Traitor's Field (71 page)

Thurloe looked at Thomas Scot, excited and apprehensive, at Cromwell, granite, and at the sheaf clenched in Scot’s hand.
Another sortie of papers. Another set of pages come to offer us truths.

Cromwell, knowing that the uncomfortable world of waiting, of speculations, of reports, was again being superseded by his world of battle, was unexcited. ‘There it is, gentlemen. The fox has broken cover. We must pray that God make our hounds keen.’

Fortified Stirling, defiant on its crag, had been a place of defence for a millennium, the iron buckle on the waist of Scotland. Now the Scottish army was streaming south from the town, through the cockpit of their history, across its bones.

The army is a whole society on the move, a whole economy: smiths and armourers and soldiers; foragers and butchers and cooks; pickpockets and royal accountants; whores and priests; a King. This little civilization moves at the pace of its slowest: the gorgeous coats poised on the warhorses must circle and wait, buzz out and back, to the trudge of the broken-soled pikeman and the women-of-all-trades with the wagons.

There were some Englishmen in the army, mostly in the gorgeous coats, and they rode impatient – wondering at strategy and Court politics, perhaps anxious to be away from the bogs and ditches where Wallace and the Bruce had humiliated their ancestors. They couldn’t leave Scotland fast enough, and they couldn’t leave the trudging rascally Scottish foot-soldiers, their foul grating grumbling accents and their stink, at all. The Scots tramped steadily in the herd, pennies in their pockets and something to do at last. England was rich, wasn’t it? Plump cattle and plump girls; rich houses to liberate. These were the calculations of men, and the instincts of boys on a spree, and something tugging in blood that had been foraging southward since before time.

A summer evening, a few miles south of Carlisle, and Shay caught up with the rearguard of the royal army. He was supposed to press on, to get through the army; he needed to be thrusting ahead, to be off on some task which he could not immediately define. So at least some grim insistence inside was telling him, thudding stubborn through his weariness.

But it was so pleasant to fall in for a moment with the last riders of the rearguard, with the flat rays of the falling sun warming the yellow fields and sparkling the helmets and sword-points and bronzing the faces, to match pace with the gentle bounce of the uniforms and the rattle of their bridles. For a moment the world was peaceful and companionable, and Shay breathed in the landscape and listened to the quiet chat of the men. In that aching moment he was young and callow once more, and craving the assurance and competence of those beside him. In the moment his dreams were fresh again, unbloodied and still to be pursued.

Dry boots, fresh clothes thick and warm, belts and weapons and saddle comfortable, the promise of supper, the casual banter of good men, the gentle drumbeat of hooves on solid ground, the private pleasure of moving in rhythm with others, the soft light, the scent of some deep rightness coming off the fields and hedges.

The soldier trotting next to him –
a boy; really just a boy
– glanced cautiously over and mumbled his respects. Shay felt the heaviness of his age, tried to contrive some gruff pleasantry in return, and then heard the dull snap of a musket shot from somewhere behind and a clang as it hit a backplate and then wild shouts and hooves and on an instinct he’d kicked his horse into the gallop and was lurching forward; the boy had hesitated, wanting to look before he decided –
there is never time to decide
– and Shay tried to slap at the boy’s horse as he passed to get it moving: ‘Ride!’

Careering forward, the all-absorbing thunder of hooves and billowing dust, and Shay was snatching for opportunities and avenues of escape, but there was none through the hedges on either side, and now he risked a glance over his shoulder –
what is the threat? What is the opportunity?
– a detachment of Cromwell’s English horsemen – were they dropping back now? – perhaps less than a dozen, but impossible to tell through the chaos of dust and his shuddering vision. Then into the vision lurched the boy, slowing dramatically and shrinking away from Shay on a horse that bucked and spun and the boy was teetering and scrabbling and falling backwards into the road. 

Shay heaved at his reins and pulled viciously at his horse’s neck and the beast veered under him and he felt his stomach plunging away and then he was lashing the horse into the charge. Forty yards off the boy was staggering to his feet, grappling clumsy for his horse, thirty yards off, but the horse was shying and skittering and there were two English horsemen looming beyond him. Twenty yards and the first horseman was on the boy with a wild windmill stroke of his sabre and the boy was staggering aside; ten yards and Shay’s pistol was up and he fired and the rider disappeared backwards into the dust. Shay yanked hard on the reins again, pulling his horse around to protect the boy on the ground and colliding broadside with the second English rider. Confusion, Shay trying to punch the man off-balance backhanded while reaching for his sword, and the rider was pulling away, but then Shay’s horse had shied and reared and he was slipping off it as best he could into the dust.

All sense was useless, the world a swirl of noise and dirt, and Shay was jumping between instincts: scrabbling for his sword, peering fierce through the dust for the enemy, trying to work out where the boy was. Through the haze he saw the English rider, a few yards off and pulling his horse around and coming back to the attack, and Shay had forgotten – what had happened to his sword? – then he tripped over the boy.

He pulled himself up onto his knees, sensed the dark onrush of the cavalryman, and tried to pull the boy up with him; but the boy was slumped and hard to grasp and the cavalryman was a vast shadow exploding over them and Shay could only try to shield the boy with his torso, then a fierce cry from behind and thunder and Shay dropped flat on the boy and over them both vaulted a miraculous second horse, a soaring arc of muscles and hooves through Shay’s bewildered vision, and the attacking cavalryman slowed and hesitated and was transfixed by a rigid sword that exploded out of his back.

Silence.

No more of Cromwell’s cavalry. The dust settling, and through it the world solidifying once more. 

Shay pulled himself to his knees again, and checked the boy. Their rescuer trotted back, and dropped quickly to the ground; one of their companions from the rearguard. ‘That was the bravest thing, sir,’ he said. A quiet voice, unemotional; a large fit man, perhaps thirty. ‘Coming back for the boy.’

Shay grunted. ‘Yours was just as good a deed, lad. And more successful.’ He glanced down at the boy in the dust, a young glare of shock and a vicious dirty crimson rip across the chest, then up, and shook his head.

The other man winced in frustration, and then his face evened again. Together they dragged the boy’s body out of the road, and collected the three horses. There was no hedge here: scattered trees, and then uneven moorland spreading away, as much as they could see of it in the dying evening.

The horses tied, the boy covered, the two men dropped to the ground.

Shay thrust out his hand. ‘Thank you. I’m very much obliged to you.’

The young man shook hands. ‘Austwick, sir. Allen Austwick.’
Austwick?
‘Captain.’

‘Shay.’ Shay was still scrabbling at the surprise.
Austwick? 

‘I know who you are, sir. Well – we weren’t sure of the name. The Ghost, that’s what the men call you.’

‘They do, do they?’ Momentarily, Shay felt his vanity warming pleasantly.

Of all the men to find in a ditch in a skirmish: Austwick indeed.

‘No one sees you come, no one sees you go. You’re with the army, then you’re not, then you’re back. Murmuring in the Duke’s ear. With the men around the King. You’re listened to. Soldiers have an instinct for these things.’ He caught himself. ‘If that doesn’t seem fanciful.’

Shay shook his head. ‘I’ve lived among soldiers these thirty years. I have great respect for their instincts.’ He looked around them in the gloom. ‘Austwick, you said? We’re better off here for the night, I fancy.’

‘Agreed, sir. Good a spot as any.’

‘Road’s not as safe as it might be.’

‘Agreed, sir.’

In the last of the light they found comfortable places for themselves among the easy undulations of the earth, and Shay glanced with approval at Austwick setting his sword close beside where he’d lie and checking his pistol while he could see. Darkness closed the world over them.

‘Austwick. If you’ve no better distraction to suggest, I’d like to ask you for the tale of Doncaster, and the Leveller Colonel.’

Silence.

‘I know you were there. I have a. . . professional interest in the matter. I’ve had the tale from Teach, and from the lad Blackburn before he died.’

Silence, as if Austwick had disappeared in the darkness.

Then: ‘You spoke to Michael Blackburn?’

‘I helped him and Morrice away. Not far enough away, unfortunately. I know how the sortie ran. I know that William Paulden planned it; he that died just after. I know that Thomas Paulden and Teach and you and Blackburn were close in it. It. . . helps if I see it from different perspectives.’

Again the darkness swallowed the last of his words, and gave nothing back. Teach had described Austwick as a commanding presence in the operation; this was a different man now. ‘William Paulden was scouting around the town, yes? His brother, Captain Thomas, went off to the north gate. You and Teach and Blackburn got into Rainsborough’s lodging by pretending to have a message.’

A grunt from the night, the quiet suggestion of a chuckle. Then, ‘A simple trick, I guess, but they’d no reason to suspect.’

Shay’s third hearing of the death of Colonel Thomas Rainsborough was in a Cumbria ditch, settling himself against a shoulder of earth and grass and listening to a disembodied voice in the night.

‘Blackburn looked after the horses, I think.’

‘Right. I went with Teach after the Colonel’s Lieutenant. He’d let us in, swallowed our story. He took us up to Rainsborough’s room.’

‘The Lieutenant was up already?’

‘I guess you know an Adjutant’s job, sir. All the papers and logistics. First awake, last to bed. He was pretty distracted from the start – barely checked our papers – mind elsewhere, yes? I was proper wound up, sir, but I suppose visitors with a message was just routine business to him.’ 

‘Mm. And Rainsborough?’

‘His Lieutenant woke him, and he was out of his room half-dressed. We had sword and pistol on the two of them and pushed them down into the street.’

Just two men to bring down two men.
‘You took a hell of a chance.’

‘Maybe so. But they’d never have believed we were just messengers if we’d come with a platoon. And men will do what they’re told if they’re half-awake and well-threatened.’

‘That changed in the street, though.’

‘Chaos.’ The darkness emptied again. Then: ‘What we had in the roadway not half an hour back; like that.’

Shay grunted. He felt himself getting drowsy. A warm night; the ground soft. ‘Try to see the individual actions. Who moved? Who spoke?’

‘Mr Shay. . .’

‘Tell me. Who was first in the street?’

‘Me. Well, Blackburn led the horses forward and then came back to help. I went out; Teach and Blackburn were pushing Rainsborough and his man after. I mounted. Captain William Paulden coming up. Then Rainsborough muttered something, then—’

‘What?’

‘Cursing us. Whores – no, pimps. Pimps, and snakes. And cowards. And he used a strange phrase: working – no, festering in the innards – maybe it was guts – intestines, maybe – festering in the intestines of Satan.’

‘Charming.’

‘Then Rainsborough’s Lieutenant was cursing us too, by St Nicholas and St James and everyone else, and it had all fallen apart. Rainsborough was in a fury by now, and Teach saw him reaching for a weapon or lunging and shouted a warning and then Blackburn was among them and it was a proper scramble. Rainsborough cursing again, and then somehow everyone was armed. I think maybe Blackburn had stumbled and dropped his weapons, or they were snatched. Rainsborough had a blade – he may even have grabbed it from one of the saddles. The Lieutenant had a pistol and that went off, but in the confusion he hit Rainsborough, and then Teach finished the Lieutenant with his sword and Rainsborough was still waving his blade around, even though he was already mortally wounded, and I swung at him once or twice – maybe Mr Paulden – and between the two of us that did for him.’