Traitor's Field (45 page)
Authors: Robert Wilton
‘There!’ Shay shouted to no one and no purpose, and ‘Forward!’ and still Balfour was pushing them forward. Vyse had seen the chest, had seen it before he jumped, was pulling himself furiously towards it, and as Shay watched with face clamped teeth-tight in intensity one long pale hand reached for it – but too far. ‘Come on!’
Another man was reaching for the chest now, a clumsy stupid arm that clutched at it and slipped and pushed it away and lunged and clutched again; then Vyse had two hands on it and was trying to kick himself backwards in the water, but the flailing arm had slipped off the chest again and grabbed him by the shirt. Shay switched weapons between hands, braced his knees against the insides of the bow and found a precious moment of steadiness in his rigid right arm and fired. The face exploded black and away into the water, and Vyse was free and splashing his way back towards safety, kicking clumsily while clutching the chest to him. A hand clutched at his shoulder, at his shirt, and he writhed and tried to pull away, and then the boat prow was over them and Shay drove his sword into the face of the pursuer and reached down for pale spluttering Vyse. ‘Now away!’ and Balfour instantly reversed the pull of the oars, and the momentum checked and changed and gradually they began to back away from the mêlée. Vyse was hard against the side of the boat, coughing, with the chest in both hands, and Shay had him by the neck of his shirt, but there were two soldiers clutching at his back and legs; overreaching dangerously, Shay hacked at them both, the sword in his right hand again and swooping mad and vicious. The men fell away, blooded and screaming, and he checked again but there was a moment’s peace.
Over the bow, the shouting and the splashing and the drowning were receding into the darkness. There were figures on the wharf now, and shouts, and for a second Shay wondered about Manders. Then he bent again to Vyse, a hand under each shoulder, and hauled him bodily upwards out of the water until Vyse got one hand over the side and clutched tight.
Shay grappled the chest away from him, and Vyse got his other forearm wedged over the side. Shay turned to put down the chest, and as he did he saw at the other end of the boat a hand, then an arm and a shoulder and finally a head appearing over the stern.
Balfour saw it too, turned back for a moment to Shay, and then they both watched for one dumb moment as a soldier pulled himself over the stern and into the boat, to lie there spluttering and staring at them and instinctively reaching for sword or knife. Again Balfour looked over his shoulder, and his eyes widened: Shay’s face, inhuman and black, the words dropping ominous like drumbeats: ‘Kill him.’
And Thomas Balfour killed him. As the soldier flapped clumsily at the sides of the boat and tried to lever and kick himself up, Balfour had a knife from his belt and threw himself forwards. His right arm landed on the man’s shoulder and neck and drove him down uncomfortably into the stern, and his left hand pushed the knife into the man’s chest. Hasty and wide-eyed, Balfour pushed himself awkwardly up from the mass beneath him, and stared. He’d not heard the cry begin, but he heard it now, a high moan of agony and outrage, accompanied by a feeble flapping of hands towards the knife. He’d stabbed the man but the man wasn’t dead, the man was still moaning and flapping for the knife and now his eyes flickered open and gaped at Balfour pitiably and hurt. Gasping incoherent words, Balfour fell forwards onto him again, scrabbled the knife free and stabbed and stabbed, hacking through coat and shirt and cutting at the thin feeble meat of the chest. The face stared and twisted at him, tortured and stupid and surely, surely dead now. His hand clutched for the man’s face, stifling the moan and trying to cover the gazing sad eyes.
Revolted, futile, Balfour pushed himself up again and began trying to heave the man up by his armpits. Slumped like sacks in the boat, the man would not come. A shoulder – an arm – eventually Balfour had him by one leg and pulled the body up and against the side of the boat and then rolled it over the side into the Thames. He lay collapsed for a moment, chest crushed against the hard wood and face swaying over the water, aware that the body was still rolling and moving nearby. Then, as he watched balefully, it rolled upwards one last time and sank.
A hand grabbed his shoulder and wrenched him round and up, a pair of hands at his collar and Shay was shifting him back and down and he found himself on the bench. Legs wide and re-finding the balance, fists still clenched on the collar, Shay brought his face down close.
‘You don’t have to enjoy it. You don’t have to exult in it. But sometimes you have to do it.’ He released Balfour’s collar at last, and gave the slightest nod. ‘You did it. Now row. We must get away from here, and you must row.’
Behind him as he took the first heavy pull at the oars, Balfour could hear Vyse’s gasping breaths starting to ease. Shay stepped to the pale shivering figure slumped in the bow, took off his jacket and pressed it down over the torso. Then he pulled away and bent to check the small wooden chest that now sat innocuous in the bottom of this other boat.
Oliver Cromwell scowled at the page, and let it thump to the table in his hand. He picked up a second page and moved it over and on top of the first. The scanning of his eyes back and forth over it became an irritated shake of the head.
‘And I suppose, Master Thurloe’ – Cromwell’s heavy face staring up at him, no clue as to sympathy or irony, only the Lord’s justice waiting to be done – ‘you will have me denying this fiasco like the first.’
Thurloe took a breath. ‘We have no proof that the crown is not at the bottom of the Thames.’
Cromwell’s eyes widened a fraction. ‘These men, whoever they are: they may have that proof – and thereby power to shame us.’
‘Then they would only prove their guilt. None may use this story without revealing himself to us.’
Cromwell’s jowls chewed at this for a moment. Then he nodded heavily.
The big head came forward, the eyes hard on Thurloe. ‘Young man, I had you marked for a man of will. A man of resolve. A man ready for all the trials that God may send us.’
Thurloe waited.
‘Ready to prove himself against such outrages as these. To overcome.’ Still the implacable eyes.
Thurloe nodded slightly.
‘Well then.’
T
O
M
R
J. H.,
AT THE
S
IGN OF
THE
B
EAR
Sir,
I received with humble pleasure your last letter. I dare say that your willingness to look beyond the little divisions of present days is a fit commemoration of the broad-mindedness of Beaumont, who has brought us into contact in such sad circumstances. I may add that I am no strong adherent of any cause, and certainly not of the killing of good priests, and I think that such an event should cause us not to cower more cravenly between this or that wall of principle, but instead to begin to wonder whether we have not as a country lost something more important than both causes. We have not sage good hearts enough to waste them scatter-wise, and when we are so careless of men like Beaumont we should all I think pause a while and examine our causes and our consciences.
As you expected, there is little I can do to find a soldier knowing no more than his Christian name. If you could remember the Regiment in which he served – perhaps the name of his Colonel, or some identifying ribbon or device on the uniform or hat – I might have more success. There was a Colonel – Rainsborough was his name – who came from Colchester to Doncaster – could that have been the Regiment?
Or perhaps we may trace him from the other direction. Perhaps you will not wish to name your active friends in the Royal interest who are so enthusiastic for further strife, but perhaps you have heard the name of a man or men in the Army with whom they are in contact.
What do you do yourself in these days? I imagine these must be difficult times – as they are for all of our people, but I am not insensible to your difficulties, and I hope that partisanship does not stop me sympathising with the discomforts of a fellow man.
If you should ever choose to meet in person, at any time or place of mutual convenience, it would please me much. We might more easily identify your friend, and in any case a fresh conversation with a fresh mind would hearten me much. I sense that we share a belief in the common humanity of man, and I would be most glad to help you explore and come to terms with the world as it moves today, with all its errors and flaws.
[SS C/S/49/170]
What game do I play here?
Shay in shadow, fingers tapping on a letter, trying to conjure the spirit out of it.
A little agitation, yes. And my odd hunger for more of Pontefract.
Blackburn’s intriguing report of the death of Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, by raiders from Pontefract.
William Paulden has a plan, and William Paulden dies. Four men lead it, three go into the inn, just two bring out Rainsborough
.
George Astbury’s obsession. The soldier had come from Pontefract, on George’s last night at Astbury. Had the soldier brought with him the letter that George would have on his body?
George’s obsession becoming my own.
With bulldog persistence, Balfour had coaxed Manders and Vyse into a game of dice, and they were hunched over the table when Shay entered. Vyse stood immediately, glad of the chance to distance himself and somehow embarrassed.
But Shay said: ‘Balfour. Manders. I’ll have an errand for you, if you’d oblige me.’
There was the lurking sense that an errand for Mortimer Shay could involve anything from delivering a letter to assassinating Oliver Cromwell, but they could only nod.
Vyse was shaping to speak. ‘Sorry, lad. Fair hair. Too distinctive. Next time.’ And Shay was gone again.