Traitor's Field (72 page)
Authors: Robert Wilton
The scene shrank away into the darkness, and Shay could hear Austwick breathing.
‘I think it was like that. Hard to be sure.’
‘Doesn’t normally matter how a man dies, does it? Thank you for indulging my curiosity.’
‘I understand, sir. To—’ He caught himself. Shay frowned; waited. ‘To be honest, I knew there was some other business behind it.’
Careful
. ‘Right. What. . . what exactly had you learned?’
Austwick was shifting his weight, and Shay heard it in leather and grass. ‘Well, naturally, the details of the skirmish would hardly matter. And the whole attack was a bit of bravado, I guess. But. . . I’m sure I wasn’t listening when I shouldn’t, sir, but I just overheard.’ Shay was holding himself absolutely still. ‘Captain William Paulden and Mr Teach – something about getting someone out – not a kidnap but a rescue.’
A rescue?
Austwick had stopped.
‘Right. The rescue.’
Who on earth needed to be rescued?
‘Nothing else? It’s not a crime, Captain – very natural – not as if there can be any doubt of your loyalty – but I like to be sure who knows what.’
‘Of course, sir. Thank you. That was all. Someone to be rescued from Doncaster. They were looking out for this person during the raid. That was all.’
Shay waited, burning with frustration for the story he never seemed to hear: a sun that never emerged from scudding clouds; a glimpsed woman who never turned to face him. Austwick had disappeared into the silence again.
MERCURIUS FIDELIS
or
The hone
ſ
t truth written for every Engli
ſ
hman that cares to read it
From
Monday, July 28.
to
Monday, Aagust 4. 1651.
aving
ſ
o precipitately and cau
ſ
ele
ſ
ſ
ly invaded yet more of SCOTLAND, laying wa
ſ
te to the fertile plains of FIFE, the marauders of PARLIAMENT have paid the price due for reckle
ſ
ſ
ne
ſ
s and SIN. Even as the
ſ
avage band moved north,
ſ
o HIS MAJESTY KING CHARLES
ſ
hrewdly has led his Army of LOYALISTS
ſ
outh, and the rebels have been left holding the bag. CROMWELL continues his depredations, having now captured the fair town of PERTH, of which we wait to hear whether it has
ſ
uffered the
ſ
ame HORRORS as
ſ
o many bore in poor IRELAND. Only this may we hope, that having been
ſ
o
ſ
hamefully mi
ſ
led, he will not
ſ
pend more time in exerci
ſ
ing his humiliation on more innocents.
Meantime HIS MAJESTY continues his
ſ
erene progre
ſ
s into the BOSOM of his own country, and the TRAITORS do lay down their weapons. Every VILLAGE and TOWN he enters does welcome him with prayers of thanks and REJOICING, for HIS MAJESTY’S manner and bearing are so comely and his people know that they are delivered at la
ſ
t.
So does the LORD GOD reveal his mercy and boundle
ſ
s kindne
ſ
s to tho
ſ
e who tru
ſ
t in HIM.
Recollect, among the de
ſ
erved HYMNS of joy, the TERRORS that have been inflicted by the illegitimate and
ſ
avage CLIQUE that have
ſ
et loo
ſ
e their dogs, and that have been
ſ
uffered by
ſ
o many diver
ſ
e PEOPLE in this
ſ
ore-tried land. In your prayers remember poor COLCHESTER and PONTEFRACT, and the many primitive villages of SCOTLAND and IRELAND that grieve yet. So too remember the MARTYRS
ſ
o foully and lawle
ſ
ſ
ly MURDERED in tho
ſ
e places, and remember every VILLAGE in ENGLAND your
ſ
ons who are lo
ſ
t. Even as we pray, we doubt not that GOD will hear us, for GOD hears all, and every
ſ
uffering that is borne with faith in HIM
ſ
hall he return with ten-fold mercy. PRAISE BE TO GOD.
[SS C/T/51/83 (EXTRACT)]
Mercurius Fidelis
: the text received on a translucent paper folded together and then glued and placed between two glued pages of a mouldy chapbook, or by any of a dozen other ruses; prepared at night, by inky fingers that sometimes shook and fumbled with the type, under eyes that would not rest; printed in the first hours of light, alongside a pile of notices advertising the sale of stock of a bankrupt mercer; carried in satchels and furniture and hat-linings, under cloaks and saddles and heaps of straw, from Oxford across all the counties of England.
It was read in great manors and unhappy cottages, in rural markets and city counting houses, in parlours where old loyalties were whispered and halls where the new regime was being trumpeted. For some it was amusement; for some it was hope; for some it was a balm soothing the ache of a loss; for some it was the ache, the reminder of what they had used to be, or had failed to be.
It was read with excitement, for wasn’t it natural that in the end dawn would follow night? It was read with trepidation, for the Committee men and the magistrates and the Clerks of Fines would be harder than ever on Royalists now, and new debts and hostaged sons would be held against those who might be tempted to remember their old loyalty too hastily. It was read by Sir Greville Marsh, with the boy’s thrill at sport in his chest and then, thumping in his gut, the echoes of all the failures that life had made his, and it was read by dozens of other men like him, in dinner-table conversations, racecourse huddles, candlelit cellars, furtive market-stall exchanges and isolated oak-tree rendezvous.
It was read by John Thurloe, carefully, and he knew that the crisis – his crisis – had come.
‘Teach, you didn’t tell me what was really happening at Doncaster.’ A campfire at evening; the scene had used to relax Shay, but they were getting close to Preston, and he was becoming oddly fretful.
Teach’s face, blank, turned to him. A flicker as he considered, then blank again. ‘No,’ he said, and turned forward. ‘I didn’t.’
‘A rescue. A source.’ Again the blank face studying him. ‘Some affair of Astbury’s?’
‘You know the game.’
‘Yes.’
I do. I would have done the same
. Teach of all men would only tell the minimum of his dealings with George Astbury – Astbury’s instructions, his obsessions.
But at last, feeling in Teach’s face. ‘Look, Shay: Astbury was. . . he was wild. Everything was a plot. Everything was a brilliant scheme to turn the war. You know it. You’ve said as much.’
Shay nodded.
‘Doncaster was a. . . a fool’s errand. Astbury was mad about some business with the Parliament forces there: a contact, a scheme, I – I don’t know. William Paulden knew more. His brother might have got something from him, too. There were messages coming from someone in Doncaster; someone who’d found a way to send in – not via Beaumont, but using that channel.’ He shook his head in the gloom. ‘Then a man was supposed to meet us in Doncaster – perhaps this man – meet at the bridge, I think. He never appeared. That was it. Whole thing was a nonsense.’
T
O
M
R
J. H.,
AT
M
ACRAE’S IN
G
ALASHIELS
Sir,
I know not if this will come to you, not knowing if you are with the Royal Army now that it is on the march south, and not knowing if you have arrangements still to receive such trivial correspondence as I must offer in this time of trial. I hope you survive yet and prosper.
I am sometimes with the caterpillar Army as it hurries south on its innumerable feet towards your King. Spirits seem well enough around me: I had thought that a decade of blood must have exhausted all, but I think that all do now perceive an imminent ending to their labours, and this gives the Army great heart. Scotland is safe-held behind us now, and as the Army marches south the men feel closer to their homes and this does truly raise their spirits. I have been lately in London, and it is strong for Cromwell, and in my latest journey northward I found generous garrisons at Derby and Sheffield, and a dozen places beside, up the full length of the country.
I am not a man of high politics and strategy, and yet I infer that we are near some final crisis of this protracted war, and I venture to hope that in one means or another this land may soon have absorbed the last of the blood that has so unnecessarily drenched it. Perhaps we may yet meet as companions, in some England of peace and not of this voracious conflict.
[SS C/S/51/80]
Shay read it dully, absorbing its messages, indifferent.
This, perhaps, is age, that I care now more for some trivial incident of the past than the strategy of tomorrow
.
Was Astbury’s obsession just an amateur’s over-concentration on a single source, some insignificant malcontent in the Doncaster garrison?