The first flurry ended as suddenly as it had begun and both men stepped backwards, their guards raised, Tom sucking air into his lungs and knowing he needed to close the distance between them. He launched himself at Henry again, his front foot kicking back and his rear leg thrusting forward in an explosive pass, his arm straight and strong, the rapier’s point impelled towards his enemy’s face, but Henry threw his back foot across his body, turning side-on, and the point of Tom’s blade hit nothing and then Henry was upon him and Tom’s body worked instinctively, his blade meeting every thrust and driving the deadly point wide, the balls of his feet barely brushing the ground as he made of himself a moving target. The weapons kissed and rasped and Tom knew Henry was the better swordsman but he twisted and parried and somehow kept the death-dealing point of his enemy’s blade off him.
Then Tom stepped backwards out of reach and dragged a forearm across his head, blinking away sweat and turning his face enough to spit but keeping his gaze riveted on Henry. Henry almost grinned, for he knew that Tom had made a mistake by putting space between them, knew that Tom’s best chance, the explosive pass, had failed. Now Henry’s longer blade would finish it.
‘On a horse you were a nuisance, Rivers,’ he said, whipping his blade left and right, cutting the air with sharp breaths. ‘But like this …’ Now the predatory flash of teeth in the moonlit shadows. ‘Like this … without your brother … you are nothing.’
Small, still careful steps brought Henry a little closer, their sword points overlapping now by a hand’s span. Perfect striking distance.
‘The watch!’ Birkenhead cried, and Tom was aware of men’s voices, a commotion behind him on New Inn Street. ‘Cease this madness before it’s too late!’
‘Kill the bastard!’ Henry’s friend screamed, one eye bulged and mad with pain, bloody hands still pressed against the savage wound as though he was ashamed of it.
Come on, you arrogant pig’s bladder, Tom thought, aware now of flamelight spilling across the ground round his feet and along the garden wall, chasing away the shadows and illuminating Birkenhead’s wan face. Then Henry lunged to show how the pass attack should be done, but Tom dead-parried the blade and struck, his rapier’s edge slicing into Henry’s forehead, then punched in with his left hand, plunging the knife into the side of Henry’s neck.
‘You’re a dead man, Henry,’ Tom spat in his face. Then he hauled the knife out and would have stayed to watch his old enemy piss his breeches and gasp his last pain-racked breaths, but to stay was to die.
And so he ran.
For a while they chased him like a hound pack on the scent of a fox, west past the old Saxon church and the run-down tenements, on through damp passageways, then south-west along the paved streets of the colleges. Their yells sometimes sounded close enough that they must surely be on him, their torches drowning him in their accusing light. Other times the voices were more faint, swirling in echoes off grand college walls and lost to the night. But Tom never stopped to take stock, instead letting his legs eat up the ground, his boots splashing through filth, the wind gushing past his ears and his heart hammering with exertion and the thrill of the chase.
He did not know when they had at last given up the hunt, or at least when he had outstripped them, but by the time he had weaved his way back to the north-west of the city there was no sign of pursuit. And yet by now the night watch would know that what they had been alerted to was no drunken brawl over whores. John Birkenhead would have revealed Tom’s identity and his part in the destruction of his precious printing press. He would have reported that there were other rebels involved too, though there was every chance the Royalists had already gleaned as much from the man they had captured trying to slip out of the city. All of which meant they were still searching for him.
Furthermore, Tom was certain that regardless of what information they had pulled from the man they had caught, they would have alerted the soldiers at the city’s gates, effectively sealing Oxford until they knew the extent of the threat. Even if the others had escaped after the explosion, Tom knew he would never now make it out of the west gate through which they had entered the city that morning. Which was why he had followed his nose. Behind him was New College, from which he could hear sergeants bellowing orders and a drum beating the Assembly, dragging soldiers from their quarters to protect the gunpowder stored there. In front of him was the north-west section of the old city wall, against which stood scaffolding and piles of rough-dressed stone that glowed dully in the moonlight, indicative of the overall shoring up of Oxford’s defences of which Tom had seen evidence across the city. But immediately in front of him, between him and the wall, was a stinking ditch, the same that had assaulted his senses earlier that night and to which Birkenhead had assured Tom he would grow accustomed. He had not grown accustomed to it and the stench was almost overwhelming at such close proximity, but he had gambled that of all the possible ways out of the city, this one would not be crawling with Cavaliers. The reeking trench, into which the people of Oxford’s foul waste was tipped, was somewhere all but the rakers avoided, either deliberately or subconsciously. Tom’s gamble had paid off and even the night watch had not thought to come here. Yet.
That was the good news. The bad news was that there was no bridge across the mire. The trench extended east and west for as far as Tom could see in the dark. He could not go west because that was towards New College and the sound of soldiers and drums. He could perhaps go east, try to find a way round – for surely there was one – but that way stood the west gate and the heavily defended Magdalen Bridge. Besides which, he was running out of time. It was likely the Cavaliers had sent additional patrols out to sweep the surrounding countryside, in which case there was a good chance that The Scot and his men would have given Tom up as lost and were even now riding south-east towards the dawn.
He turned at a sound, pulling his sword from its scabbard, but it was only a flea-bitten dog searching for scraps amongst the scrub. He turned back towards the ditch and the wall beyond, plotting his route up the scaffolding, hoping he would find a rope or some other means of climbing down the other side.
Then, his blood still thrumming from the fight and the chase and the thrill of being alive whilst his enemy was not, he plunged into the stinking filth.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘THAT’S A SIGHT to get a man’s mouth watering,’ O’Brien said, looking across a fair meadow whose yellow cowslips glowed unnaturally bright in the weak dawn light, to the close-cropped pasture beyond and further off still, where a throng of beeves stood hemmed in by fence and hedgerow. The morning’s fog lay thick across the land like a blanket yet to be thrown off, and all was still and quiet but for the relentless shrieks of buzzards soaring high above and the forlorn replies of their unseen chicks. ‘There must be enough beef there to feed a bloody regiment,’ the Irishman said, using his teeth to pull the stopper from the neck of his powder flask.
To the west of the cattle enclosure stood a copse of mist-threaded birch and hazel just as Prince Rupert’s agent had told them it would. According to the spy, behind that screen they would find a timber-framed barn that had seen better days, and inside that they would find … well, that had been a little harder to swallow, and yet here they were.
For two days they had ridden south-east, avoiding all towns and villages in favour of the fields, drovers’ paths and trackways, like the shadow of a hawk skimming the ground. The Prince’s agent had been sceptical of Mun’s troopers’ ability to get the job done when he had discovered that there were only thirty of them, and yet he had nevertheless insisted that they undertake the business, that Mun repay his past assistance and future silence. Besides which he could not deny the success Mun’s wolfpack had enjoyed preying on rebels amongst the rolling hills, rugged rough pastures and the wild uplifts of Lancashire’s massifs. Furthermore, he knew as well as Mun that being so few was what would make it possible to travel across country without drawing attention, which was what they had done, skirtin
g towns such as Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley and Stoke-upon-Trent, and others whose names none of them knew. Only once had they ridden into a settlement: the large village of Tutbury, where Mun had spent some of the silver Hook Nose had given him on meat and ale, deciding that if he was to risk his men’s lives in an enterprise not of his choosing, he would at least see their bellies full and their thirst slaked. Albeit O’Brien was still hungry judging by the gurgles emanating from his stomach as they stood considering their next move, while two hares boxed madly amongst the yellow flowers a stone’s throw away.
‘You really think this Lord Lidford would keep a siege gun out here in the middle of nowhere, where any gimblet-eyed pedlar might stumble over it?’ O’Brien asked, putting a ball and wadding in his wheellock’s muzzle and ramming the whole lot down before replacing the scouring stick beneath the barrel.
‘I doubt his wife wants the thing sitting in their parlour, Clancy,’ Mun said. ‘And if it’s as big as that sly bastard says it is, no one is going to run off with it. No one apart from us.’
‘I suppose there’s some sense in it,’ O’Brien said, looking up as a flock of geese passed overhead, boasting of their adventures in wild, far-away lands. ‘I knew this girl from Mullagh, County Clare. Cleona Dalaghan.’ The Irishman shook his head. ‘Christ, she was ugly. She had teeth like the Ten Commandments, all broken! One Christmas we near hung her and kissed the mistletoe.’ He grinned. ‘Bigger than me she was, a grand doorful of a woman. Her shadow had its own shadow! Still, she was a generous wench and even the few who hadn’t flattened some straw with Cleona Dalaghan were never to wonder what her tits looked like. Why is that, O’Brien, you ask?’ Mun hoisted an eyebrow and O’Brien cupped his big hands over his chest. ‘Because those apple dumplings of hers spent more time out of her bodice than in it. Like your man’s gun, hiding in plain sight.’
Perhaps that was it, Mun thought, for nothing would draw attention to Lord Lidford’s prize possession – a gun he had won in a card game according to Rupert’s man – like soldiers and defences. Better to hide the thing where no one would think to look, specially in time of war. And yet an old barn still seemed an unlikely place. ‘We’re not going to get any wiser standing here reminiscing about your old sweethearts,’ Mun said, turning and walking back to his men who were waiting by a thick snarl of blackthorn and bramble amongst whose white flowers a thousand spider webs glistened with dew.
A little while later Mun and eleven of his men were walking through the birch copse, sword blades held low as though they were cutting through the last of the morning mist still cloaking the ground. He had left four with their horses and sent the remaining fourteen, mounted under John Cole’s command, to the oxen, with orders to round up the beasts and anyone they found guarding them.
‘No killing,’ Mun said now, the barn appearing through the trees. It was no wonder that they had not seen the building before, for the birch bark and the barn’s old limewashed walls were almost the same colour, so that Mun wondered if Lord Lidford had planted the trees for that very purpose. Then they were through and there it was, fitting Hook Nose’s description down to its knee-height stone base and the roof that was for the most part straw-thatched, but for the eastern end which had been re-covered in the recent past, and hastily too by the looks, not with straw but with fern and gorse.
But the large double doors of good solid oak looked out of place against the rotting daub walls, almost ruining the overall image of neglect. It was like a man arriving at a horse auction on a tired nag to give an impression of modest means, only to betray his wealth by having not swapped his best saddle for another. O’Brien’s raised eyebrow said that he had noticed the incongruity too as Mun nodded at him to lift the beam that held the doors shut. It thumped onto the ground an inch away from crushing Godfrey’s foot.
‘Keep you on your toes, whelp,’ O’Brien said, shooting the lad an awkward glance before pulling the big doors open. ‘After you, Sir Edmund,’ he said, and, sword in hand just in case, Mun walked into the rotten-smelling dark.
‘Open the door right up,’ Mun said behind him, for the entrance faced east and the dawn light, pink with the blush of spring, flooded in, chasing the disturbed gloom to the barn’s corners where it gathered thick as pitch. To his left against the wall stood an old cart in which some creature had made a nest. Cobwebs laced the wheels, filling the holes between the spokes and shivering slightly in the breeze coming through the open doors. Immediately in front of him was what remained of last year’s hay, a large loose mound of dusty fodder that still held the scent of a summer past. A flap of wings above drew Mun’s eyes up as a pigeon moved noisily to another beam. Other birds cooed softly in the darkness through which shafts of light poured from holes in the thatch and walls.
‘You afraid of rats, Edmund?’ O’Brien asked, nodding at the sword in Mun’s hand. But Mun ignored him and began to plunge the blade into the hay pile, filling the air with dust that made the big Irishman sneeze.
‘Well, lads, what are you waiting for?’ Goffe said, joining Mun and poking the dry old fodder with his own hanger.
‘I’ve got something!’ Trooper Godfrey called from the dark at the rear of the barn. ‘Here in this straw!’
‘All right, don’t wet yourself, lad, we’re just here,’ Goffe said.
O’Brien put both hands into the straw and a moment later his teeth flashed in the half-light. ‘I love them that love me; and those that seek me shall find me,’ he said, throwing off the straw like a dog digging up a bone.
The gun was draped in canvas but even then and in the murk it was clearly a monster.
‘Fetch the others,’ Mun said to Godfrey, ‘and tell them we’ll need at least ten oxen.’ The young trooper nodded and ran off, all but tripping over his sword scabbard with the excitement of it.
‘We’ll never move it,’ O’Brien said, scratching his thick bristles.
‘We’ve got no choice,’ Mun replied, lifting the canvas and pressing a palm against the cool iron.
‘I’ll make us a torch so we can see what we’re about,’ Harley put in, turning to go back outside.
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort, you paper-skulled pillock,’ O’Brien said, clouting the man’s right ear. ‘There’s likely to be black powder hereabouts, cully. Bring a flame in and …’ he spread the fingers of both hands, ‘you could scare the wee birdies,’ he said, pointing up to the rafters.
Further exploration of the barn revealed ten kegs of black powder and yokes and harnesses for sixteen draught animals. All in all the rotting old place was a treasure trove; the only thing of which there was no sign was the forty-seven-pound iron balls that such a beast would cough to pummel castle walls and put terror in men’s bellies. But that was not Mun’s problem.
‘You say this Lord Lidford is in Oxford with the King?’ O’Brien said, frowning at Mun. ‘Why in God’s name is all this not being used against the rebels?’ He slapped the gun’s muzzle. ‘She looks almost a virgin, like she’s barely been fired.’
‘She’s a he,’ Mun said, pointing at the carriage. Upon one smooth elm cheek could just be made out the name someone had given the cannon. ‘Goliath.’
‘A fitting name for the beast,’ O’Brien admitted, ‘though he’s hardly making them quake with fear tucked away in here with the rats and mice.’
‘Perhaps Lord Lidford has not yet decided whose side he is on,’ Mun suggested. ‘He has no affection for Rupert. The Prince’s man told me that even if the Prince could provide the Earl of Essex as wadding Lord Lidford would not allow him to fire his precious gun.’
‘Which is why we’re stealing it,’ Tobias Fitch caught on, the mason’s apprentice sharing Godfrey’s enthusiasm for the business.
‘Easier said than done, lad,’ O’Brien said, glancing at Mun who recalled the appalling sight of the royal artillery train hauling itself through the mud on the way to Edgehill. ‘I still say we’ll never move it. Not far anyway. Not without more men.’
‘I thought
a good Irishman was worth three or four Englishmen,’ Mun said, walking out of the barn and into the dawn. There was no sign of any other folk around, which was good.
‘That’s true enough,’ O’Brien admitted, ‘but with that being the case we still need another three Irishmen.’
Two hours later and with the help of the oxen they had hauled Goliath from his resting place. Revealed in all its glory the gun had the men slack-jawed and wide-eyed. None had ever seen a gun like it, for being a full cannon it was even bigger than the demi-cannon which now stood sentinel at Shear House. Goliath was mounted on a complicated affair, a carriage constructed from different woods and one and a half times as long as the length of the gun’s bore. Its wheels, like the side-pieces, were of elm and were half the length of the barrel in diameter. But its proportions and how the thing was made was not what interested Mun. What was of infinitely more importance was that the oak spokes and the axle trees, the planks at the fore-end, and every other part, were all present and in apparent good order. The old cart was sound, too, and the powder casks were loaded onto it and covered over with the canvas that had cloaked Goliath. Another two oxen were brought from the enclosure to pull this and those beasts were the lucky ones, Mun thought, for the cart and its contents weighed next to nothing compared with the gun carriage.
‘What are we going to do with them?’ O’Brien asked, nodding towards the three boys, not one of them a day over seventeen, whom Cole and his men had found guarding the oxen. Two had been armed with clubs and the third, a yellow-haired, ruddy-cheeked boy and the eldest of the three, had been brandishing a poorly made firelock for which he admitted, crimson-cheeked, having neither powder nor shot.
‘We’ll leave one man behind to guard them and keep an eye out until sundown,’ Mun said, ‘by which time we should be at Lichfield and the Prince should have his gun.’
Of them all Goffe had the most experience of oxen and so Mun had put him in charge of the beasts. The farmer-turned-soldier had assumed his responsibility earnestly, as though he relished the reminder of his former life, and not for the first time Mun was glad to have the man with him.
Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) Page 16
