Traitor's Field (25 page)
Authors: Robert Wilton
The sun shone unseasonably warm as Shay rode into Doncaster, and it heartened the day. In its light, the skeletal trees seemed to huddle more ashamed of their nakedness.
At the gate to the city, two crossed pikes barring his way, Shay yawned and shifted his weight in the saddle, aware of the clearest paths of escape to left and right and continuing to watch the face of the sentry who scrutinized him. The man’s skin was terrible, a battleground of pockmarks and spots.
The sentry glanced up at Shay’s face again, and winced fractionally – not a man who enjoyed being looked at – then he waved his hand indifferently at the pikes. It was enough to move them, and Shay trotted forward into the city.
But then getting in might be easier than getting out, of course. It was a risk coming here: a fortified place, and a military headquarters. It all seemed relaxed enough, but there were people dying in the fight for besieged Pontefract not that many miles up the road, and that sharpened the atmosphere.
Pontefract was the last outpost of Royalist defiance in the country, and here in Doncaster was supposed to be the man who was his one channel of contact through to the garrison.
I have to see the ground
.
Sleepy streets. An innkeeper trying with a wavering pole to re-hang the carved effigy of a bear over his door. The site of the old St Nicholas hospital. A church. Shay kept his horse at a trudge as he came alongside the vicarage. A modest house, though it seemed well-kept. It also seemed to be closed up: the shutters were closed, at least, and there was no hint of light or life.
‘You wanting the vicar?’ A voice, from behind him. ‘Reverend Beaumont?’ He turned without apparent concern.
Not a sentry. A shopkeeper? Not smart enough. A jobbing craftsman?
Careful
. ‘I want a vicar. Don’t know his name, and don’t care.’
‘Reverend Beaumont,’ the man said, as if confirming that Beaumont was the Reverend that all right-thinking people should want. ‘You’ll not find him.’
‘Oh? Where—’ Shay had the uneasy sense of a joke that he wasn’t getting.
‘He’s up at Pontefract Castle. Swinging in the wind, he is!’ And the man opened his mouth in a delighted grin, as if his handful of rotten teeth were the real surprise. ‘They hanged him for he was slipping secrets to the Royalists inside.’
I need to be far from this conversation and this place, and fast
. ‘Oh, indeed?’ Shay seemed to consider the fact, as if pondering a decision by the late Reverend Beaumont to be hanged. Then he shrugged. ‘Should have minded his own business, I guess.’ And he nudged the horse into a walk, feeling the lively eyes following him as he went.
From half a mile off, lost among the trunks of a clump of trees, Shay watched the jagged yellow peaks of besieged Pontefract. The fortifications rose spindly and uneven from the countryside, the lower walls running around and down the slope and away, in odd extensions born of fashions and contingencies in the history of defensive war.
Nearer, Shay could see scattered flags and tents, detachments of s oldiers on chilly sentry duty, the occasional cluster of riders moving across the scene. The Parliamentary Army had wrapped Pontefract tight enough. There would be ways in and out – there were always ways, to be found in knowledge more local or more ancient than one’s own – but without being more certain he would not try to re-establish contact.
The letter – the last letter out of Pontefract to George Astbury, the letter that had been in his pocket at his death – was still in Shay’s own pocket. With the besieged town in front of him, he pulled it out again, unfolded it, reread the simple message.
Sir, as you will well know, Cromwell was last week before the town and did much plundr. He did not trouble us here in the castle. But the damage done neareby will further upset the local people. And the effect on supplies for winter may only be guesst. Cromwell departed the 11th. Our younger bloods do still enjoy their raiding sorties into the countryside for cattle and men to ransom. The garrison is better settld now since the agreeing of the Governing Council’s articles of war.
T. M.
[SS C/S/48/1]
An unremarkable message, and so it would seem if intercepted; nothing in here of use to the Parliamentarian besiegers. There might be a hidden message in it, but not one that Shay could see using the usual codes and cyphers.
What was in here for Astbury?
A short note, a smudged and worn paper.
What is in here for me?
The largest Royalist garrison yet defying Cromwell’s Army was cut off and alone. If they still sent out secret messages, those messages were not getting through. It was too dangerous to risk trying to pick up the thread: there was no knowing what the Reverend Beaumont had revealed before he died, no way of knowing what Parliament’s intelligencing men might now be able to read. Pontefract was deaf to him, and dumb.
Sir,
I regret to report that on the 9th March James, Duke of Hamilton was martyred under the executioner’s axe at Westminster, beside Lord Holland, and Lord Capel who defied for so long in Colchester.
The Duke faced his enemies with the same courage and dignity he had always shown – in defeat at Preston, in the flight thereafter, and in his confinement since – and his Creator with right grace and eagerness. Thus, he has followed his Royal master to the uttermost, and the similarities of their passing and their composure are the fittest compliment to his Grace that I can pay. I am relieved to report that his body rests in holy ground, and his soul no doubt in that better Kingdom.
At the last, I was able by privy means to secure the enclosed. Though his Grace could not escape this murderous clique, his name and his line will I trust endure and outlast them far. I beg you to give the enclosed to the new Duke, and with it a worthy report of the nobility with which his brother fought for our cause, and carried his honour untarnished to the death and beyond.
God save the King.
P. V.
[SS C/H/49/107]
The Hague: a plain reception room, cold walls and hard tiles and William Hamilton crouched over an excited terrier, stroking it roughly behind the ears. He looked up expectantly as the door opened, and then in surprise.
He stood, and waited for explanation.
‘Your Grace, I bring you the gravest news. I—’
‘What? I am no Gr—’ Then the face opened in sore outrage. ‘Oh, they havno’. No, they havno’.’
‘Your Grace—’
‘No. Ah, the foul, the foul cheating filthy – They havno’.’ The head writhed and rolled on the shoulders, as if the pain of the death itself had passed with the title. ‘My James – James, oh, you poor – No.’ The face back to the silent visitor, breaths coming uneven and harsh. A cry, a choke of distaste and revulsion, and the shoulders swung ready to push out of the cold cell of a room, and then stopped.
The visitor’s arm was stretched out steady, offering something in a precisely poised thumb and finger. Instinctively, Hamilton reached towards it. Then, strangely, his visitor had taken his hand and gripped one of the fingers, and now pushed a ring onto it.
William, Second Duke of Hamilton. ‘God save your Grace.’
Spring was tickling the extremities of the apple trees at Astbury House, and Rachel Astbury was walking among them trying to conjure dreams of romance or at least hope, when one of the maids came hurrying through the long grass with skirts held to knee.
Rachel saw her approach, and looked deliberately away again, trying to recapture the tree-scented suggestion of freshness in the air for one last moment. Then she turned to face the maid.
‘Please miss, there’s a man called here.’
‘A stranger?’
‘I don’t know him miss, certain. He says—’
‘You told him my father was away?’
‘Course, miss. He asked for the mistress. Is that you miss, Miss Mary being away?’
A moment of hesitation.
Can I disappear from this world?
A moment of fear.
I cannot face any more shadows from the trees.
Then pride. ‘Yes. Yes, of course it’s me. I’ll come at once.’
Is any man on earth safe to me now?
‘Joanna!’ Joanna turned back. ‘Make sure John is there with me.’
After the fresh glow of the garden the house was immediately gloomy and obscure. Between kitchen and hallway she found the outline of John waiting for her. The steward’s fading coat was reassuringly familiar.
But thin. We are frail vulnerable people here
.
He led the way into the hall.
The shoulders that she found when John stepped aside were not frail. In the pale grey light of the hall, the back of the visitor seemed larger and darker than everything around it. As he turned to the footsteps, the effect was not diminished: a strong chest, dark hard-wearing clothes –
there is no spring in this man
– and a heavy-featured face.
The face saw her, seemed to smile on an instinct, and gave a little bow. The eyes didn’t drop with the head, but kept watching her.
‘Miss. . . Rachel, I think.’
A hard hulk of darkness in the hallway, and she knew him with a little gasp.
‘You’re the – the man in the storm.’
He frowned, and seemed to consider this. Then he chuckled deeply; it was like water coughing in a pipe. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think I am that. But some people call me Mortimer Shay.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course. Sir Mortimer.’ She bobbed the suggestion of a curtsey. She didn’t take her eyes off him, either. ‘You’re. . . welcome here, sir.’
He ran a heavy hand through thick grey hair. ‘I suspect that I am not, Rachel. Your father does not, I think, cherish my presence here. A prudent man, your father.’
Some instinct of irritation at the condescensions of the older, of men. ‘He is not at home. I shall decide whom I welcome.’ She affected a moment’s consideration. ‘You are welcome here, until my father should decide otherwise.’
A smile spread broad over his face, and there was new interest in his eyes.
He wasn’t just looking at her, but examining her too. Periodically his eyes would sweep slowly down her, over the exposed bust with her breasts pushing above the bodice, over her stomach, down to where her thighs moved against her dress and then her hem brushing the floor, and back up again. She took in a quick, uneasy breath, held her head higher.