Traitor's Field (57 page)

‘I agree, General.’

‘Well then. Colonels to me in one half-hour.’ Lambert grunted acknowledgement and stamped off into the rain. ‘Thurloe: you have a friend inside the walls?’

Thurloe nodded slightly. ‘A correspondent.’ 

‘I cannot find cracks in their barricades, but their alliance is loose enough. Can’t we play on that a little? Can’t the more reasonable men be helped to understand that we are not their enemy?’

T
O
M
R
J. H.,
AT
M
ACRAE’S IN
G
ALASHIELS

[SS C/S/50/104]

Sir Mortimer Shay in the kitchen: an iron-grey head among the hanging joints of meat, steam and the thick smell of stew gusting around him, the alehouse serving girl brushing past him and back and wondering at the games of men, an eye in a doorway watching the bustle beyond.

And what do you, Scoutmaster?

Like all good scouts, Francis Ruce was an elusive, insubstantial presence: hardly seen, hard to track. Shay had done two days’ scouting of his own – watching and casual enquiries and mental games on the map – and it had brought him to this alehouse kitchen five minutes before Scoutmaster Ruce had slipped into the alehouse and sat opposite another man. The other had scanned the room, then exchanged words with Ruce, and Ruce had dropped his hat on the bench between them and settled back in his chair.

Not good.
The scout should wait, the source visit.
Are you scout tonight or source, Mr Ruce?

The scouts were the eyes of the army in the field, the ears. Sharp eyes and ears meant timely readiness to face the enemy; they meant winning the race to the good ground; they meant a powerful line of march and a robust deployment. Dim eyes and dull ears meant surprise, weakness and vulnerability.

At Naseby in ’45 the royal cause had suffered badly. Some said it was the scouting. Francis Ruce had been Scoutmaster. At Preston in ’48, Cromwell had surprised the royal army by the unlikely expedient of staying north of the river.

It was natural for Ruce, as Scoutmaster, to come to such a place in such a manner. If he is to be a good scout, a scout must have his sources, to learn what he must of the enemy’s movements and condition. 

A scout who becomes himself a source, is the best possible source.

Are you scout tonight or source?

One of a dozen murmured conversations in the alehouse, Ruce and the other talked on, heads bent, eyes unmeeting, and Shay tried to read the currents of the exchange, to gauge where the power lay in a glance, an expression of watchfulness, a clenched hand.

‘A trumpet call for free Englishmen!’ Every head swung round, and Shay adjusted his glance a moment from the doorway. A young man was standing on a chair at the other end of the room, a paper clutched tight in two hands. Shay’s eyes, no threat seen, flicked back and tried to read the two faces. Had Ruce reacted more quickly?

A scout is naturally alert. A source is naturally uneasy.
The blade always has two edges.

After some initial jeers, friendly or indifferent, the young man pressed on defiantly, reading the pamphlet in a voice a little high and unmodulated, and his audience settled. Ruce and the other had returned to their murmuring, and Shay resumed his study of their expressions and postures, only half-hearing the occasional shouts of agreement from the crowd at the reading.

The reading ended, with cheerful jeers and applause and stamping, and then someone started on a ballad, and Ruce’s companion was standing. Was it imagined? The companion crushing something in his fist and pocketing it as he stood? A scrap of paper?
These are suspicions only. Scout or source? Without – there:
as he picked up his hat in his right hand, Ruce’s left hand went underneath it to support some heavier thing clutched in it.

Information is insubstantial; payment is substantial.

I think I have you, little man.

MERCURIUS FIDELIS

or

The hone
ſ
t truth written for every Engli
ſ
hman that cares to read it

From
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ONDAY
, J
ULY
25.
to
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ONDAY
, AU
GUST
1. 1650.