Betrayal (The Fenland Series Book 2)

by Ann Swinfen

  I was not sure I knew where Ben had walked from, but I could see that his injury needed attention without any delay.

  Kitty had a pot of water heating when we reached the farm. She had moved her belongings out of the small chamber and piled them in a heap on Father’s chair.

  ‘Lay him down on the bench, Gideon,’ I said, ‘and we must take his shirt off.’

  The shirt was so tattered it fell almost to pieces in our hands. I recognised a patch I had put on it many months before. Ben cried out as we peeled away the bloodied sleeve, and I nearly cried out myself when I saw the state of his arm.

  ‘Sword slash,’ Gideon said.

  I nodded. Kitty brought me the warm water and rags, and I knelt beside the bench and began to sponge away the dried blood that was crusted with dirt and pus. The wound, which was deep and more than a handspan long, continued to bleed. Ben moaned, but bit his lip and tried not to cry out.

  Gideon and Nehemiah stood watching helplessly, which made me nervous.

  ‘Gideon,’ I said, ‘bring me one of your leather belts. Then can you both go to the milking? Kitty and I are enough to care for Ben.’

  They did as they were bid, recognising that they were of no help to us.

  ‘Kitty, can you carry on cleaning Ben’s arm?’ I got up and went to fetch what I needed – poppy syrup and a salve of woundwort, a needle and stout thread. I added some of the poppy syrup to a mug of small ale and lifted Ben’s head and shoulders so he could drink.

  ‘This will ease the pain a little,’ I said.

  He drank thirstily. I hoped it would ease the pain. I did not dare give him much, he was so emaciated.

  Kitty moved over so I could reach Ben’s arm.

  ‘Now, Ben,’ I said, ‘this wound must be stitched. I won’t lie to you, it will hurt, but I will do it as quickly as I can. It will only heal properly if it is stitched, do you understand?’

  He looked at me with frightened eyes, but he nodded.

  I put the leather belt in his right hand.

  ‘It will help if you grip this between your teeth.’

  He looked even more frightened. ‘You a’nt going to cut my arm off, Mistress Mercy? That’s what they done in the army.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said briskly. ‘It isn’t that serious, but it’s deep, and we must give the two sides of the wound the chance to grow together again. Now, bite on the belt.’

  I turned to Kitty. Her face was very white, and she too looked frightened.

  ‘Do you want to go away?’

  She swallowed uncomfortably. ‘I’ll stay, if you need me to help.’

  ‘It will help if you can hold his arm steady, because he will probably flinch. He can’t help it. But you do not need to watch.’

  She nodded and gripped Ben’s lower arm hard with both hands, but she turned her face away.

  It needed eight stitches to pull the wound together. It is a hateful business, even though I had done it before and on larger wounds. Ben yelped despite the belt, and Kitty gave little sympathetic cries. It was done at last. I smeared the whole of his upper arm with the healing salve Hannah had taught me to make, then wound a clean bandage around it.

  Kitty went outside into the fresh air to recover, while I cleared everything away and brought Ben more ale.

  ‘We’ll have supper soon,’ I said, ‘and then you will feel better. Do you want to tell me what has happened? Where are the others?’

  I drew up a stool next to the bench where he lay, so that I did not at first see the look on his face.

  ‘What is it, Ben?’

  I took his right hand, which was dirty and callused, the nails bitten down to the quick.

  ‘It was terrible, Mistress Mercy,’ he whispered. ‘I never thought it would be like that. I dunno. I suppose I’m just stupid. They tell you fighting is noble, you’re a hero. It a’nt. It’s a bloody Hell. Never mind what old Edgemont talks about Hell. You don’t need to wait for Hell, it’s right here.’

  He seemed to be staring at something he could see, beyond the kitchen wall, and he had begun to shake.

  ‘It was all yelling and blood and pain. Cannon balls and shot was flying around, but that a’nt the worst of it. You’re there, right face to face with another man like yourself and you don’t know him but he’s just another man like yourself and you have to kill him because if you don’t he’ll kill you first and he’s just another Englishman like you not some b’yer lady foreigner. And then somebody’s head flies through the air like a football and lands at your feet. And it’s Aaron’s head. Do you remember that football game you had in Crowthorne last year, when you stole the stock back? Me and Aaron watched it together and then there he was staring up at me from the mud and I wanted to say, “What are you doing down there, Aaron?” Only this other man, this man that was a man just like me, he slashes at my arm with his sword. Why didn’t he shoot me? I thought, then I saw he hadn’t got a gun so maybe he lost it. And I didn’t know where any of them were, my pals. So I started to run and I got out of the fight and I saw Seth sitting on the ground leaning against a tree and clutching his belly and I said, “What are we going to do?” and he said, “Get out of it lad, I’m not going to make it.” And it was getting dark and I scarpered. I don’t want no more of their damned army, so I came back here.’

  He had struggled to sit up and I slipped my arm round his shoulders, for I feared he would fall on to the floor, he was so distressed.

  ‘I’ve deserted, Mercy.’ His voice as hysterical. ‘They’ll shoot me if they find me. What am I going to do?’

  I put both arms around him. He was scarcely older than Kitty. Just a boy.

  ‘Hush, Ben,’ I said, trying to hold back my own tears and keep calm. ‘You are going to stay right here on Turbary Holm.’

  Then he fell against my shoulder and began to sob.

  Chapter Twelve

  Tom

  Someone was manhandling me. I could hear grunts and curses. What did Edmund Dillingworth intend? Would he dare go so far as to kill us? If we were dumped in one of those dark alleys off Chancery Lane, knifed in the back, no one would be surprised – just another two young men foolish enough to be out at night in these troubled times. There flashed through my mind what the carter Joseph Thompson had said, about the masterless men and renegade soldiers roaming the heath north of London since the war had begun. We were not so very far from the heath here, outside the City itself. Found murdered, we would be regarded as just two more of the incidental casualties of wartime.

  My shoulder was wrenched painfully and I let out a yelp, smothered as a large hand was clamped over my mouth. I bit it.

  There was an answering yelp.

  ‘Have a care of your friends, Tom, or we might just leave you here.’

  It sounded like Henry, but how could that be?

  I felt myself being lifted up, then dragged. My hand scraped painfully on stone. My head was throbbing and I could not clear it enough to make out what was happening.

  Then I heard Anthony whisper, ‘Don’t leave his crutch behind!’

  Anthony was recovered, then, though he sounded breathless.

  ‘What’s afoot?’ I just managed a faint croak.

  I felt someone’s breath in my ear. A voice I did not recognise said, ‘We’re over the wall into Lincoln’s Inn Fields. We’ll need to make a run for it, before they realise where we’ve gone.’

  I gave a choked laugh. ‘Can’t run.’

  ‘Well, hobble, then. No time to waste.’

  They propped me up, sitting on soaking grass with my back to the wall. Brick. That was what had scraped my hand, not stone. It was still raining and I could feel the wet from the grass soaking through my breeches. Anthony was sitting next to me, swigging something out of a leather flask. He passed it to me and I took a deep draught. Choked. Coughed. Aqua vitae!

  ‘Quiet!’ someone hissed.

  ‘Can you walk?’ That was Henry. ‘We need to get away from here.’

  I nodded. Passed the f
lask back to Anthony, who took another swig and handed it up to Henry. I could just make him out now, silhouetted against the sky. The clouds must have cleared a little.

  Anthony and I staggered to our feet, helped by unseen hands. Someone handed me my crutch.

  I lurched forward, not sure which way to go, but Henry had me by the elbow, guiding me. The grass in the Fields was long and lush, from all the rain of this miserable summer, so that we had to wade through it, like water. The ground was uneven, with hummocks and hollows to trip us up in the dark and thickets of thorn bushes and brambles to claw us. At one moment a briar or blackberry branch slashed my hand, and at another I would have fallen full length when I slipped on a cowpat, if Henry had not tightened his grip. I am not sure how large Lincoln’s Inn Fields are, but they seemed to stretch for miles. In the night and the rain, we probably followed a roundabout course, but at last we reached the beaten earth track that was the continuation of Holborn out into the country.

  There we stopped. The heavy clouds had begun to clear away, though a mizzling rain continued. All of us were soaked and shivering. For the first time I could make out our rescuers. Besides Henry there were five other students and young lawyers from Gray’s, most of whom I scarcely knew. What were they doing here?

  As if he had heard my unspoken question, Henry grinned at me as he wiped the rain from his face with his sleeve.

  ‘When Anthony told me about your escapade, I decided to recruit a few friends in case we were needed. I reckoned you could well run into trouble. We have had a few quarrels with Lincoln’s in the past, a right battle back in ’45. At Gray’s, we’ve no love of them, so I thought if they caught you, they wouldn’t spare you a beating.’

  ‘Did John find you?’

  ‘That young lad, masquerading as a student? Aye. Said you were locked in and might have trouble. Said he was to wait for you at the Peacock. Come on, lads. Let’s make our way there.’

  ‘But I don’t understand how you got in,’ I said. ‘The gates were locked.’

  ‘Two of them climbed over the wall,’ Anthony said.

  ‘And the rest of us created a hullabaloo at the gate, banging and shouting, till the gatekeeper came to see what was afoot.’ It was one of the lawyers speaking, one I did not know.

  We began to walk down Holborn, in the direction of the Peacock.

  ‘We gave the gatekeeper a light tap on the head,’ Henry said. ‘Nothing serious. Just to keep him quiet. Then we stormed through the gates and found those rogues beating you both, with their gentleman master looking on and smiling at the sight.’

  ‘Henry knocked him out,’ someone said, ‘and the rest of us gave him a kicking.’

  ‘He had asked for it, the way his men were laying into the two of you. Anthony was still conscious, but you were away with Queen Mab.’

  ‘Tom has just recovered from one blow to the head, inflicted by those same brutes,’ Anthony said. ‘No wonder that he was unconscious.’

  ‘Anthony said you were making for the Fields,’ Henry said. ‘It seemed like a good plan. The Inn was beginning to wake up and the gate might have been barred again. So we picked you up and made for the wall.’

  ‘And dragged me over,’ I said, thinking of my grazed hand.

  ‘There was no time for finesse.’

  ‘I realise that. I’m grateful. We’re both grateful. Jesu knows what they would have done to us if you hadn’t come.’

  ‘There’s the Peacock,’ someone called. ‘And the torch is still lit. I’m ready for a meal and a gallon of beer.’

  We all shouted our agreement.

  We found John sitting alone at a table near the back, nursing a cup of beer and looking frightened. As he glanced over and saw us, he face cleared and he stood up.

  ‘You got away!’

  ‘Thanks to our friends,’ Anthony said. ‘And to you alerting them. You got here with no trouble?’

  ‘No trouble at all.’

  We pulled up stools to the table. The landlord came bustling over, surprised at so much business this late in the evening, but pleased nonetheless.

  ‘I can offered you gentlemen beef and onions or a dish of pike or roast goose. What shall I fetch you?’

  ‘All three!’ Henry roared. Now we were away from Lincoln’s he clearly regarded the whole episode as no more than a student prank.

  ‘Aye,’ Anthony said. ‘Bring all three.’

  I took off my sodden lawyer’s gown and laid it over a stool near the fire. It might dry out a little before I needed to put it on for the walk back to Gray’s. I was glad of the rest at the Peacock. The beating and the long walk had exhausted me. Perhaps the lavish food, washed down with the beer in the jug the landlord brought, would restore me. As I sat down again next to John, I felt Sir John Dillingworth’s letters rustle under my shirt. I was anxious to read them, but this was not the place.

  I turned to John. ‘You have the scroll safe?’

  He nodded. ‘I wrapped it in the lawyer’s gown, to keep it from the rain.’

  He lifted the bundled gown from a bench behind him and unwrapped it. The scroll lay there in the folds of the gown, undamaged by the wet. I lifted it up and laid it on the table in front of me, where the others eyed it curiously.

  ‘So all this adventure, and the beatings you endured, were just for an old dusty scroll?’ Henry grinned at me.

  I reached out and touched it with the tip of my finger.

  ‘An old dusty scroll,’ I agreed, ‘but it holds the future of five parishes within it.’

  ***

  Mercy

  The sword slash in Ben’s arm was healing cleanly, but I feared it would be some while before his spirits were healed as well. During the day, he helped with any tasks about the farm that did not require the full strength of two arms. He had always loved the cows. Every morning and evening he went with Gideon to bring them in for milking, and as his arm grew better, he took over half the milking, freeing Nehemiah to go in pursuit of fish and wildfowl to augment our present diet and our winter stores. Kitty and I were experimenting with smoked and salted fish, while the rendered meat of the wildfowl, sealed in jars under a layer of purified duck fat, seemed to be keeping well enough.

  I think Ben found Gideon’s company a comfort. His quiet, undemanding presence was what the boy needed after his experiences of the battlefield. By day, he seemed almost to have returned to the cheerful lad he had been before the soldiers were sent away. But at night it was another matter. Night after night he woke screaming in terror. After his first few nights in the room off the kitchen, he moved in to share with Nehemiah, for we all thought he would be the better for the companionship, but the terrible dreams that afflicted him meant that Nehemiah suffered broken nights. He worked long hours by day and needed his sleep, so I moved Ben once again into the downstairs chamber. Kitty was back in her attic room and Nehemiah was far enough away that he was not often disturbed, but night after night Gideon and I were woken. We spent many hours comforting Ben and quietening him, or sitting with him beside the kitchen fire, all of us drinking spiced ale, Ben wrapped in blankets which could not stop his shivering. Gideon and I both began to feel the lack of sleep.

  When we were not occupied in our usual farm tasks, or preserving food for the winter, Kitty and I were busy making more knitted and woven goods for the next trip to market. As well, Kitty was weaving a striped blanket as a house gift for Alice and Rafe, while I was sewing a winter tunic for Huw and knitting a lace cap for the new baby. Alice was certain it would be a girl and I hoped she would prove right, as it would look a mite dainty for a lad.

  Despite all that we had to keep us busy, I could not stop worrying about Tom. I had heard nothing from him for weeks, and my last two letters had gone unanswered. That might mean nothing more than my letters – or his – having miscarried. Unless you had the use of the government mails, sending a letter was always unchancy, but I thought there should have been some word by now. London was a sickly place, far more endangered by the plagu
e than we were. We had the marsh fever, but it was not so certain a death sentence as the plague.

  The drainers had returned to camp in the medland where they had set up their quarters the previous year. A group of men from the village had gone to Piet van Slyke, to try to make him understand the danger of draining the Fens, instead of allowing them to absorb the excess water during the winter rains. They explained that by forcing the marsh water out of the Fen and pouring it into Baker’s Lode and the river, the pumping mill had caused both to burst their banks and created the flood which had caused so much damage. Van Slyke’s response had been to swear at them, yelling that they knew nothing of the management of water. If they did not leave the drainers’ camp, he said, he knew how to deal with them, waving his short-barrelled musket in their faces. In despair they retreated and van Slyke’s men began the rebuilding of the shattered mill.

  They also began to steal our sheep once more.

  Sheep-stealing is a hanging offence, conviction should lie within the jurisdiction of the local Justice of the Peace. But we knew that the stealing of sheep by the drainers when they were working over at Crowthorne had called down no punishment from Sir John. If he ignored a crime committed on his very doorstep, what hope was there that he would act on our behalf? It had begun to seem as though we had no existence. As if we had become invisible to great men.

  Alice and Rafe were nearly ready to move into their new house, although they had very little to furnish it. An excellent kitchen hearth and bread oven had been one of Alice’s first requirements, for she loved baking, like her mother, something I have little time for. I enjoy making bread, for kneading is a fine way to work off the petty annoyances of life, but I have not the patience for fine baking. Rafe had built a sink and dug a well, so their cooking needs were well provided for. Otherwise they had not much. Ned Broadley had made them a bed as his house gift, while Nehemiah had constructed a sturdy table out of timber left over from the house building. Others had contributed stools and cooking pots, and for dishes Alice had salvaged and mended her mother-in-law’s dishes which had been broken or chipped in the flood. Her parents had provided bed linen, while Rafe’s mother had given them one very small rug.