William Falkland 01 - The Royalist

by S. J. Deas

  ‘What does Oliver Cromwell care about a King’s servant?’ one of them spat.

  ‘Little enough, but I think he cares even less for soldiers who don’t obey orders,’ I said. ‘You’ve seen what he does to ravishers.’ I waved Carew’s knife at the closest of them. They shared a look.

  ‘We’re not going to ravish you,’ smirked one.

  I fixed my eye on him. ‘You’re not going to get the chance.’ Before Carew and the other pikeman could join the fray, I lunged for the man on my right. He had a dagger of his own, a longer blade than mine, but I had the element of surprise. I swiped and then jabbed, cutting left as if to parry his own blade and then went for his chest. Twice his age, I was still too fast for him. My blade sank in. Yet, when I drew it back, no blood dripped from its end. There was no tear in his tunic, nothing but a faint wrinkle where I ought to have spilled his life. I marvelled at the dagger. For the first time I realised that it sat too lightly in my hand. I weighed it and something seemed to rattle in the handle, something I’d not understood before. With the fingers of my other hand I tested the blade. It retreated, as if by magic, into the hilt, disappearing until all but an inch of blade was hidden away.

  Wordless, I dropped it at my feet.

  ‘Take a hold of him,’ Carew said hoarsely. ‘We’ve been out here too long.’

  I swung my fists but they grappled me and held me fast to the trunk. At first I couldn’t feel their hands around me, so bitter was the cold, but they dragged me out and threw me to the ground. I landed hard, all the breath forced out of my chest. I gasped and heaved but all I took in were the mouthfuls of snow they fed me. Two of the men wrenched my wrists together behind my back and began to bind me. It took only a single blow after that for the world to fall out of focus. They hauled me upright and, hanging between two of them, heaved me into place beneath the great bough.

  The noose hung some distance above my head but I heard awkward grunting in the tree above and understood that one of the men had scrambled up to ease my passage. While Carew looked on, the other two pushed me high. My legs were held fast so I couldn’t kick out and I would not scream – there was no point and I would not give them the satisfaction. I bucked and twisted and toppled us all into the snow but they soon had me up again. It would not, I noted grimly, be as easy as the last time I’d escaped a hanging.

  They hauled me up a third time. The world came beautifully into focus. There were the rolling white fields. There was the encampment. There was Crediton and somewhere there was Miss Cain. Carew gazed at a point above my head. I didn’t look up – I knew he was looking at the noose. I looked, instead, at him. It had felt different on the morning they hauled me out of Newgate. I was ready for it then. If anything, though I might not have admitted it even to myself, it was what I wanted. All my desire had been bled out of me – by the King, by the wars, by roundheads and cavaliers. All of it was the same to me. But now I wasn’t ready any more. Now I didn’t want to die. Now there were people who needed me. Yes, my family, wherever they were and whatever they were doing. But more than that I meant the dead boys: Whitelock, Wildman, Fletcher; for I was certain now that everything Carew had said to me was a lie. I even thought, as they hoisted me higher and the noose brushed the top of my head, that I was beginning to understand. I had that pamphlet in my pocket. Somewhere beneath me there was the knife with the retractable blade. The images of both seemed to swirl in front of my eyes, tempting me to draw some conclusion, tempting me to shout it out loud. I knew it was Carew. I was certain I knew why. I almost knew how.

  A light like a tiny orb of fire split the darkness. Riding on the back of it there came a sound – thunder, in miniature, the crack of a musket. I froze. The men underneath me froze too. They hadn’t yet got the noose around me.

  The sound came again, this time from a different direction. Another flash of musket fire. Another noise like thunder harnessed and thrust out of a barrel. The second shot came too quickly for there to be only one person out there, filling his weapon back up before aiming and releasing fire.

  I took my chance. I thrust myself left and toppled from the pikemen – no matter that I landed on the ground hard enough to shatter half my ribs. The snow cushioned my fall, betraying me only where one of the tree’s roots broke through the surface. I rolled away gasping for air. This time the pikemen did not grapple after me. They were too busy whirling around, trying to discern where the ambush was coming from.

  Bound as I was, I squirmed away like a snake across the snow. Once I’d reached the trunk I used it to haul myself up.

  ‘Stop!’ Carew bellowed. He wasn’t shouting at me but at the pikemen who seemed about to scatter. ‘There can only be two of them or they’d have shot again. Let’s get this . . .’ Out of the gloom somebody grappled Carew from behind. A diminutive forearm curled around to constrict his throat and he began to buckle. I fancied there was a dagger – one with a real blade this time – pressed into the small of his back. As he went to ground, I marvelled at what I saw. Miss Kate Cain stood above him dressed in soldier’s clothes far too big for her slender frame, a kitchen knife in her hands.

  One of the pikemen had run, vanished into the whiteness. Two still remained. They stopped as they saw who had forced Carew to the ground. From the snow he called out to them. There was only a second of hesitation before they shared a look and began to advance.

  ‘Falkland!’ Miss Cain exclaimed. ‘Falkland!’

  My hands were still bound. I threw myself away from the trunk. I was between Miss Cain and the pikemen and I began to run. I saw the retractable dagger in the snow at my feet, still by the base of the tree. I couldn’t pick it up but kicked it high instead so that it landed beyond Carew. I charged on, reached Kate and hurried past her.

  ‘Leave him!’ I called. ‘Get away! Back to the camp! They can’t risk following us there . . .’

  ‘No,’ Miss Cain replied, her voice so calm she seemed not to care that the pikemen were rampaging towards us. ‘Not yet.’

  Another pealing of thunder. Another flash of white muzzle light and one of the pikemen gasped and stumbled. He looked down at himself and sank to his knees. He’d been shot in the chest. Out of the gloom emerged Warbeck, dressed up in his red Venice coat with leather gauntlets and metal bracers on his wrists. He had a vicious look in his eye. As the other pikeman kept on, Warbeck threw away his musket and drew out a sabre.

  ‘Get him out of here,’ he said. All his foppish sweetness was gone. ‘I’ll hold these.’

  The second pikeman stopped. Kate lifted her foot from the small of Carew’s back and rushed to my side. She took my hand and tried to lead me back across the field but I resisted. ‘Kate, the dagger! Carew’s dagger.’

  Warbeck was backing away. ‘Go!’ he barked. ‘They won’t follow. I’ll see to that.’ Carew floundered in the snow until he found his feet. Kate scooped up the dagger with the false blade and began to run, hesitating only to help me along. Halfway across the field we stopped and she loosened the ties at my wrists. I could hardly feel my fingers. She cupped them to my mouth to breathe some warmth back into them. We stood there beneath the freshly falling ribbons of snow and listened out for what was happening down at the witching tree. All we heard was silence: long, unending and pure.

  Back at the house, Kate dropped the latch and heaved a chair from the scullery to stop the handle from turning. She bade me sit and, in the light of the candle, reached for my neck as if to inspect me for bruises. As her fingers, ice cold, touched me, I took hold of her wrists and folded them back against her breast. I promised her the rope had not marked me.

  ‘Damn them, Falkland,’ she said. The light of the candle waned suddenly and I couldn’t tell if she was crying; but when the flame surged back into life I saw it wasn’t tears but pure rage that was making her shake. ‘You should not have gone!’

  She was right. It had been foolish to follow the surgeon into the snow. Yet now I understood. Now I had the pieces of this shredded tapestry woven together.
‘How did you know where I was?’ I asked.

  ‘I watched you going down the lane . . .’ She stopped. ‘I was afraid . . . because who comes knocking at windows in the middle of a night like this, Falkland? Who? Not honest men, that’s for sure.’ She looked away. ‘I thought you were a fool.’

  It seemed she was right.

  ‘I must have woken Master Warbeck. He wouldn’t let me follow you alone. And now he’s . . .’

  I put my hand over hers. ‘We don’t know anything.’ I couldn’t bring myself to see her grieve over a man like Warbeck; although it occurred to me that he had perhaps saved me twice now from Carew and his gang.

  ‘I wouldn’t regret it.’ Miss Cain looked up. In the candlelight her eyes were alive. Some of the rage had seeped out of her and now she looked in control of what was left. The anger hardened inside her like a freshly cast sword plunged into a blacksmith’s well. ‘If he were not to come back tonight, I wouldn’t regret it for a second. Let the snow cover him up. Let wolves find him for all I would care. He’s never been welcome in my house.’

  I stood. She had wine, red and watery in a jug, and I poured cups for both of us. It wasn’t until I gulped it back and felt its warmth that I realised how cold I’d been or how much my fingers trembled.

  ‘Who were they, Falkland?’

  ‘It was the surgeon took me there,’ I said. ‘To meet a man named Edmund Carew.’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘They said they had news about Tom Fletcher. He spun me a story about some camp whore and a soldier who wanted revenge. I should have known it.’ My hand let go of the cup and it clattered to the tabletop, spilling its dregs. Instantly I was shaking again. ‘A sorrier story I’ve never heard. I should have seen through it at once but I didn’t. Only when I saw the fresh noose they’d made ready for me.’

  ‘Falkland,’ Miss Cain said, her voice even, ‘they may come for you again.’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘They know where you live.’

  I did not mean to but I snapped, ‘They may also come for you. I won’t put you through it. I’ll be gone.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant!’

  There was silence between us for what felt the longest time. ‘Carew was looking after Hotham, the third boy to hang,’ I said at last. ‘They knew Fletcher from the printing press. They worked it and made him serve as they made old Mrs Miller serve. They had him delivering . . . I thought it was Bibles but it wasn’t. It was this.’ I produced the pamphlet she’d given me. ‘Have you heard,’ I said, ‘of this man, Hopkins?’

  I opened the pamphlet to the correct page and spread it out. The candlelight spilled over it and lit the pictures of devils and familiars in terrible orange light. As the flame moved they appeared to dance. It was a trick as magical as any the man Hopkins must have been using to catch and try his witches. Miss Cain hovered over it. She traced the inky pictures with her finger but, before she could speak, there came a sudden sound of wood hammered against wood, of somebody grappling hard to get through the front door. We froze and then I took her knife and pushed past her through the scullery door.

  ‘It’s me they’ve come for. I shouldn’t have brought this on you.’ I faced the door with only the glow of the candles behind me to light my way.

  ‘Falkland!’ The hammering on the door came again. The voice was Warbeck. I strode forward and kicked the chair so it fell and unlatched the door. Warbeck came in fast, the naked sabre still in his hand, and he only scabbarded it when the chair was back against the door. ‘They didn’t follow,’ he said. ‘I saw to that. But who’s to say how many more there are?’ He flashed me a nasty smile. ‘Did you see the bruise on that other pikeman’s face?’

  I shook my head. I had not.

  ‘I fancy you landed a blow or two on him when he took you in that alley two nights back. Got a good piece of him.’

  ‘We should go to Fairfax,’ I said, but Warbeck shook his head. He pushed me out of the way to come down the hallway, stopping his stampede only when he saw Miss Cain in the scullery door. He poured himself a cup of wine and told Kate to get a fire going. ‘No Black Tom, not yet. There’s no more sleep for us tonight,’ he growled. ‘So Falkland – have you got Cromwell’s answer for him?’

  I looked at the table where the pamphlet still lay. ‘I fancy the answer is in there,’ I began.

  Warbeck and Miss Cain looked back at it.

  ‘What became of them?’ I asked.

  ‘The one I shot will die if he’s not dead already,’ Warbeck replied, his eyes lingering on the pamphlet. ‘The others loped away as soon as the opportunity presented itself.’

  ‘Into camp?’ I asked.

  Warbeck nodded. ‘They didn’t much like the look of my sabre but they didn’t seem terrified as though they’d been found out in some scheme that would get them hanged. It’s a troubling thing, that. What did he want of you besides to see you dangle from the very tree you came to investigate?’ He scoffed at me. ‘A poor report that would make to Cromwell.’

  Miss Cain finished at the fire as I sat. She came to stand at my back, rested her hands on my shoulders and leaned into me. I produced Carew’s knife. In the light of a new candle I turned it over, marvelling at the way the orange flame flickered along the contours of the collapsible blade. ‘It’s Carew’s dagger,’ I said. ‘But not the one he drew on me.’

  I turned to the pamphlet’s pages about Hopkins, the roaming Witch-finder General, and began to read aloud. ‘“Men must be watcheful for Witch spots which doe not bleed no matter if a blade be administered. Though it be meanly esteemed of, this is yet the surest and safest way to judge.” I think,’ I said, ‘that this is our answer.’

  We froze, all three, at the sound of another hand on the door. Whoever it was they quickly passed but they were out there. They were letting us know.

  ‘I’ve seen already,’ I went on with a level look at Warbeck, ‘what this New Model is. A bastard army, sweeping across the kingdom, rounding up whatever boys it can find, no matter what their allegiance, no matter what their ideals. Roundhead or cavalier, Catholic or Protestant, it doesn’t matter to Cromwell.’ I looked at them plainly. ‘But I fancy it matters to Fairfax and it certainly mattered to these boys,’ I said. ‘It matters to the soldiers who organise tourneys in the squares. It matters to the lads who secretly go looking for the Mass, for communion or confession. It matters to the camp whores who sneak out at night to plant crosses in their lovers’ graves to steer them on their way to Heaven. Cromwell overlooked one thing when he set about making this monster. A soldier’s body might be bought by regular pay and regular food but his spirit cannot be bought so easily. I said as much to Fairfax last night. He understands the truth of it.’

  In that instant I relived again the moment when King Charles told me to look the other way, told me that soldiers did what soldiers did, that one ravisher in our ranks was not an aberration.

  ‘There was something the camp whore said. Mary. She was a lover to one of the boys who hanged himself, the one named Wildman. He spent some time away from her, stewing in envy, and when she saw him again she said he was changed. I expected to hear how he was murdered by some Puritan gang, most likely by Carew, but she swore he took his own life. He said to her . . .’ Here I struggled to remember the exact words though the image was burned into my mind. ‘He said he would rather hang by his own hand than die at somebody else’s pyre. I took it to mean he couldn’t face another battle when the spring came around but it was more than that.’ I lifted up the dagger and teased the point with my finger.

  ‘They talk of it all over camp and it’s in here too,’ I said, tapping my finger to the pamphlets, ‘how every royalist is a Catholic, how every Catholic is in league with devils. That story they tell, of Prince Rupert’s little dog Boy – as if that yapping little terrier is anything more than an overgrown rat . . .’ I admit it: I hated that dog, even if it was no witch’s familiar. I looked at Warbeck again. ‘Do you remember the day we arrived
? Do you remember the soldier who came out of his hut as we entered that night, how he looked at us with a face as though he’d seen the devil himself? Do you remember the two men in the alley by the church who turned and fled? Where I found the rosary? Why, even Kate, when Fairfax brought us to the door, thought we were here to hunt witches. The camp is rife with it. How? Fairfax can talk of rumours and of dancing girls with the itch if he likes, but what if some of the soldiers here have decided to make this army how they see it should be? You’ve seen yourselves how ardent some men are. How much passion! We were all there on the Day of Admonishment. We’ve read their books of soldier’s verse. What if Carew and the other boys running that press decided that something had to be done?’

  Warbeck’s eyes boggled but I saw he understood. ‘What you’re suggesting is preposterous!’ he exclaimed, showering us with spittle. A speck must have landed in the candle flame for it sizzled and flickered. ‘This is an army – a united army!’ He couldn’t take his eyes off the pamphlet. I caught once more the reek of his rotten breath.