William Falkland 01 - The Royalist

by S. J. Deas

  Hotham didn’t fit. If I’d ever fancied him a royalist or secret Catholic – and I have to admit that a part of me had so, even though I’d seen the nature of his friend Carew, smiling with a sanguine curiosity as he watched the crowds on the Day of Admonishment – that part of me was now thoroughly vexed. Jacob Hotham, spirited Puritan, ardent London pamphleteer – a boy who might spend his evenings at heated coffee house debates or setting in print the latest outpourings of some scholar disgusted with the state of the Crown – dangling from the same tree as two harried, tormented royalist boys? The matter didn’t make sense. Two Catholic royalists murdered and one of the murderers strung up for revenge, that made sense, although even there I couldn’t help wondering about the last boy with the granadoe. Yet the girl Mary had been adamant – Richard Wildman had taken his own life. I chased my own thoughts in circles as a demented dog chases its own tail until, after hours of hunting, I felt ready to throw myself on a granadoe too, so viciously did my head pound.

  I needed to speak with Hotham. Alone. I would find out from him who among the royalist boys had strung him up and as I did, I’d slowly tease his own confession out of him.

  I returned through the square and past the church, then stood in front of the surgeon’s house for an intolerable time, divining which of the many windows hid Jacob Hotham himself. I watched as Edmund Carew went in and later as Edmund Carew came out again, and after him the other boys who had gathered at Hotham’s bedside. I’d thought they’d given up for the day but promptly another gang of boys arrived, exchanged words with Carew and then disappeared within. Hotham had friends in this camp then, I was certain of that, but now a new certainty leapt to mind, one I could not fight down: none of the boys who came to tend the cripple were the kind I would have sought to be companions of my own.

  There seemed little hope of getting inside and cornering Hotham, at least not in daylight hours, so instead I thought to sniff around the dead boy Fletcher. Fletcher, only so recently pressed into service, had not yet fought in any battle and so I didn’t expect to hear many tales from the common soldiery; but he was a local boy. The other locals would know him and might have a story to tell. Thomas Fletcher, I thought, must have had a mother.

  There were few women left in Crediton. Aside from Miss Cain, the only ones I’d seen who remained were old and withered, the kind soldiers protect as cooks and cleaners and do not torment. At the surgeon’s house I asked a woman old enough to be my own mother after Fletcher and where he’d lived. At first she didn’t want to tell me but I didn’t think she had a secret to keep: hers was merely the common suspicion of a woman whose world has been upended. I was able, with patience, to convince her I didn’t mean to cause any trouble, that I had a vested interest in making certain Thomas’s memory was honoured. She gave me directions to a cottage at the southern edge of the village on the Exeter road and I realised I must have passed it every day on my way to Fairfax’s farmhouse.

  I walked the familiar lane, watched on either side by soldiers in their camps. There were dogs here and a mongrel worked up a din as I passed the yard where it was roped to a tree. The cottages between the church and the edge of the town were set farther apart, and in the spaces between them, camps had been built. Enterprising soldiers had constructed walls of ice and compacted snow so that in places it seemed that each cottage bled into its neighbour. Some of the camps had roofs of a sort where the men had trained the snow in such a way that it crept out from the cottage walls and sheltered them beneath.

  Halfway there I had the feeling of being followed and turned to see a lad, no older than seven or eight, traipsing after me with his hands outstretched. He walked barefoot, his trousers ragged things, his shoulders and torso wrapped in a cape that billowed open every time he took a lurching step. When he saw me looking he stopped dead, lifted up his cupped hands and suddenly nipped away between two cottages. Too young to be pressed – but it hadn’t stopped the New Model ousting him from his home. I was beginning to lose count of how many spies had been set to watch me. Warbeck watched for Cromwell, Purkiss for Fairfax and now, after last night, perhaps another. Was it Carew and his gang? Had I blundered too close to whatever secret they held? If so then I greatly wished they might do me the kindness of telling me what it was. Or perhaps the boy hadn’t been following me at all.

  The cottage where Thomas Fletcher had been born and raised – and from which he’d been snatched and shoved into a Venice red coat – was at the end of the lane, nearly on the edge of Crediton itself. As I approached I saw that a soldier loitered outside. His coat seemed smarter and certainly less frayed than I’d seen in the rest of the camp, but he didn’t stand as firmly and statuesquely as the guards had done outside Fairfax’s farmhouse. I’d passed him before, I realised, or another man like him, standing watch on this spot. I’d walked this way each time to Fairfax’s house and each time a man had been here. At the time I’d thought nothing of it. Now I thought a great deal. A guard meant that something was inside and now I wanted very much to know what that something was.

  I walked slowly by on the opposite side of the lane until I was certain this was the Fletcher place. The soldier watched me with the dull interest of the intensely bored. Snow rose in a great drift against the low stone wall that bordered the cottage. I turned back and approached him; when I looked him up and down, I saw he had a dagger in his boot as well as the sabre at his belt – but that was not what held my eye; I was more concerned by the fact that his boots were spotless, with barely a scratch on them.

  ‘What do you want?’ he barked as he gathered himself. ‘Can’t you see this is private property?’

  ‘Black Tom sent me,’ I said.

  He was still. ‘Black Tom?’

  I nodded. ‘It’s nothing to bother yourself with. You know it was the Admonishments two days ago. We’re rounding up wastrels, cleaning up the camp.’

  He was a thickset man with wild black eyebrows that dominated his face. Beneath were piggy eyes and a crooked nose. Up close I might have taken him for any old pikeman in camp – he was certainly ugly enough to have had his face staved in in many a battle or brawl; it was only from a distance, in his fine red coat and cared-for boots, that he seemed distinct. I wasn’t sure if he believed my story but I was certain he hadn’t entirely dismissed it. Not yet. I decided to drive for the kill before he had time to think on it too deeply. ‘It won’t take more than a moment. But you wouldn’t want me reporting back that some sorry bastard got in my way, would you?’ I stopped. ‘Son,’ I said, though he was at least my age if not older, ‘if it’s a girl you’ve got hiding in there, it won’t matter to me. It’s meant to go reported but we’re all men here, aren’t we?’

  He was silent for a second but then he broke. His mouth widened in a toothy mockery of a smile. ‘Ah, don’t fool with me!’ he laughed. ‘There’s no girl in there unless you count old Mrs Miller. And if she was a girl, it was in another century. There’s no one hiding out here. I see to that.’

  I started forward, taking his merriment to be assent for me to pass, but his face changed at once. He stepped smartly back and his hand rested on his sabre again. Behind him the shutters were tightly closed on all the cottage windows. ‘I’m sorry, Mister . . .’ His eyes were on me, questioning.

  ‘Falkland.’ There seemed no point in pretending otherwise.

  ‘Mister Falkland.’ I thought I saw a slight glint of recognition. ‘The intelligencer. I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t pass here without Black Tom’s say-so. Go on, get about your business.’

  So he’d been warned. By whom? ‘The boy who blew himself up with a granadoe lived here,’ I said.

  I thought I saw a genuine sympathy now. ‘Aye. A tragedy, that was. Poor Mrs Miller. Took him on as if he was her own after . . .’ His face hardened again. I could see him thinking he’d said too much.

  ‘Who warned you I’d be coming?’ I asked.

  He wouldn’t bite but I thought his answer telling enough. ‘None come past me, Mister F
alkland, save with Black Tom’s blessing.’

  I wished him a good night and left him at his post, head spinning anew. Something inside this house was under the supervision of Fairfax himself. I couldn’t see how or what this might have to do with Fletcher’s death, or that of any of the other boys, and yet surely there was no coincidence? I hurried back to Miss Cain’s house and accosted her in her kitchen. ‘There’s a house towards the end of the Exeter road,’ I gasped, out of breath. ‘A man stands guard there every night!’

  The look she gave me was one of curious amusement. ‘Poor Tom Fletcher’s house? Yes, and every day too.’

  ‘You knew him?’

  She almost laughed at me now. ‘Master Falkland, do you imagine before this army came upon my home that I sat upon my back doorstep with my eyes closed and never once went to church or market? Poor Tom used to live with his mother in that cottage. His father was gone two winters ago, fighting for the King.’

  ‘Dead?’ I asked.

  ‘Dead,’ she replied. ‘It took the longest time. They had a surgeon take off his leg but it didn’t matter. In the end they sent him home to die. I told you most of the women fled when the army came. Tom’s mother wanted to run too but Tom made her stay. Then, when the soldiers came, they made her take men in her house. She tried to resist. She barred the doors, just her and Tom inside. They let her go at first. You could hear them whispering up and down the lane about the mad woman making her home into her tomb. But eventually they got sick of sleeping under the stars. They forced themselves in.’ She looked away, paused a moment and then her eyes found mine. ‘We all heard well enough what happened. Tom tried to fend them off but he was a slight little lad, that one. Not much more than skin and bone, and not much of that. They locked him outside while they did what they did to his mother. Oh, they didn’t go unpunished. You’ve seen one of them already, dangling from that tree in the middle of the village. But it was enough for Tom’s mother to just disappear. Nobody knew where she took herself. Tom vanished too, disappeared into the army. Pressed. I saw him maybe twice after that, both times coming out of the church in a soldier’s coat that was far too big for him.’ Her words finished with a sigh of heavy melancholy. She turned away from me, back to busying herself with her pot.

  ‘Kate, what are they doing in that cottage? Fairfax himself has set the guard on it.’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing much. I’ve heard people see old Mrs Miller go in and out but she’s a spiteful old witch, that one, and doesn’t talk to anyone else.’

  ‘Where will I find her?’

  Kate directed me to a cottage on the west side of Crediton. Outside, the November twilight was already turning to night. I would, I supposed, have to wait until morning but I desperately wanted to know what secret Fairfax was hiding in there. That was the King’s man in me coming out, who’d fought against Cromwell and Black Tom and their militias for too many years.

  ‘Kate . . .’ I hesitated to ask her but I needed help. ‘Does Fletcher’s cottage have a back door?’

  She didn’t look round. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I only ever saw the one guard at the front. But I would need someone to distract him . . .’

  ‘You’d have me walk up to a soldier in the dark of night and engage him with idle talk while you break into the house? And what, Master Falkland, do you suppose he will think of that?’

  The question hung in the air between us. He would think she was propositioning him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said after a moment.

  ‘You’ll be done and gone soon, Master Falkland. The rest of us have to weather this invasion for months yet.’

  ‘Perhaps one of the camp followers . . .’

  She turned and touched my arm then brushed past me into the hall. I was surprised to see that she was smiling. She went upstairs and returned with a candle and a lighted lantern with a hood. ‘There’s another way, Master Falkland. Come. I’ll show you.’ She wrapped a heavy cloak around her shoulders and stepped out into the night.

  At first the path she led me was a familiar one, past the market square with its defiled cross and the church. As we passed the graveyard she turned down an alley, dark as pitch, that made me think of the first night I’d come this way where the man had dropped his rosary. It was, I thought, the same alley. ‘Miss Cain, when you first set eyes on me did you really think I was here to hunt for witches?’

  She hushed me. The alley exited into a narrow lane with packed banks of snow pressed to either side. It was clear this road was well used in daylight but now it was deserted. ‘Keep your ears about you, Master Falkland. We’ve learned it’s best to keep to the High Street after dark.’

  I heard a burst of laughter from inside one of the cottages. Thin curtains of flickering light filtered out between ill-fitting shutters. Kate hooded her lantern. With the clear night sky above us full of stars, we had enough to see by. Almost at once Kate turned into another alley every bit as narrow as the first, then struck across some open ground where the snow rose up to my calves. There were tracks here, footsteps, but too few to have beaten a path. We followed them and then she began to pick her way across virgin snow. She turned once to put her finger to her lips. A pair of jesters we might have seemed to anyone who saw us, creeping in exaggerated steps through the snow, lifting each foot high and placing it gently down, but no one did. The fires and lanterns of the camp were distant, and though I could see figures moving in the tents and timbers against them, they were far too far away for me to see who they were.

  We reached a wall as high as my outstretched hand. Miss Cain stopped. As I looked about, I thought I knew where she’d led me: we were at the back of the Fletchers’ house, at the end of its walled yard.

  ‘Lift me up,’ she whispered. I must have looked bewildered. ‘Over the wall!’

  I peered around the corner. Barely three paces along the side of this walled yard was an arch with a door. It seemed a far easier means of entrance and so I eased my way through the snow until I stood before it but there was no latch, no handle, nothing. I pushed gently but it didn’t move. I didn’t dare rattle it hard.

  Miss Cain, when I returned, regarded me with a steady gaze. I bowed my head. I should, I understood, have listened and known better. I put my back to the wall, bent my knees and cupped my hands, indicating that Kate should step in them. She did and I lifted her. She was lighter than I thought she would be, or perhaps Newgate had not stolen as much of my strength as I’d imagined. As she pressed herself against me, fumbling the snow from the top of the wall and dropping it now and then on my head, I found my thoughts tinged with unwanted desires. For all the years I’d marched with the King, my Caro was all I’d ever needed, the only woman I’d lain with and the only one I ever would. I made myself think of her as I held Miss Cain higher. Then at last I felt her weight ease as she lifted herself away and over the wall and heard the soft rustle of snow from the other side. I stood a moment, waiting for the thump of my heartbeat to slow, then crept back to the door. I was waiting for her as she opened it and we stared at one another for a moment – I could not say why. In the night her face seemed dark and her eyes uncommonly wide. She grabbed my arm and pulled me after her and then carefully shut the door and latched it. We stood before one another like thieves, so close we were almost touching. ‘Kate . . .’ I don’t know what I meant to say to her then; but before I could frame another thought she quieted me with a sharp ‘Shh!’ and moved to the cottage door. It was as well, I think.

  The back door to Tom Fletcher’s old home opened without a squeak. I pushed through while Kate carefully lifted the hood from our lantern and turned the shutters so that light spilled only in a narrow shaft ahead of us – by this means we would have light to see by and the guard outside would know nothing of it unless we were fool enough to shine our lamp through the cracks around the door or the shuttered windows at the front of the cottage. Our hands touched as Kate passed me the lantern. Had we not had a need for silence, I would have told her she would make a fine intelligenc
er. Perhaps I would have told her more but a man with a pistol stood guard not far from the cottage door and I doubted he would hesitate to use it if he detected us. Here was no place for idle talk.

  We were in a scullery. There was a small range but it didn’t seem to have been lit in many days and the cottage was as cold inside as out. I crouched and fingered the ash but it was icy. There were no provisions in the cupboards and no water in the pail. A tin pot sat on a stove but it was bone dry. Indeed, it appeared to be covered in a thin film of dirt and dust. I was left with the empty feeling of walking through somebody’s mausoleum. There were, I knew, a great many houses across the kingdom that had been abandoned since the battles began – some left behind by young men gone off to war, some abandoned in a fevered rush by families fleeing in the face of the fighting – but I hadn’t expected to find one in Crediton, not in a place where so many soldiers slept in crudely constructed camps.

  I turned and pushed at the door that led to the front of the cottage. It opened into a tiny hall from which led a staircase to rooms above and two doors: the one in which I stood and a second room. I turned to the other door and cautiously pushed it open. The air was just as cold. As I crept onward, a rich and bitter smell I couldn’t place swirled around me, making me gag. Heavy shutters blocked out all but the thinnest sliver of starlight. I set the lantern down, taking care to face it away from the windows. Against one wall, opposite a hearth as cold and empty as the first, stood a tall contraption. At first I took it for a harpsichord or even a church organ, but as I brought the lantern closer I quickly understood it was nothing of the sort. The frame was polished oak and within it sat an iron plate, with another plate suspended above it by a great shaft. A heavy lever protruded from the uprights of the frame allowing the second plate to rise and fall – and revealing behind it a sequence of other plates that could be dropped and shifted into place. I approached it slowly, half-circling it as a man might do on observing an enemy outpost. The base of the contraption was built out of iron slats with handles for each so they could be slid backwards or forwards, or from one side to the other.