Traitor's Field (73 page)

The raid on Doncaster; the rescue of a source.
But how to make contact?
The source in Doncaster was a stranger to the Pontefract men.
Surely they’ d have arranged some word of recognition.
Some other memory.
Blackburn: according to Blackburn, William Paulden had said to listen for the signal. But what was the signal, and who knew it?
Teach didn’t seem to know; Thomas Paulden was abroad; William Paulden was dead. William Paulden, who’d stayed out of the inn to patrol the streets.

And how did any of that connect with the courier, weeks earlier, hurrying through the night to Astbury?

He shook his head.
And who now is the obsessed?

Garrisons at Derby and Sheffield, the key points on the eastern route. That was the meat of it.

Cromwell dropped from his horse like a leather-strapped, well-armed sack of potatoes, and sank to his ankles in the mud. Immediately he was tramping away through it, water and dirt splashing around him, and Thomas Scot was hurrying along beside him oblivious to the ruin of his cloak.

‘They’re turning, Master Cromwell!’ Cromwell stopped, and the weary head snapped round. ‘I have it from the royal Court. They’re going southwest. Avoiding the direct route to the east.’

Cromwell’s heavy features opened with life. ‘Are they now? Making for the Welsh border, and Gloucester.’ Scot nodded. Cromwell began to stride forward again through the mire. He shouldered his way into a tent and grabbed at a map and began tracing the veins of England on it with heavy fingers. ‘Excellent.’ He was talking to himself; Scot and Thurloe followed the meditation obediently. ‘Wales; Gloucester; the Severn Valley. It’s excellent.’

‘The old heartland of Royalism. They’re heading for their supporters.’

Cromwell snorted. ‘Mere sentiment. Not strategy. They’ve let us shepherd them. They’ve abandoned the thought of London, and they’re scrabbling for friends.’ His heavy fist began to thump at the west of England, and Thurloe saw Cromwell the warrior beginning to glow and flare. ‘We have them, gentlemen.’

MERCURIUS FIDELIS

or

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

From
Mpnday, Augu
ſ
t 11.
to
Monday, Augu
ſ
t 18. 1651.

Shay was surprised to see the
Mercurius
, and then uninterested – he tended to forget that it was published regardless of his contribution – until an instinctive second glance showed him the misprint in the date, and then he was scrabbling at the page with fingers that would not grip, and holding it crumpled in front of his face.

Standing in the middle of the hall at Astbury he growled an endless ‘No’ – a refusal, a denial of the impossible – that stretched out hoarse across the house and hung in the dust and searched the corners for clarity.

Alte Veste: a Bavarian musketeer a yard away, the barrel pointing at his belly, the vast black muzzle that was the darkest, lastest thing he would ever see, and the fat click that seemed to punch him as the hammer snapped forward.

Rachel came quickly from the study, and circled him warily.

‘Uncle Shay. . . Shay! What’s wrong?’ She caught at his arm. ‘Tell me!’ His head swung down towards her, eyes staring wide. They blinked, and re-focused on her. ‘Yesterday – today – Shay, you’re like. . . you’re just like Uncle George. . . you’re behaving just like him, when he came back – the last time, before Preston.’

Mortimer Shay’s face and torso collapsed in the sigh.

And so we have come full round.

He looked at the beautiful, desperate eyes.

Was this it, George? Not just doubt in the cause, but certainty – the certainty that something was very badly wrong?

He swung away, moving with heavy stilted steps. The arrests in the spring. The I. S. letters that fixed the Scottish army at Stirling when Cromwell was preparing to attack the flank, and steered the army down through England, tracked by an enemy that seemed to anticipate every manoeuvre. And now the rogue, countermanding message in the news-sheet.

I. S.? 

Memories lurching at him in the nightmare.
A man called Thurloe has been set to investigate the affair at Doncaster
. Edinburgh and the rescue of Con Blythe. The insistent visits here.

Is there anything I can touch now that is not immediately cankered?

‘Shay!’ He turned. Two pale soft palms reached up and held his leathery cheeks. ‘What’s happening to my world?’

Again he watched the eyes, the pupils large and all-absorbing, searching him.

Can I know defeat? Can I know loss?

Her hands fell to his chest, clutched at his jacket, and shook it.

Perhaps I must.
He reached up a bent finger, and roughly stroked it down her child-soft cheek.
But I must do it as Shay.

‘General Leslie is—’ Henry Vyse had knocked and opened the door and started speaking, but the room was empty.

A room like so many in Worcester now. Bare – the owners had scrabbled away anything of value, so the floor was only boards, the mantelpiece looked uncomfortably empty, and there were dark squares on the wall where a mirror and a picture had been. And over-inhabited: Miles Teach had found himself a palliasse from somewhere, and it dominated what had been a small parlour, his blanket folded neatly on top; there was another set of rolled bedding on the other side of the room, and Teach had reserved much of the rest of the floor for Shay when he came. This counted for luxury; Vyse himself was in a room of six.

All the rooms had the same smell now: a ripe mix of wet cloth, of old leather boots, of mud, of long-marched men.

Teach kept his space tidy, Vyse saw that. He’d noticed it before – with Shay as well – and there was a flicker of awe at the ancient habits of the veterans. Boots orderly together by the palliasse; a shirt drying on the back of the single chair; the single bag strapped closed on the table; under it, a few papers in a pile, an odd pattern of holes or wear in one; next to the bag a knife; aligned next to the knife a pistol, cleaned or ready for cleaning.

‘Help you, boy?’ Vyse turned. Miles Teach was in the doorway, neutral, waiting.

‘Pardon me, Mr Teach. General Leslie was asking – Manders said you were in here.’

‘I was. Then I was taking a piss. Old man’s weakness.’

‘I wasn’t – I hope you don’t think—’

‘Not much of me, is there?’ He saw what Vyse had seen. ‘Boots and a blade.’

‘That’s a curious paper.’

Teach looked a little sour. ‘A device merely. A memento.’ He managed a smile. ‘These games that Shay makes us play. Secret meetings and hidden messages. Don’t get too fond.’

‘Have you heard from him lately?’ A shake of the head. ‘How do you judge our situation here? Are you hopeful? I mean, if you write—’

‘I have never been hopeful, boy.’ Miles Teach was grim; then an uncomfortable smile spread, and he began to recite. ‘I’ve fought each day as I’ve found it, and counted it success if I’ve lived to tomorrow. My family never had enough money for its station, and my cause never had enough luck for its ends. I’ve been fighting thirty years or more, a dozen countries and a dozen Princes, defeats and victories and all it’s brought me is what you see. A man, and a knapsack.’

‘You and Sir Mortimer, you’re like – you’re men like no others. How do you become—?’