A Crowning Mercy (30 page)

April, apart from Atheldene's raid, was a good month. The rain was soft, the land green and the air was warming. Campion taught herself to ride side-saddle, though Colonel Washington refused to allow her out of sight of the castle, insisting that officers escort her, and she explored the lower valley or rode on to the nearer hills where the lambs were already growing fat. There were days when the sky was almost clear, when only a few white clouds were piled high in the blue and a fresh breeze promised to clear them away and bring her the seamless blue sky of which she dreamed. The river of her life was keeping her in this calm pool, like the one in which she had swum at Werlatton, where Toby had watched her through the rushes, and sometimes she would think of that and laugh. Sometimes she would look at the seal about her neck, a jewel now so familiar that she often forgot that it was also a mystery. When the war was over, Lady Margaret said, when the King returned in triumph to London and Sir Grenville Cony was among the defeated, then, and only then, Lady Margaret said, would they force the secret from him.

The end of the war seemed a long way off. The Scots were stirring in the north, turning the King's eyes from London and Campion accepted that she must wait for the unravelling of the seal's meaning.

Then, as a quiet stream can be disturbed by the melting of winter's snows, by a torrent of cold, harsh water that floods the banks, scours the pools and muddies the tranquillity, so the war came with appalling suddenness.

It was presaged, on 20 April, the day before Easter, by a great clatter of hooves in the castle yard, by shouts, and by boots echoing on the stairs of the New House. The long gallery door was flung open.

Campion and Lady Margaret turned. A tall figure stood in the doorway, a figure in leather and armour. Campion spoke first. 'Toby!'

There would be no doctors, midwives and lawyer in Oxford. There would be no marriage for the moment. The King had dissolved his parliament and his army had gone to face the Scots, but that was not the news that had brought Sir George and Toby hastening back to Dorset. Parliament, the London Parliament, had decreed that the great food-bearing counties were to be scoured of Royalists, that London must be supplied with wheat this year, with beef, mutton, fruit and ale, and they had sent orders for their armies to concentrate and clear the west. One of the spies who swarmed on either side had sent word to the King, and his news was hard on Sir George. Lazen Castle was to be taken, the siege to begin at Easter, and Sir George and Toby had ridden desperately, bringing what reinforcements they could, so they could reach the castle before their enemies closed the ring.

Sir George had followed Toby into the gallery, Colonel Washington coming after. Lady Margaret stood, dominating the room. 'Campion, you must go!'

'No!'

'Yes! George! She can stay with Tallis in Oxford?'

Sir George nodded. 'She can. She might be safer even further away.'

Campion shook her head. 'No!'

'You'll not be going anywhere, Miss Campion.' Colonel Washington was looking through one of the wide windows. His face was grim. 'Those laddies moved fast. Damned lobsters, if you'll excuse me, your Ladyship.'

The villagers were streaming from Lazen, hurrying towards the castle, while beyond them, beyond the mill and the cottages, Campion saw the Roundhead troopers in Lazen's fields. Lobsters, horsemen whose jointed armour, curiously resembling a lobster's shell, covered their bodies, thighs and arms, followed their standard-bearer on the far side of Lazen's stream. Sir George frowned at Colonel Washington.

'You didn't know they were close?'

'I did not, Sir George. I've patrolled each day, but my belief is they've come from the forest land to the south. You could hide an army in there.'

'From Werlatton?' Campion asked.

'That direction, Miss Campion.' Washington smiled. He was a small man, yet now he seemed to grow in stature and confidence. He walked to the fireplace and stood beneath the proud, naked Diana. 'They'll find us a tougher nut to crack than they think. The lads are shaped well.' He spoke of the tenants and labourers of Lazen who had been drilled with musket and pike, swelling the garrison to a formidable size. 'Aye. I think we can make them regret their temerity.'

'We'll make them regret more than that.' Lady Margaret stared with hatred at the growing mass of Parliamentary troops. 'You'll excuse me, Colonel.' She pushed open a window and shouted one word across the moat, startling two sentries. 'Bastards!'

'Margaret!' Sir George sounded shocked.

Colonel Washington smiled, one finger brushing at his moustache. 'I think they'll be surprised. We'll see the back of them by the end of May!'

Toby moved to Campion's side, his eyes gentle on her nervousness. 'You heard the Colonel, my love. They'll be gone by the end of May.'

She held his arm, feeling the leather stiff and cold beneath her right hand. With her left she touched the seal and wondered if it was this talisman of gold that had brought the armoured men to Lazen.

War had come to Lazen. Her enemies had come. They were surrounding her, threatening her, and she sensed, even as she listened to the garrison preparing their defence, that the river of her days was gathering her again, plucking her from the calm waters and carrying her to unknown land. She held Toby's arm as if it was her anchor.

Lazen Castle was under siege.

16

The Roundheads were not gone by the end of May, but nor did they seem any nearer to capturing the castle. Their efforts, even to Campion's untutored eye, seemed amateur and ineffective.

The enemy concentrated their siege works to the north, building a great battery of earth and timber in which their main guns were placed and from which, one morning, they had opened fire with a guttural thunder that startled the rooks and sent them flapping and cawing in alarm. The round shot, that seemed to crash horrendously against the north wall, did remarkably little damage. Colonel Washington was far more concerned by the enemy's mortar, a gun he described to Campion as a 'vicious cooking pot', which threw its missiles high into the air to crash down within the defences. The mortar claimed the first victim in Lazen, crushing the skull of a kitchen-maid within the scullery. Colonel Washington sent a letter to the enemy, carried out of the castle under a flag of truce, that mockingly congratulated them on the death of the maid. He told them of the hour of her funeral and requested a cessation of the guns during the service. The truce was observed and the Roundhead guns did not fire again that day.

The Roundheads were either camped to the north or else living in the deserted houses of the village, though their guardposts and patrols encircled the whole castle. They outnumbered the garrison by at least three to one, but it seemed to Campion that Colonel Washington treated his enemies with contempt, not caring about the odds. In the first week of May he led a sally against the main battery, his men debouching from the new walls by the gatehouse at dusk, charging the guns and throwing themselves into the Parliamentary works. Campion watched with Lady Margaret from the keep and she saw the Lazender banner planted on the enemy battery, heard the cheer of the Royalists, and even, clear in the twilight, the hammering as Washington's men drove nails into the touch-holes of the enemy cannon. She saw the sparkle of musket fire in the falling darkness, watched the spread of smoke like winter fog, and listened to the war shout of the castle's defenders: 'King Charles! King Charles!'

'Back! Back!' Colonel Washington, mounted on his horse, waved at his men. A last musket volley splintered light towards the enemy who tried to counter-attack, and then the Royalists were leaping over the remains of the timber palisade that they had pulled down and were streaming back towards the castle. Campion could see Toby, his sword drawn, shepherding his own men away from the battery, and then it seemed that the whole northern sky was filled with sheet lightning, a great spread of red flame that lit the horizon, boiled smoke over the battery, and was followed, seconds later, by the huge thunder of the enemy's powder magazine exploding. 'King Charles! King Charles!'

The enemy did not fire their guns again for ten days, their battery was rebuilt further back, and in the meantime they suffered a further reverse, this entirely of their own making. The moat at Lazen was fed by a spring that rose north-east of the castle, and the enemy dammed the spring despite the fire from the sakers that Colonel Washington poured among the labouring soldiers who shovelled earth and carried stones to divert the water. Their success seemed to presage a Parliamentary victory, for the water sank swiftly in the next three days. The moat drained at the south-western corner and, by the fourth day, the northern branch of the moat that was normally thick with lily pads was nothing more than a ditch of stinking slime. It was still a formidable obstacle, but the thick mud would dry and Colonel Washington was forced to take defenders from the northern and western walls to guard the moat-banks. On the fifth day the fish in the main stretch of moat were flapping frantically, their water reduced to a shallow strip in the centre of the littered mud, and that night the defenders dug pits in the lawn from which they could fire at an attack across the drained moat.

Yet the water, diverted from its normal course, had seeped into the low ground at the foot of the northern hills where the enemy were building their new battery. Their own earthworks became waterlogged, the mortar sank through its plank base into sodden slime and the ready powder was ruined by damp. The new battery was a quagmire, useless for guns, and in desperation Lord Atheldene ordered the dam removed so that the water again flowed fast and clear through its underground conduit to the moat. The fish were freed from their shrinking death, the defenders breathed relief, and the ditch of slime was again filled with fresh water.

Lord Atheldene was a courteous opponent. Informed by Colonel Washington that the women and children of the castle were concentrated in the New House, he ordered his gunners to avoid it. A second battery, with just two guns, had been placed to the south, firing over the water meadows from the edge of the village, and, denied the New House as a target, they concentrated on the stable-yard. Horses were wounded and had to be put out of their misery. For two days the stench of blood hung about Lazen.

The northern guns eventually broke down the old wall that connected the keep to the Old House and, two nights later, the Roundheads attacked the breach. Their shouts startled the air just before dawn, and Campion awoke to hear the sakers and murderers coughing their death. She pulled a robe over her nightgown and ran to the Old House to watch. Smoke shrouded the buildings and the kitchen garden into which the enemy came. She dimly saw the flash of swords and pike blades, listened to the cheers of the enemy as they swarmed through the breach, and then she understood why Colonel Washington had not been worried. He had expected the attack, wanted it even, because the enemy was now trapped in the walled enclosure of the garden. The defenders, receiving the signal they had waited for, attacked from the keep and the old kitchens. For the first time, Campion heard the clatter of pikemen fighting pikemen, and in the first grey light of dawn she saw the huge spiked poles being carried forward against the enemy. The cheers of triumph turned to alarm, to screams, and she bit her lip as she watched the leather-jacketed defenders going grimly forward, pikes levelled, their wickedly long spikes already reddened by blood. Muskets sparked, making a continuous crackling, and then the Roundheads were pushed back and scrambling for safety. Campion saw the prisoners being taken, some horribly wounded, and she breathed relief. She was safe again.

The wounded were treated in the New House and Campion became used to the horrid mutilations, to helping the doctor amputate legs or arms, to sitting beside the dying as they tried to endure the pain bravely. She sat with defenders who died, with the captured enemy, and she would read psalms to the Puritans and pray with them in the cruel, small hours when dawn seemed an eternity away.

The fighting was not constant. Some days seemed calm, punctuated only by fitful gunfire, and there were constant courtesies in the middle of battle. Prisoners were exchanged, the wounded restored to their comrades, and Lord Atheldene sent weekly news to Sir George and Lady Margaret. The news-sheets were all Parliamentarian, and thus unlikely to print news that might cheer the defenders, but Sir George was ready to believe much of what they said. They spoke of the King being harried in the north, of the Scots coming slowly south, and they trumpeted the tidings when an isolated house or castle, much like Lazen, was taken by the rebel forces. Yet not even the Parliamentary news-sheets could demonstrate a pattern of victory. The war seemed hesitant, patchy, and neither side had won the great victory that could tip the balance. Lord Atheldene sent more than news. Once he sent a great ham studded with cloves, a barrel of wine and a letter regretting that he should be fighting old friends and neighbours. He offered safe conduct to the women trapped in Lazen, even suggesting that Lady Margaret and her retinue would be welcomed by his own wife, but Lady Margaret refused the offer. 'This is my house. I have no intention of going to Harry's house. It's draughty and there are young children screaming everywhere.' She had already composed her epitaph to be carved on a plaque to be erected in Lazen's shot-battered church. 'She Dyed in the Defence of Her Owne House, Foullie Besieged bye Traitors.' She looked at Campion. 'You must leave, child.'

Campion shook her head. 'Not without you, Lady Margaret.'

Campion's fear of her enemies had grown less. So long as Lord Atheldene commanded the besiegers, she did not fear. He was a man, as Sir George said, of honour and decency who would ensure that the women of Lazen Castle would be spared the horrors of war. Even when Samuel Scammell joined the enemy. Campion being made aware of his presence by a wounded prisoner, she did not fear. Scammell could have no power over Lord Atheldene.