A Dangerous Energy

by John Whitbourn

  Further away by the ruined breach the surviving men of the retinue were standing in skirmish order with apparently no enemy to worry them. And Hartley-Booth was standing at the base of the mound filling the breach. He waved his sword, yelling his approval of Tobias’ exploit.

  On top of the mound a nervous figure was signalling wildly with Hartley-Booth’s banner so as to call in the waiting Crusader infantry. Occasionally leveller snipers attempted to still him.

  Tobias felt a trifle calmer now. Sword ready, he skirted the gun and the corpses, gingerly advanced through the door and thus into a dingy hallway. There was a stair on his left and a few open doors gave glimpses of empty rooms.

  Time for a breathing space, he thought, returning to the original room. Already he could feel his normal calm returning. He noticed the taper still glowing in the dead hand of the gunner he had shot. He ground it out beneath his boot to ensure this particular heretical gun would remain silent.

  Somewhat limp, he stood still for a moment and observed the world through the hole in the wall. Suddenly he saw the faces of his companions register indecision and fright in turn, but could not see the cause of their alarm.

  Some of the Crusaders fired off hasty shots and then all turned and ran. They had barely covered twenty paces when the cause of their precipitous retreat came into Tobias’ line of view: Leveller pikemen, at the trot, in good formation and all of them uniformed in green, and fully equipped with pot and plate armour. There seemed to Tobias’ aghast eyes to be an endless stream of them. Obviously a full regiment of foot previously kept in reserve had been committed to this area. In the time it took to appreciate the fact, Father Oakley’s line of retreat was blocked by a solid phalanx of enemy soldiery.

  Quite rightly the much depleted force of Crusaders had realised that they stood next to no chance against such a superior force and every man had turned to save himself by returning over the wall. A few, slow-witted, were trodden down in the Levellers’ original rush. A couple more, unable to summon up a sufficient burst of speed, were despatched by pike thrusts to their unprotected backs. The rest scrambled up and over the mound in the breach and disappeared from Tobias’ knowledge. He recognised Hartley-Booth taking part in the ascent. At the top the old man paused, looked back at the enemy and was for a moment undecided. Cautious counsel seemed to prevail for at the last moment he turned to flee over the breach. At that instant God saw fit for a cannonball, presumably a Crusader one, to strike the Colonel and neatly remove his head. The divorced remainder of his body was flung like a stringy doll into the advancing enemy.

  Nothing daunted, the square of pikemen trotted on to the top of the breach a mere moment before the first wave of Crusader infantry reached the gap they had thought secured. Tobias heard the two forces mix in distant battle.

  He had been entirely absorbed in the spectacle of the Colonel’s demise but when his eyes turned to look for fresh diversion, several things immediately struck him as relevant to his predicament. Firstly the musketeers of the Levellers reserve regiment were following the dense phalanx of their pikemen. They were scattered around the area in loose formation looking for something useful to do. Before long some of them would notice the cannon emplacement and classify it in this category.

  These were the heretics’ doughtiest troops, men trained in secret in preparation for an uprising and, moreover, fully convinced of the dogmas for which they struggled. That such bodies of men existed and waited for their day was long known to the Church, which occasionally caught and made examples of a few. However the degree of strength and organisation of their present manifestation in Southern England shocked all observers.

  These regiments of disciplined troops must have been the fruit of innumerable dangerous and secretive gatherings in out-of-the-way places and ‘safe’ houses. They were the creations of pastors who obstinately refused to despair at the weary round of travelling, writing, organising, cajoling and suffering. Each soldier, each musket, each piece of armour was the product of near-infinite patience and endeavour. Each soldier killed was the irredeemable loss of a massive investment. How reluctant therefore the Levellers must have been at last when it came to committing their legions. Or perhaps not for they were, for the most part, fanatics. Or spiritual men who found it difficult to reckon things in terms of earthly values.

  The next thing Tobias noticed was that the cannon so obligingly loaded by its now deceased or departed crew was temptingly pointed at the plug of Leveller soldiers in the contested breach. He envisaged the poetic justice of discharging its load of grapeshot into their densely packed ranks. Hotly following this agreeable vision was the thought that he had put out the only means by which the cannon might be fired. He had little time for self-reproach or even the devising of a means to relight the taper, for the enemy were approaching.

  In many ways he felt that enough had been asked of him for one day and extreme discretion suddenly seemed an entirely proper course of action. He scurried out of the room and after a moment’s indecision proceeded up the stairway he had noticed a few moments before. Upstairs he found a door ajar and, seeing no one through the gap, he went into the room beyond.

  Obviously it was a bedroom but the occupant had failed to stamp their personality on the space, which suggested an austerity more likely born of poverty than taste. Tobias viewed it as a rotten place for his final stand. He closed the door and leant against it so that he might hear what transpired downstairs. For comfort he held his sword at the ready.

  At length he heard some disturbance below and a number of voices. He could catch the sense of only a few words:

  ‘… peace …’

  ‘… on …’

  ‘… no time or …’

  At one point he heard footsteps in the hall and what sounded like a single boot being planted on the stairs. After a while the footsteps receded, at which point he considered he could stop living from moment to moment and think properly. He failed miserably because he felt like a trapped rat.

  He went and sat on the bed. It was unexpectedly comfortable. Laying his sword close beside him, he reached for his pack and methodically reloaded his pistol. He wondered where his other one had got to; he had probably dropped it in the cannon room.

  The window which looked on to the street now called his attention. Sidling across the room, he peeped through from one side.

  Nothing much had changed. Levellers still held the breach and, as he watched, files of the regiment’s musketeers were being led back to reserve positions as the danger gradually passed. Some fighting continued by the wall but it was clear who had the upper hand. A heavily bearded musketeer was going through Colonel Hartley-Booth’s pockets. No valuable pickings there, thought Tobias; these people will be here the rest of the day. Now is as good a time as any to go.

  Before picking up his sword he placed a spell of silence upon himself for safety’s sake. Then rearming himself he edged open the door and stepped on to the landing.

  A surprise awaited him: at the base of the stairs was sitting a Leveller pikeman in the dark-green uniform of the regiment in the breach. He seemed fully absorbed for his head was in his hands and Tobias could detect no motion. Across his backplate was a splay of blood, presumably not his own. He seemed to have abandoned his helmets and weapons. Magically silent, Tobias slowly descended the stairs and delivered a death-blow with his sword.

  Which was a pity, for Tobias was in no danger whatsoever and at any other time would have found the young pikeman, seven years his junior, entertaining company. His victim’s membership of the Levellers sprang from a fundamentalist Christian belief which had been his joy and support since his very earliest years. His name was John Scott and he had tried to externalise his faith by joining the organisation which led to his demise, but what Scott had seen in the breach that day was not Christianity he had realised. And when he had impaled a man on a pike that afternoon, it became clear to him that his relationship with Christ, so essential for salvation, was at risk.

&
nbsp; So he had flung away his weapons, retired from the fray and sought out a quiet place in which to seek forgiveness for his culpable error and lack of love. Here Tobias had killed him.

  Stepping over the body, Tobias saw that the cannon room was empty once again but that the open space visible beyond its broken wall was still in enemy possession. It occurred to him that if all the Crusader attacks had met the same fate as the Colonel’s then he would be faced with the ironic task of trying to get out of Reading at any costs – as opposed to his wish of not so long ago. Looking around, he saw that the downstairs passage had a back as well as a front entrance and after a cautious exploration he found that the back door opened on to a jungle-like walled garden. Through here, he thought, he could make his escape. Retaining his sword in hand as reassurance, he forged a way through the massed vegetation and scaled the wall at the bottom of the garden. He became aware again of the active and nearby sounds of battle, though whether the noise originated from inside or outside the town he could not say. At least the issue was still being contested. Having landed in a similar if slightly better kept neighbouring garden, he drew his pistol from his belt and cocked it. Much of his old confidence was back and the noise of battle was cheering him. He booted open the door at the end of the garden path and strode into a hall leading to a street door as in the building he had just left. Passing through, he saw a large family gathered in their living room behind an improvised barricade of tables and chairs. They seemed to offer no resistance so Tobias merely scowled at them and left them even more frightened and perplexed than hitherto.

  He saw himself out and emerged into a street that was deserted save for a few corpses. He realised he must be only a road away from the site of the retinue’s defeat and so decided to head towards the other side of the town in search of friendly forces. It seemed bizarre to be an enemy soldier walking unhindered through a besieged town with only the occasional body and battle noise to remind him of his predicament. The unexpected respite meant he was relaxed when four obvious Levellers pelted round a corner and made straight for him. If anything they seemed more surprised than he. Tobias had ample time to rest his pistol across his straightened arm and take careful aim at one of the figures when it became apparent to him that none of them were armed and that they were shouting for quarter. Since four to one is not good odds even for a magician, Tobias was glad to hold fire and thereby intimate his willingness to accept their surrender. If need be, he could dispose of them later.

  The four stopped ten paces or so short of him. They looked all in. On closer inspection Tobias could see that two of them were women, or rather girls. One of whom had dropped leadenly to her knees and in an exhausted voice spoke again and again.

  ‘Recant … recant … recant.’

  The others by various signs showed that they, too, were not prepared to offer further resistance that day. Tobias wondered at their enthusiasm for capitulation but did not need to ponder long. Around the same corner came a mob of men howling madly, obviously Crusaders. Tobias should have felt a surge of hope or triumph, but he did not.

  His captives cast anxious looks at their pursuers and then placatory glances at Tobias. Obviously they had been in search of a sympathetic party to whom to surrender.

  ‘Please, Father … save … ’

  ‘Recant … recant … ’

  Some of the mob, perhaps a hundred men, came down the road towards them, the rest spreading out through the town. Those leading, a heterogeneous mix by the look of them, were a storming party of Central European volunteers and regular soldiers. They saw Tobias and greeted him with a ragged cheer. He could see no officers and so naturally took charge.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  A bland-looking musketeer undertook the rôle of spokesman. ‘Number five breach.’

  ‘How goes it?’

  ‘All finished by looks of it, we’re all over town.’ He looked at the prisoners. ‘The prince has sounded the no quarter and sack signals.’

  ‘I’ve come from Number four breach,’ Tobias explained. ‘There will be prolonged resistance there, I suspect, and at the town centre where the heretic reserves are. As acting officer I therefore temporarily suspend the sack signal. Pray consider yourselves under order once more and follow me.’

  ‘What about these?’ said a runtish man of Irish appearance, pointing to the captives with his sword.

  ‘Father please … please,’ said one.

  ‘No quarter as ordered,’ replied Tobias, ‘and that includes the wenches; time enough for fun later today.’

  While his order was enthusiastically enacted Tobias mustered his troops and proceeded forth, impelled by no great emotion, to avenge his fallen Colonel.

  CHAPTER 5

  In which our hero covers himself in glory and considers what to do next.

  As the later morning and then the afternoon drew on, Tobias found himself with no lack of employment. He had gathered several bands of exultant Crusaders together and led them to attack the unbroken Leveller regiment at his own, Number four, breach. Ironically enough, at one point he found himself struggling for possession, along with another five hundred men, of the very house he had hidden in a few hours earlier. At length and at cost they took it but it was not until the artillery pieces (including the Leveller cannon well known to Tobias) were brought up that the firm if diminished heretics were scattered. The cavalry pranced through the gaps in the ranks torn out by the cannons and, soon after, any effective resistance ceased.

  Father Oakley had the good fortune to be noticed at the van of one particular charge by a member of the prince’s personal staff who at this juncture dared to venture into the town. In this way Tobias’ part in the battle was officially noted – to the considerable benefit of his future career.

  Ignorant of this, Tobias waited until the green-coats were finally broken and then took leave of the officer in charge of this particular struggle. He was commended for his prompt action in rallying forces to a part of the field where battle was still in progress and reminded that the proper chain of command could be temporarily set aside in the absence of higher authority. Tobias thought that his rag-tag bands of Crusaders and the artillery he had had brought up could have done perfectly well without this booby and his troop of gentlemen cavalry and, moreover, he deserved the medal that this effete old fool would undoubtedly receive for the bloodbath. However he said nothing and took his leave in search of fresh diversion.

  Of the military sort there was little to be had. Tobias arrived in the centre of the town just in time to see the final collapse of the Leveller reserve regiments which, according to later historians, marked the end of the Battle of Reading. This was not quite the case, for individual houses and blocks full of die-hards continued to hold out to the early evening. However, the noise produced by their suppression was largely indistinguishable from the horrendous row of the town being put to the sack and Tobias saw no more fighting that day.

  Save for the few units involved in the mopping up and the prince’s regiment, who considered themselves above such things, the Crusaders were allowed to stand down and seek whatever entertainment most appealed to them. Like a Cinderella, Tobias had until about ten o’clock of that evening in which to do as he wanted. By that time his twenty-four-hour tower would have fallen completely and he would be assailed by a massive fatigue.

  Age and status had given him a degree of fastidiousness and so he did not think just in terms of personal enrichment or simple rutting like most of his compatriots. Instead he decided he would wander and observe some of his fellow men at play for his own amusement and experience. Then he would retire to his well-earned repose after, he thought, a highly worthwhile day.

  Such were his thoughts as he sat on a bench facing the town square. All around him corpses were piled and men driven half-mad by relief and the lack of restraint were rushing hither and thither. It had been a turbulent day for them all and Tobias found it easy to accept the temporary bedlam.

  It had also b
een a fine, hot day and even in the late afternoon, brassy sunshine continued to pour upon the town. Tobias considered the possibility of removing his heavy, buff coat, but found that he couldn’t be bothered. He sat there abstracted until the Cathedral clock at the other side of the square solemnly struck five. The Cathedral itself had been used as a barracks by the Levellers in order to show their lack of esteem for such grandiose pomp. When the tide turned against them, impelled by no other reason than desperation, they had used it as a citadel and in the process had caused even more destruction.

  However, some pious or practical soul had contrived to keep the great clock going and thus Tobias was reminded that it was time to go about his business.

  CHAPTER 6

  In which our hero assists a damsel in distress, removes her from danger and is thereby enriched.

  In the hours left to him before he needs must sleep, Tobias intended to look for experience and entertainment in that order. As a man of intelligence, education and some refinement, and with a whole city and its surviving inhabitants at his absolute disposal, he was amply able to satisfy his requirements. In material terms, by the time he was obliged to return to camp he was richer by the acquisition of a ruby necklace and two (pure gold, he suspected) ankle chains. Needless to say these were of little intrinsic use to him and he very soon disposed of them for a rather large sum to a Jew in London.

  However the means by which he came to own them was to prove a rich memory for a number of years to come and this he accounted the greater gain for he already had money sufficient for his needs. Otherwise, though, he often found his mind prey to a poverty which manufactured boredom; hence his lust for life of a sort.