Traitor's Field (54 page)
Authors: Robert Wilton
Since it is not idiotic loyalty, it is brilliant treachery.
Shay had two papers in front of him on the desk, two reports from Scotland. His eyes kept being distracted by the brightness of colour from the Astbury garden, shining its whites and yellows and weird vivid green through the window. Then he would drag them down to the desk again.
To the left, the report of Montrose’s utter defeat, written in a great house on the edge of the Highlands, of necessity more a castle than a home, an outpost of learning and relative civility in the wilderness.
To the right, a report written in the discreet solidity of an Edinburgh town house.
Sir,
I have this day been ill-received wherever I have called, and we may perhaps rejoice in the fact. Each of my visits has been met with the merest courtesy required of the host and no warmth besides, and to this cold fare sometimes has been added a pointed remark and once a veritable sermon. The infamous public letter from London lately circulating in the town has roused the taciturn Scots to a rare heat, of affronted pride and dignity and religious principle.
We may only speculate if this has contributed to the most recent adjustments of view among the leadership here. They have let go of some last more extreme demands, and sent to their representatives treating with His Majesty’s representatives in the Netherlands to conclude an arrangement as speedily as possible. Neither confirmation nor exact terms have yet been received here in Edinburgh, but I may declare with comfort that there will shortly be such an arrangement, and that accordingly His Majesty will once more have the political, financial and, we may thereby hope, military support of a substantial party in these islands.
W. J.
[SS C/S/50/64]
Again the colours glistened at him through the window, and again he dragged himself down to the affairs of the real world. There would be a King once more, in Scotland at least.
And once more we shall try our luck against Cromwell.
Anthony Ascham, Ambassador-designate of the Commonwealth of England to the Court of the Kings of Spain at Madrid, passed his last night, before formally presenting his credentials for that office, in an inn on the edge of the city.
The month-long journey had felt like a wild, adventurous interval between the dignified civilized pillars of London and Madrid. A rest day. A festival of misrule. A period in the wilderness to sharpen his faith. London, where they knew him as the bold theorist of the new regime – Ascham took another mouthful of the rich Spanish wine – the sober thinker. To Madrid – capital of perhaps the most cultured and powerful royal Court in Europe –
surely our very antithesis. And yet I have been sent, and tomorrow I will be accepted
– where he would be the austere diplomat.
And in the evenings we shall debate a little, I imagine. I shall learn Spanish.
The messenger arriving just an hour ago – such formalities, such obsequiousness.
I shall publish in Spanish. ‘On the friendship and advice of the Commonwealth of England, to His Majesty the King of Spain’. That would sound well.
The serving girl was hovering, and he brandished his goblet – a warm superior smile.
Two men with their backs to him, nearer the door. Once glanced towards him.
What must they think of me?
Between the two capitals of power and politics, the sea and the hundreds of rocky miles of northern Spain. The colours so sharp and strong: dark greens and browns and orange. One didn’t see orange like that in England. And so much rock, and scattered sparse across it in terrifying isolation the mountain taverns, straw and stink and hugger-mugger bedding, and those dark, raven-haired women. A wildness to the place and to the people. A danger. It seemed so very far from the green horse-churned fields of England, and London’s brilliant bustling.
He felt rather young again. Another mouthful of wine.
Not yet forty, after all. I could be back in London before I’m forty, with this fine appointment already a glorious success behind me.
Young because rather nervous. Young because the Spanish women seemed to watch him voraciously, to want to mother him and then possibly to swallow him whole.
It would surely be unseemly
. ‘
A Discourse on the effects of Absolutism on Public Morality’?
The door to some other room opened an inch, and an eye appeared in the gap. It seemed to stare at him for one dark moment, and then the door closed.
The Englishman in Spain. The official Englishman. Do women automatically find foreigners more interesting? ‘On the allure of the exotic’.
The serving girl was back beside him, a full scarlet skirt, a loose blouse, the suggestion of brown breasts free inside it, big dark eyes and that long, long hair. She reached the bottle towards him but, on a whim of dignity, Ascham held up his hand. She frowned a little, and her wrist dropped to the table with the bottle. He tried to pat it in avuncular fashion.
Enigmatic. Faintly austere. She will wonder.
Later, on the edge of a dream of bronzed glory and voluptuousness, a thundering of feet and a slam and black ghosts and a panicky stifling, and one half-real moment feeling the hand over his mouth and seeing metal flickering in the night above him, and then the cold burn of pain, and nothing.
Sir,
I judge Irelande largely lost to your purposes now. Cork has been surrenderd to the soldiers of Parliament, and as we lately hear they soon after defeated the Irish in the field close by. Now we learn that Clonmel, despite a valiant resistance, has likewise been given over to the invaders as its defence could no longer be sustained. Waterford holds, but only by the hardest and is like to fall at any hour. The Irish – those as are still ready to bear arms – have retreated into the hilly fastnesses of the west. There they will not be easy caught, but nor will they do Cromwell any harm. Clearest of all, the man himself thinks the business done, as we understand that he is leaving at last for England to resume duties there, bidding others to complete the conquest here. Proud of the discretion you gave me to judge my activities for myself, I believe that I will now be better used in England again, and in truth I shall not be sorry to leave this place, for it shall be like escaping from the pit itself.
T. M.
[SS C/S/50/71]
Shay only skimmed the report, with just a smile at the flash of Teach at the end. He had expected nothing more of Ireland. The compromise with the more Protestant Scots made the compromise with the Catholic Irish unsustainable, anyway.
Come on then, Teach. You and Ireland have served your turn; the game is now elsewhere.
Teach and the old hearts of the royal cause would begin to converge on Scotland now, to hope to be there to welcome the young King and seek his favour, perhaps to strap on a sword again. Shay’s road there would be longer: it would lead south to Oxfordshire, and east, to Norfolk, before it turned again northward.
Two weeks in the saddle?
His backside shifted instinctively on the oak chair.
I seem to have been riding to war these thirty years.
T
O
M
R
J. H.,
AT THE
S
IGN OF THE
B
EAR
Sir,
I was much heartened at your note about the incident at New Market, though saddened by your distraught circumstances, for I had feared some indiscretion or ill aspect of mine had deterred you. Truly the climate of bitterness around you must try your soul, and I likewise am troubled by the belligerence of those around me. Cromwell is much vexed at the thought of war, and at the hotheadedness of the pamphleteers who have brought it on, and at the posturing of Charles Stuart, but he is entirely determined to come to Scotland and defeat the Scots again if he needs to. The military plans and preparations are well in hand, and the General himself eager to be on the march. Is there no road by which men of the prudent middling sort might lead their sundered countrymen to safety again? Even our concerns about the Levellers do make men here more angry than cautious, and I must say that I am concerned indeed. It seems that Colonel Rainsborough or those around him had indeed at some time and in some way had some correspondence with Royalist elements, and at the same time that Levellers in the Government had communication from Royalists. Can you imagine who that might have been? For it seems fantastical to me, and leaves me grieving for the right balance of this distracted land.
[SS C/S/50/74]