Traitor's Field (13 page)

‘Mm. He mention Pontefract at all?’

‘Astbury? Might have done – siege still going on, people were thinking about it – but I don’t. . .’ He turned to Shay. ‘Yes. I do remember one comment. We were talking about it – there were fresh rumours – usual fatuous chatter; you know how it is. Came to old George, and he looked very thoughtful, and he just said, “There is sickness there.” That was the word: sickness. Sounded rather final.’

What was Astbury’s obsession?
The repeated references to the place; the last letter in his pocket. ‘Meaning disease, you think?’

‘That is what sickness means, Shay, yes. But I can’t speak for George Astbury. Ask him yourself, in the unlikely event you end up in the same billet. He seemed damned bleak about it, that I can say.’

Shay was silent. ‘I had rather gathered,’ Langdale went on, examining his folded hands and then peering hard at Shay, ‘that Astbury was starting to interest himself in intelligencing matters.’ Still silence. ‘That might explain his interest in the scouting, I mean to say. Same sort of business you always seemed to be dabbling in. Stuff you never talked about.’

Slowly, Shay produced a malevolent smile. ‘Quite,’ he said. Langdale’s face was sharp and hard and full of distaste.

The journey from Coventry to Nottingham was fifty miles, and the two Parliament men plodded most of them through a wet afternoon along muddy Derbyshire roads, cloaks hunched around shoulders and the few words lost to the wind. 

The region was still uncertain: angry hunted Scots were loose and lost and roaming wild, and little bitter deeds of Royalist violence could catch a man anywhere. So they had an escort: one fat levy, hardly the pick of the new Army, which told them what they needed to know of their own significance. The soldier trotted behind them, walked behind them, stood behind them, and had done all this for many days, and John Thurloe could not recall a single word from him in all that time.

They had found a good room in Kegworth, dried their clothes and eaten and slept well, and the fresh morning had shared their rejuvenation. They rode to Nottingham with the sun brightening their faces and the green of England around them, and the old castle gleamed across the landscape as they approached the city. Webster was kin to the castle’s Governor and wanted to pay his respects, and then they might find a good lunch somewhere, and for a few warm hours England seemed a place where a man could find life pleasant and even pleasurable.

Strangely, into Thurloe’s reverie of pleasantness kept striding the image of Sir Anthony Astbury’s daughter, as she had done intermittently over the previous weeks, proud and shaken and angry, hair awry and staring at him venomously.

As they approached the main gate of the castle they were overtaken by a messenger on horseback, brisk and businesslike and high in the saddle as his horse rattled over the drawbridge.

‘How did they take you, old ghost?’

Langdale’s face twisted into a scowl. ‘In an alehouse.’ He offered the words precisely, as a gift to Shay’s scorn.

Shay just nodded, and winced slightly at what Langdale’s mighty pride had been through.

Langdale shrugged. ‘It was clear they would take me that day or night. Better to go with a hot meal and dry boots.’

Another nod. The shared precepts of three decades. Shay said more softly, ‘I saw the field. Your men stood fast like gods.’

The old General just shook his head. ‘Even I would not have believed it of them. They were annihilated, and they would not run.’ Another shake of the head, back in the sunken miry lane, then he looked up. ‘Shay, I am right sick of it all.’

‘You’ve life yet.’

‘Perhaps so – for which I should thank you, I suppose.’

‘Me?’

‘I thought you came to rescue me.’

‘Not particularly. I just had that question.’

‘I see. I’m pleased to be of service, Shay; you know me.’

‘Indeed. Why? Would you like to be rescued?’

‘I ask favours of no man, Shay, least of all a pirate such as you.’

‘So I assumed. I also assumed that if you wanted to escape you’d have done so. Crumbling old ruin like this.’ His head was bent to the door again.

‘Quite. I have made preliminary work with two of my gaolers. One is a man of true and passionate belief, God save us all, and that’s always fertile ground. The other is healthily corruptible; young wife, too, he tells me, and that sounded promising. A couple more days’ conversation and I’ll come and go as I choose. But not much point until I’m rather surer of the ground outside. I don’t mind escaping, but I’m too old to run hither and yon to no purpose.’ Langdale pulled his cloak around him and settled comfortably. ‘You were wont to dress a little more showy, Shay. Why those drab black weeds today?’

T
O THE
G
OVERNOR OF
N
OTTINGHAM
C
ASTLE
C
OLONEL
J
OHN
H
UTCHINSON
, L
ORD
R
ADCLIFFE
F
ROM THE
C
OMMITTEE
OF
S
ECURITY
OF THE
P
ARLIAMENT OF
E
NGLAND
,
MET IN
L
ONDON
,
IN HARMONIOUS ASSOCIATION WITH THE
A
RMY
C
OUNCIL

[SS C/T/48/01]

‘Well, Langdale, this has been pleasant enough; but I’ve business elsewhere. I’ll bid you good day.’

‘Good day to you, Shay. My regards to Lady Margaret.’

‘Unless you want to come with me. . .?’

Langdale looked up. ‘Is that an invitation? A request?’

Shay shrugged. ‘If you like.’

‘Well, if you’re asking me. For fellowship’s sake, then.’ Langdale was up out of the chair with surprising speed, and heaving hurriedly at his palliasse. A loose stone pulled away, and he was pushing a book into his jacket, a knife into his belt and a ring onto one gnarled finger. Shay gestured him to stillness briefly in the doorway, and then they were out into the passage.

They moved cautiously, from safe point to safe point, corner to stairwell to shadow, and it took fifteen minutes to reach a section of passageway dominated by a large wardrobe. The wood was dark and crude, and starting to rot.

‘Here; give hand, Langdale.’ With two men at it, the wardrobe pulled away from the wall easily. In the shadow behind it Langdale saw dimly a darker shadow: a narrow opening in the stone, a gateway to some other world.

A soft sigh of understanding. ‘The Prince’s passage; I thought this was mere legend. This is how young Edward broke into the castle. And how you got in.’ The old General glanced at the man beside him. ‘The cupboard must have been a bit of a heave for your rotting body. How do you know these places, Shay?’

A dry smile in the gloom. ‘The little practical curiosities of history, Langdale. I collect them.’

Colonel John Hutchinson had no interest in being Governor of a crumbling wreck of a castle far from London, and no hesitation in demonstrating it. The long dark curls and the neck-cloth showed elegance, but the pale skin and the hard, indifferent eyes showed the more austere man within.

He accepted the greetings of his two visitors with no more than basic courtesy, and politely asked after the family of his kinsman Webster. He was clearly confident of his superiority as a Member of Parliament to these two mere clerks.

‘Tiresome up here, you understand me?’ Irritation and disdain in the voice. ‘I gave up my regiment because I had a greater duty in Parliament. But if I can’t be there, I’d rather be in the field with my men than acting the sentry here.’