He could not lay a trail of powder, for the dampness underground would likely ruin it, besides which there was no dry surface on which to pour it. Also, he could never lay a trail long enough to give him the time to crawl back out before the explosion. Instead they would have to hope that at least one of the young man’s match-cords remained lit long enough to ignite the one charge that would blow up the whole cache.
The canvas-swathed keg O’Brien had brought down was bone dry and so Mun chose this for the heart of the detonation, with his knife cutting the sack open and digging a hole into the lid until the tip of the blade fetched out a spill of black powder.
He nodded to the match around the Cannock man’s wrists. ‘Give me both of them,’ he said. The others, their work done, were already backing out of the tunnel boots first, eager to be far from so much black powder, candle flame and lit match.
‘Shhh!’ The man put a finger to his lips and Mun froze, holding his breath, his heart clenching. Then he heard the wet percussion of picks stabbing into pebble-flecked earth. There was a sudden crumbling of soil to Mun’s left and immediately a musket’s muzzle appeared and there was a tongue of flame and there must have been a crack but Mun did not hear it. He was on his back in the water. The musket ball had hit him, he knew that much. But he did not know where it had struck him for though he had felt the blow he felt no pain. Yet.
A face appeared through the hole and then the Cannock man scrambled through the filth, pulling a knife from his boot, and Mun saw the man’s arm rise and fall, saw a flash of blade and heard a man screaming.
‘The fuses,’ Mun growled, pushing himself up onto his knees. Now the pain. Searing agony in his thigh, the mud slathered on his breeches sheened with watery blood. ‘Cut them shorter!’
‘But we won’t have time—’
‘Just do it!’ Mun threw himself onto the bloodied rebel, grabbed hold of his bandolier and hauled him further through the hole until the body stuck fast sealing it. ‘Hurry!’
The other man was hurrying, pulling the match-cords from his wrists, blowing on them, taking his blade to them and sawing them shorter. He held them up and Mun nodded, half lying on the dead man, holding on for all he was worth, his cold hands numb to the steaming blood on them. He could hear the muffled shouts of those on the other side of the hole and suddenly the corpse was convulsing, jerking like a fish on a hook as his comrades took hold of his legs and tried to draw him back through the breach. But Mun held on. ‘Set them! Do it now!’ he yelled and the other scrambled over to the trestle, his eyes wild, and pushed the unlit ends of the match-cords into the hole which Mun had dug into the cask lid.
‘It’s done,’ the Cannock man said, blowing on the fuses.
‘Now go!’ Mun was losing his grip on the dead rebel, the men on the other side beginning to win the tug of war.
The other man muddled over on hands and knees and took hold of the dead rebel’s coat.
‘Get out!’ Mun growled.
‘No,’ the man said, and then Mun saw the begrimed face properly for the first time.
‘You damned fool!’ Mun said, for not only was the other no Cannock man, he was barely a man at all, but rather Lord Lidford’s heedless boy. Who seemed determined to get himself killed. ‘What are you doing here? Get out!’ Mun screamed at Jonathan, whose face was a snarl, his fists full of the dead rebel’s felt tunic. ‘Go now or die.’ The corpse lurched violently but together they held on. Mun heard a man curse savagely and the body went still.
‘You’re shot,’ Jonathan Lidford said.
‘Go, you goddamned fool,’ Mun said. ‘There’s no time.’ The rebels had given up and were no doubt scrambling back up their shaft on the other side because they knew what was coming. Jonathan let go of the dead man and slewed off and Mun exhaled, cursing in pain.
Then he was moving, being hauled backwards, a strong arm under his right arm and across his chest. He tried to call the boy a bloody idiot but the words were garbled. He was cold, had lost sensation in his legs. It’s the cold water, he thought, the black spots filling his vision again. But he knew it was more than the cold water, knew it was because his warm lifeblood was leaving his body, draining into the Lichfield mud so that he would soon be as dead as the coffin-buried corpses in the earth above him.
He tried to dig his heels into the mire, wanted desperately to speed the progress back up the tunnel because he somehow knew that the fool boy would not leave him and so would be blown to pieces or buried alive when the burning match met the dry black powder.
If the match was still alight.
The boy is stronger than he looks, he thought. I wonder how short he cut the fuses.
Then the world shook and there was a boom, but a muted one like a far-off cannon’s roar, and a blow like a kick to the stomach. And then there was nothing.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WHEN TOM HAD come exhausted and stinking to the foot-bridge across the Cherwell north-east of Oxford he had thought The Scot had gone, ridden east into the dawn, and thus that he was a dead man. But then he had seen shapes moving in the gloom, men and horses milling and the glint of helmets and tack against the silver tideline of the coming daybreak.
‘It’s done?’ The Scot had asked simply, whistling a signal for his sentries to come in from their positions in the scrub to mount up.
‘It’s done,’ Tom had replied, pulling himself up into the saddle and scanning the faces around him. Trencher’s face was a slab of granite and in a heartbeat Tom knew what was coming.
‘Weasel,’ Trencher said. ‘Heard it, didn’t see it. The place was crawling with dragoons.’
‘There was nothing to be done,’ Penn put in, holding Tom’s eye. Beside him Dobson bristled as though the violence in him clamoured to be unleashed in spite of there being no recourse now other than to escape Oxford before the King’s men rounded them up or flayed them with lead and steel. ‘But you know Weasel,’ Penn said. ‘He’ll swallow his own tongue before he tells those damn nigits anything.’
‘He’ll bloody swing is what he’ll do,’ Dobson said, grimacing. ‘After what we did to their precious printing press they’ll make him dance.’
‘Shut your mouth, Dobson,’ Trencher gnarred, giving the bigger man a murderous glare. Dobson shrugged casually but said no more. Yet Tom knew that Dobson was right for all that he had not wanted to hear it. Weasel, with whom Tom had shared ale and food and ridden into the fray at Edgehill, who had been his brother of the blade, would now die strangled and pissing down his leg at the end of a rope. If the Cavaliers did not bring him down before death and cut him open and pluck out his still throbbing organs.
There was nothing Tom could do, nothing he could have done differently, that would have changed the outcome for Weasel. Or if there was there was nothing to be gained by raking the ashes of it now as they rode south-east, the wind in their faces, across a land stirring towards the new day. After some fifteen or so miles they made camp in woodland near the village of Watlington. The Scot’s men shared their food with them and lent them rain cloaks to sleep under and some time later they woke stiff and damp and moaning to Tom that he still stank like a sewer. Then they rode east twenty miles into the rolling Chiltern Hills and the village of Great Kingshill, where they rendezvoused with a column of horse coming from London bound for the new Parliamentary headquarters at Thame. The day was bright and warm for the time of year and the sun made a silver ribbon of a river in the valley to the south as they watched The Scot make his introductions to a Colonel Bartholomew Haggett.
‘Most of ’em look green as snot,’ Dobson remarked, unimpressed.
‘Most of them look as if they’re knocking at death’s door,’ Penn said. The column comprised some seventy-five men, all harquebusiers, plus the men leading three carts, two pulled by oxen and the third by draught horses.
‘What are they moving?’ Dobson asked, nodding at one of the carts whose cargo like the others’ was covered by canvas that was lashed tightly down.
‘I can tell you exactly,’ Trencher said. ‘Silver and coin. Twenty thousand pounds’ worth to be specific.’ He nodded towards one of The Scot’s troopers, a spotty lad who was begging two others to return the lump of cheese they had clearly stolen from his knapsack. ‘That is if we’re to believe young Banister over there.’
Penn’s mouth slackened and Dobson became suddenly still, his dark bushy brows hoisted.
‘What?’ Trencher protested. ‘You think I share a man’s bottle and his fire and don’t have the good manners to enquire after his business?’
‘We’re going to hold their hands all the way up to Thame,’ Tom said, making sense of it. He could understand why The Scot had not told them about the convoy – being loose-tongued about that much silver was never a good idea – but Tom was angry nevertheless, for he would rather be southward bound, not least so that the others could claim their reward from Captain Crafte. Instead they would be going north again and west to Thame.
‘That’s enough silver to pay all of us, Essex’s whole bloody army,’ Penn said.
‘Doing God’s work is its own reward,’ Trencher said. ‘I don’t need coin for killing Cavaliers.’
‘Need it for ale, though,’ Dobson said.
‘True enough,’ Trencher admitted. ‘Killing Cavaliers is thirsty work.’
‘You kept that quiet, Will,’ Tom said, cuffing water from his face. He was on his knees amongst nettles by a foam-flecked brook, washing off the stubborn filth from the ditch through which he had scrambled to escape Oxford.
‘I only found out last night, besides which I knew you ladies would get all giddy when this little trove turned up.’ He coughed into a fist. ‘Well, not you, Tom. I expect your lot would spend all that on a good family feast.’ Tom gave that comment the look it deserved. ‘Anyway, I got the impression that young Banister’s tongue was ale-greased and I didn’t want to land the poor lad in trouble with The Scot.’
‘He must have been well oiled to find you good company,’ Penn remarked.
‘Sod off,’ Trencher said.
‘I would have sent a bloody regiment at the least with that much silver,’ Dobson said. They were all still watching The Scot and Colonel Haggett. And the carts that were filled with treasure.
‘And bring two regiments of the King’s horse down on them?’ Tom said and Dobson considered this, scratching his black beard. ‘Fewer than a hundred and there’s a good chance they’ll be ignored, better still unseen.’
‘Still one hellish gamble,’ Penn said and Tom agreed that it was, then noticed one of Haggett’s men bleeding from the nose. Others were coughing, some violently.
‘How far is it to Thame?’ he asked, standing and raking his wet hair back from his face.
‘Can’t be more than fifteen miles,’ Trencher suggested, ‘but those carts will make it seem like fifty.’
‘Those carts are not the problem,’ Tom said, ‘at least for now. You’re right, Matt, Colonel Haggett’s men are unwell. I’d wager some of them will be in the ground before we get this silver to Thame.’ All eyes turned to Haggett’s men, who were ragged-clothed and unkempt and seemed struck by some malaise that had them leaning against tree trunks and propped up on deadfall.
‘Soldiers usually stand a little taller and straighter when they meet men from another regiment,’ Trencher said, ‘but that lot are a shambles.’
‘They do seem to lack professional pride,’ Penn, a lawyer’s son, observed. ‘Could be typhus fever. That’ll have a man coughing his guts up.’
Even their horses’ coats, Tom noted, were dull, their tails and manes tangled and thick with dust. By contrast The Scot’s thirty men looked hard, battle-tested and ready for a fight should a fight come along.
‘Colonel Haggett must be relieved to have the company,’ Trencher said, ‘if his lads are fever-racked.’
‘We’ve done our job,’ Dobson said. ‘Those bastards in Oxford will be wiping their arse cracks with charred scraps of their damned newsbook for the next month. We could be back in London the day after tomorrow spending Captain Crafte’s money on women and wine.’
‘Our orders were to ride back to London with The Scot,’ Tom said. ‘So it’s Thame first and then London.’
‘That because you’d never disobey an order, Tom?’ Penn asked through a grin.
Tom half smiled at that. In truth he would happily ride back to London regardless of Captain Crafte’s orders. He would half drown himself in beer and perhaps find a whore to share his bed, for he had killed Henry Denton and that was his victory. Mercurius Aulicus and the destruction of the printing press that spawned it meant nothing to him, though what Crafte would do when he discovered that John Birkenhead was still alive Tom could not say.
‘What say you, Will?’ Tom asked, ‘shall we see this bounty safely delivered to Thame?’
Trencher had removed his battered old pot – part of the war gear The Scot had supplied when they had joined him outside Oxford – and was rubbing a patch of bristles on his mostly bald head where the pot had raised an angry red welt.
‘We do the Lord’s work and that’s the truth of it, but that coin will buy us the tools to do it. Powder and shot, blades and blankets. I’d have us do our bit in seeing it delivered into righteous hands and put to good use.’
Penn nodded. Tom looked at Dobson and the big man turned and glanced at one of Haggett’s men whose hacking cough, sweat-sheened face, and hand clutching his swollen abdomen marked him as a dead man walking. ‘Well I’ll not ride all the way back to London like some friendless Devil-driver preaching to the damned rabbits and crows.’
So they would remain with The Scot and his thirty troopers and Colonel Haggett and his seventy-five ragged men and turn their horses north again to escort three wagons brimming with silver to Thame.
And the next day, as they lumbered on, the carts’ wheels sinking into the ground or wedging behind grass-covered rocks, the first of Haggett’s men died.
The man had been in his forties, a shoe-maker before taking up arms to fight for God and Parliament. It was the same man, Tom realized, whom he had seen bleeding from his nose the previous day.
‘He shook all night like a wet dog. I ’eard his teeth chattering and couldn’t sleep for it,’ another trooper had said as they stood gathered round the stiff body whose legs stuck out the bottom of a shelter half-heartedly put together using a fallen ash trunk and a wet-weather cape. ‘He won’t be the last neither,’ the man went on, sharing a forlorn look with another ashen-faced trooper.
‘There are worse ways to go than in your sleep,’ Trencher observed, ‘and the Lord will receive him gladly as a righteous man and a holy soldier.’ Some of Haggett’s men ayed and nodded in thanks to Trencher, grateful for those words, and Tom saw the fear in their eyes, because if the Lord truly was recruiting then the chances were their names were next on the roll call.
They hastily dug a grave and laid the dead man in it – with most of his belongings, for they feared, despite their godliness, that some ill luck might yet cling to his knapsack and his shoes and spare clothes, his tinder box, leather bottle and spoon. Though they evidently believed that ill luck could not adhere to coins, for the man’s five closest friends shared out the three shillings and fourpence they found in his purse. The same must be said for his rusty hanger and his wheellock for they took those too.
Corporal Mabb, a grey-haired, grizzled trooper, told Christopher Allingham – for that was the dead trooper’s name – that he was sorry for not putting him in consecrated ground but that he hoped the man would understand that they could not be hefting corpses around the country. Though again it was the cause of death and not the inconvenience of it that put fear in men’s bellies. Colonel Haggett himself said a prayer, most of the words drowned by the raucous clamour of nesting rooks above, the birds seeming to disapprove of the rites. Or perhaps, Tom considered, they were warning them that whatever disease had carried Allingham off was still lurking amongst those beside his grave.
Then they took the road north-west through a valley of arable land and pasture, the rising ridges on either side thickly crowned with beech woods. Now and then they saw farmers and shepherds hurriedly moving their flocks further up the hills towards the trees, the lambs and calves that were being weaned from their mother’s milk bleating timorously as they were swept along. Late that afternoon they watched a man and boy up on the east ridge cut a cow’s throat. Leaving the beast on its knees, its blood washing down its chest onto the cropped grass, the farmer and his boy rounded up the rest of his animals and moved them off. Panicked by the sight of soldiers the farmer hoped his sacrifice of one beast might save several, and perhaps it was a ploy that had worked for him before. Yet he need not have killed the cow, because Colonel Haggett had already made it clear that God’s soldiers did not prey on honest men like common thieves. And so despite his men’s grumbling and The Scot’s barely concealed ire, they left the cow where it lay and moved on through the valley.
‘Well, that farmer and his brood will be eating like kings for the next week,’ Penn had said, as chafed as the rest to be turning down fresh meat.
‘It was likely an ancient beast anyway,’ Trencher had replied, trying to make the others feel better, ‘and we’d have spent a tooth or two on the meat.’
The Scot sent two of his troopers galloping on to Thame, their task to warn Essex of the convoy’s approach and request an additional escort to see the silver safely in. He and his men now headed up the column, riding half a mile out in front to reconnoitre the ground. Tom had volunteered his party to ride as the convoy’s rearguard and Haggett, a careful-looking man with close-set, studying eyes and a yellow tinge to his clean-shaven skin, had seemed grateful and accepted. The colonel knew many of his men were afflicted and in such state were unlikely to be as vigilant as they should be. Tom suspected that Haggett himself was unwell for he was sweating profusely, had armed the grease from his forehead three times while they spoke, and yet he would not diminish his authority by admitting any such infirmity. In truth Tom had wanted to keep his party away from Haggett’s men as much as was possible and presumed that that had been The Scot’s thinking, too. Nevertheless, even lagging behind the column they could not put far from their thoughts the sickliness that was eating its way into those guarding the treasure carts up ahead. The breeze was northerly and it bore their barking coughs and their ragged hawking of blood and phlegm. Even from a distance Tom could see that many of Haggett’s men were almost lying in their saddles, their heads lolling beside their horses’ necks.
Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) Page 21
