment, but though he was a big man he was not a killer like Dobson and had the sense to know it.
‘Done my bit and more.’ Dobson pushed big hands into the small of his back, looking up to the sky as though waiting for the Divine to reward him. Instead, a murder of rooks and crows swept above them eastwards in a dark riotous cloud, heading for their roosts. The sun had gone and the sky was grey blue and streaked with cloud the colour of cooked salmon flesh.
‘Give it ’ere then, you big girl,’ Trencher said, but Scarron raised a palm and went muttering to the handcart, lifting it with the fluid ease of long practice and setting off, shaking his head with Gallic disapproval.
‘You’re welcome,’ Dobson growled after him, sharing a look of disgust with Weasel, who hawked and spat a green string onto the track.
‘Hard to think of war with springtide in the air,’ Penn announced, slapping the bulbous end of his wooden club against the leather-bound palm of his left hand. They all carried some such crude weapon as protection against outlaws and every ten or so paces Penn would toss his club so that it turned once end over end then catch it neatly. It was a habit which Tom had been tiring of for the last two miles. ‘That was a winter I’ll happily forget,’ Penn went on. ‘Froze my nutmegs off a dozen times.’
‘Old Jack Frost did well to find your gingamabobs, lad,’ Trencher replied, shooting Tom a grin. But something else had caught Tom’s eye: a smithy, perhaps a mile away on the near edge of a clutter of dwellings spreading northwards along the fringes of woodland. There was barely a breeze to talk of but what there was came from the west, bringing with it the faint ring of hammer on anvil and dogs barking. Smoke curled into the sky, a dun smear against amethyst, and far away figures could be seen making their way back towards the village, some of them driving sheep or cattle.
‘Crafte never said we had to sleep under hedges, did he?’ Dobson said, his own club – a three-foot length of ash with a six-inch nail through its end – resting on one massive shoulder. ‘No point in waking damp as a whore’s crotch if we don’t need to.’
‘Aye, a bed of clean straw is all a weasel needs,’ Weasel said, knuckling snot from the end of his pointy nose. ‘Not much to ask.’
‘We can’t risk it,’ Trencher put in. ‘I’m surprised we’ve not met any King’s men as it is.’ He nodded towards the settlement. ‘But if we go upsetting any locals we’ll have a troop of dragoons on us in the time it takes to fill a piss pot.’
‘Then we won’t upset any locals,’ Dobson suggested with a shrug.
‘Trencher’s right,’ Tom admitted reluctantly, for he would have chosen a bed or some old straw in a barn over another night under the stars. ‘The less attention we draw to ourselves the more chance we’ve got of getting into the city. We don’t need people asking questions. Not unless your French has improved since we left Richmond, Dobson.’
‘Can’t be so hard if this lot can bloody speak it,’ Dobson grumbled, at which de Gombaud muttered a filthy oath which Tom was relieved none of his companions understood.
‘We’ll overnight in those woods. Keep ourselves to ourselves,’ Tom said. ‘We can’t be many miles from Oxford.’ He looked up to see the first stars pulsing like embers immeasurably far above the streaks of grey cloud. ‘It won’t rain tonight.’
‘It rains much in England,’ Tristan said, the young Frenchman’s
first words of English since leaving Richmond.
‘If you don’t like our rain why don’t you bugger off back to France?’ Weasel suggested, at which Tristan pursed full lips and scratched his short black beard as though he was considering doing just that.
In time, they were into the woodland and looking for a good place to make camp a fair stone’s throw from any of the smooth mud tracks that spider-webbed through the woods. Rooks squabbled high up amongst the branches of beech and oak, but otherwise there was a stillness, in large part due to the lack of wind but also, Tom sensed, because it was the twilight hour, when the daylight creatures make themselves scarce and those of the night have yet to venture out. He and Scarron hefted a corner of the handcart on their shoulders whilst Trencher and de Gombaud held a handle each out above their heads because this was easier than pushing the thing over root tangles, deadfall and brambles. And by a big storm-felled elm from whose prostrate yet still living trunk sprouted a row of healthy new branches, they made camp for the night. As it had fallen the tree had wrenched up its roots along with a great circular clot of mud and this whole mass had mossed over, creating a wall behind which they could shelter. Penn soon had a fire going and small beer was being poured into cups and even the ass seemed happy enough relieved of its burden and tethered the other side of the fallen elm. Pipes were thumbed full of tobacco and lit and Tristan, who it turned out had no small skill for concocting something almost delicious from basic provisions, had won himself two new friends in Dobson and Trencher by the time the last light seeped from the world and the woods were given to the night.
And none of them had thought there would be blood.
Tom was woken by someone prodding a finger into his right shoulder. He opened his eyes to see de Gombaud’s square face much too close to his own.
‘I don’t sleep,’ the Frenchman whispered, so that Tom could smell tobacco on his beer-soured breath. ‘Not enough to drink,’ he said, answering Tom’s glaring eyes as to why he was not snoring along with the rest who lay beneath blankets, their feet towards the fire that still popped and spat, working its way into a thick oak limb. They had not set a watch; had not thought it necessary, but Tom now suspected he’d got that wrong. ‘People are here,’ de Gombaud hissed, eyes wide, jerking his chin off towards the direction in which the great elm had fallen. ‘They are … sneaking. Don’t want us to listen them,’ he said, tugging an earlobe. Tom pushed himself upright, noting that Trencher on his left and Penn on his right were as still as the dead. His heart was buffeting his breastbone, his lungs clenching on their breath to allow his ears to scour the night. Then, without another word and still crouching, de Gombaud brushed past Tom’s left shoulder and scrambled over the fallen elm out of the reach of the fire’s glow and was gone.
‘Will, wake up,’ Tom growled, grabbing hold of the two-foot-long cudgel he had carried in his belt since Richmond. The smooth ash was warm in his hand and he felt anger bloom in his gut, rising and spreading through his limbs with the promise of violence. ‘We’ve got company, Will,’ he hissed, knowing it was true though he had yet to hear or see the interlopers in the flesh. In a heartbeat Trencher was awake, his club in his hands, and Tom was waking Penn when the unmistakable click of a firelock being cocked stopped him cold.
‘Don’t move. Don’t even piss yer breeches or ye’ll be pickin’ bits o’ brains out yer muzzles.’
‘Ballocks,’ Dobson muttered, sitting up and scratching his bushy beard and taking in the sight before them. Five men stood in their camp, their wild-looking faces sheened by the fire’s copper glow. The one who had spoken had a face as thin as a hatchet and looked as though a stiff breeze might knock him down. But he was the one holding the pistol and to Tom’s eyes his thin arm looked steady enough that if he pulled the trigger Tom’s insides would adorn the fallen tree behind him.
The other outlaws were armed with crude-looking blades but for one who held a blunderbuss, a weapon to inspire fear because, although it was short like a handgun, its bore was almost an inch, greater than a musket’s.
‘What do you want?’ Tom said. ‘We have nothing worth stealing.’
‘Talk again and we’ll kill the lot o’ ye and piss on yer corpses,’ Hatchet Face said, the skin stretched tight across his cheeks so that he looked like a living skeleton. Tom glared but held his tongue. ‘My friend’s dragon has seven balls down its throat,’ the outlaw said, jerking his pistol across towards the grey-haired thief holding the blunderbuss. ‘’Tis his greatest pleasure in this world to fire the thing. He’d rather wave that thing around than put his cock in a nice warm notch, so ye don’t want to be givin’ him any reason to tickle its trigger.’
The grey-haired man hawked and spat a gobbet into the fire, where it sizzled as he grinned like a fiend waiting at Satan’s elbow for a sinner of his own to torment.
Hatchet Face gestured for one of his other accomplices – a boy, perhaps even his son from the look of his long thin face – to go and see what treasures might be waiting for them in the handcart and he hitched across the clearing all but dragging a lame leg behind. The other two took this as their cue and edged closer to their victims in a move that spoke of long experience, their blades pointing threateningly, and Tom saw that all of his companions were awake now, rubbing eyes and trying to make sense of their situation.
‘Tools,’ the boy said, opening a sack to let the fire’s glow reveal its contents. ‘Hammers, chisels and the like.’
‘We’re stonemasons,’ Scarron said. ‘Our tools are all we have. Without them we cannot work.’
Hatchet Face turned his pistol on the Frenchman. ‘Ye speak when I tell ye to speak, ye foreign bastard.’
‘There’s nothin’ else, just tools,’ the boy said disappointedly.
‘We can sell ’em,’ another outlaw said, his sword favouring Dobson and his ballock dagger pointing at Tristan who was closest to the wall of roots and earth ripped up from the ground.
Hatchet Face shot the man a withering look for stating the obvious, then looked back to Tom whilst gesturing with the pistol’s barrel towards the empty bedroll between Dobson and Scarron. ‘Where’s yer friend, hey?’
‘He’s got the shits,’ Tom said, as though that was answer enough, and the thief glanced off into the woods over Tom’s head, teeth worrying the crooked line of his lips. Then he swept the filth-stained cap from his head and held it out like a beggar expecting charity.
‘We’ll have yer coin and finger rings if ye please,’ he said. ‘Nipper, load that ass with them tools and we’ll be on our way.’
‘Let’s tear them apart,’ Trencher growled under his breath beside Tom and from the corner of his eye Tom saw the big man’s hand clench around the haft of the club by his side.
‘Not yet, Will,’ Tom murmured, his blood simmering in his veins, demanding savage action. But his limbs were rigid, awed by the promise of death whispered by the muzzle aimed at him, and so he denied his blood’s appeal. And yet they must do something, for without their tools they stood far less chance of gaining employment in Oxford.
‘Joe, do the honours,’ Hatchet Face said, offering the upturned cap to the man beside him, who nodded and took it, starting at the end of the line with Penn who, still sitting, emptied a fistful of coins into the cap.
The thief straightened his sword arm so that the blade’s point was a hand’s span from Penn’s face.
‘If that’s not all of it I’ll stick this cheese-toaster into your belly and give it a good twist,’ he threatened theatrically, giving the impression that he had delivered the line many times before.
And then de Gombaud came back.
The Frenchman burst from the trees behind the man with the blunderbuss and the thief turned just as de Gombaud swung something two-handed – a pickaxe – and there was a boom as the spiked curved head erupted from the outlaw’s back.
Hatchet Face fired wild and Tom felt the ball whip past his head as he scrambled to his feet and swung his cudgel at the fool who had just w
asted his one shot, cracking the thief’s skull open with the ferocity of the blow and sending him sprawling.
‘Come here, you scab!’ Trencher roared, throwing himself after another outlaw who had turned to flee, and Tom looked across to see the other swordsman backing off from Scarron, Weasel and Dobson who were edging towards him brandishing their own crude weapons.
‘The boy!’ Tom growled but Penn was already leaping the elm to chase after the lad who had limped off into the woods. Trencher knocked his opponent’s sword aside and swung his club up, taking him beneath the chin with a loud crack of bone and spray of blood and teeth, and another splintered report announced Dobson’s blow to the back of the last man’s skull. The impact had likely killed him but that didn’t stop Weasel and Scarron pummelling his body until it must have been no more than a bag of blood and broken bones.
Vaguely aware of Trencher beating a man to death, Tom walked over to where Hatchet Face lay. The man was moaning pitifully, his whole world reduced to a swirling maelstrom of confusion and pain, and Tom hated him even more now because it was all over far too quickly and Tom’s blood-lust had not drunk deeply enough.
‘Got the little runt,’ Penn said, a hand snarled up in the boy’s lank hair, hauling him back into the clearing. ‘I’ve seen old timber-toed veterans run faster,’ he said with a grin.
‘Is that your boy?’ Tom asked Hatchet Face. The man moaned incoherently. His eyes were rolled back into his cracked skull to show only their whites. ‘Is the lame boy your son?’ Tom asked again and this time the thief moved his head in what might have been a nod. Tom leant in close so that his mouth was against the thief’s ear and he could smell sweat and fresh blood. ‘I’m going to cut his throat open,’ Tom said. Hatchet Face gurgled and groaned and it was a subtly different sound, different enough that Tom guessed he had understood.
He pulled the knife from Hatchet-Face’s own belt, stood and walked over to where the thin-faced lad stood pissing in his breeches. Weasel glanced at Penn and grinned wickedly. Penn frowned, gave a slight shake of his head and turned away.
Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) Page 9
