Traitor's Field (76 page)

In a stable, a moment to regroup, the hunted men kicking impatiently in the straw while grooms held a dozen restive horses nearby. Another man hurried in; a murmured exchange and the King watching impatiently.

‘Your Majesty, the road to the north may still be open.’ Another unknown face addressing him. ‘But we cannot at the moment reach it. And they will be looking for you.’ A glance round the stable. ‘I have a troop of men in the yard outside. If you’ll wait ready here, I’ll see if we can’t draw the enemy fire and buy you a few minutes and a clear path.’

The Earl of Cleveland, sixty and dapper despite the chaos of the day, heaved himself up onto a horse. ‘I am about ready to settle my account with Master Cromwell.’ He nodded down. ‘If Your Majesty will excuse me.’ Two or three others reached for horses and followed him out of the stable towards the street.

Balfour grabbed at a saddle and pulled himself up; Shay clutched his wrist. ‘Balfour, stay close by.’

‘I am full done with running, Master Shay.’

‘No!’
Vyse and Manders and all the future I will never own.

The young man stared down sadly. ‘I thank you for your kindnesses and your friendship. You are the man I would wish to be.’ And he yanked at the reins and hurried out into the street, Shay staring after him.

The last charge of English Royalism thundered out of a stableyard and down Worcester High Street on the 3rd of September in the year 1651, the flame-torn evening sky above and the bellowing of cannon and the awestruck yells of soldiers engulfing it. The ragged troop filled the width of the street and launched itself into the noise, with no hope or goal, only the wild euphoric sense that now, after a decade of war and ultimate defeat, all that was possible was a defiant, exultant roar of the self. The riders hurled themselves into the smoke and were lost, and the English soldiers staggering amazed aside did not see the half-dozen men far behind in the dust, cantering from alley to shadow to smoke and so away towards the northern gate of the city.

In the chaos of Worcester, while the streets are still moans and blood and the echoes of Royalism’s last charge still ring, while Cromwell’s surgeon tuts mournfully over the semi-conscious Duke upstairs, a man stands in the parlour of the commandery considering the wreckage. Some instinct of memory makes him look first at the hearth, and he immediately sees the shifted stone, the edge of the thin sheaf of paper flirting with his hopes. Reverentially he holds the sheaf in his hands, feeling the texture with his fingertips and beginning to skim the strange columns of words: names, Royalist names surely, and other letters, and symbols.

North of the city the lost King disappears into the night, the horses hammering over the dry ground, carrying men too desperate to control or think. More men looming out of the gloom, the King’s companions veering towards them with swords drawn, shouts of challenge, reassurance, recognition, and the group pulling up for a moment beside a copse. ‘Whither away?’

Breathless sweating shadowed faces in the last of the light. Shay’s voice came low and hard out of the grey: ‘For now, north. Assume the first five miles are hostile ground. Ride as fast as the road allows. Kill anyone.’

‘But—’

‘You cannot risk time or challenge! Ride down anyone on foot. Kill anyone on horseback. After five miles, ease the pace: discretion will become more important than speed. Who knows this area?’

Hesitation. ‘I, sir.’

‘The life of the King, the future of the realm, depend on your judgement. Be sure of your trust. You will choose where he goes, where he stays. Choose well.’

‘And you, sir?’ It was the King.

‘We must get you out of this island, Majesty. There are arrangements to make; paths to prepare.’ Shay felt the bulk in his jacket. ‘I have other affairs to finish. I will find you.’

He looked around the black shapes, peering at the faces until he recognized one. ‘Musgrave, surely?’ Acknowledgement. ‘Will you wait with me? I have an errand for you; the King has bodyguards enough for tonight.’ Wary agreement from the other.

The King again. ‘How will you find me?’

‘I have ways.’ He held the young man’s saddle, and looked into the fresh, worried eyes. ‘Majesty, whatever befalls, you will never be as much a King as you were today. I honour you for it, and I hope that England has the chance to know it again.’

‘Thank—’

‘Now ride!’ A moment’s uncertainty, then they were gone into the night. Shay listened a moment to the hooves diminishing, then pulled the horse around to face Sir Ralph Musgrave, waiting anxious.

Shay reached out a hand, and gripped his shoulder. Musgrave flinched at the fierce grip and, dimly, his eyes were wide in concern. ‘Musgrave, I hope to get the King away to the Continent. There’s high chance he’ll be captured. Either way, this cannot be with him.’ He released the shoulder, reached into his jacket, and thrust the sack at the other man. ‘This – this is England. I leave it in your charge. Hide it. Bury it. Guard its secret well. I pray we may live to see it restored to the King.’

Midnight, and the wild lantern-lit faces of Cromwell and Thomas Scot, conspirators come at last to unquestioned power. ‘The young Charles is out.’ Cromwell, like a man at first fuelled and then doped by a feast, had lost his battle energy and seemed heavier. ‘We’ve torn Worcester apart, checked every prisoner, and he’s gone.’

‘He can’t be far. We control all the roads, we dominate every town.’

Thurloe, two paces away, glanced at Tarrant and Lyle beside him. Their eyes were wide and hungry, straining hounds, and he felt his own excitement. After today’s victory, what might not be possible?

Cromwell continued to growl. ‘He could be far enough. He has sympathizers yet in these parts.’

‘Not after your triumph today, Master Cromwell.’

‘Find him!’ Cromwell leaned forward, and his face melted and reformed in the lantern light. ‘This day must be Royalism’s last.’

The dreams of the young Charles II:

I’m become a dirty secret, a shit-stain on the boots of men who are inconvenienced and embarrassed but cannot be rid of me.

First the night ride out of the chaos of Worcester, the aching exhausted miles, the horses stumbling and rasping, the murmurs and fears and complaints of his few companions coming at him like phantoms out of the darkness. Hours later, lost in the middle of England, the shadow of a house looming in the black. Dropping down off the horses at last, arse sore and body desperate for rest, but someone had thrust a bundle of clothes at him with an urgent command. Clumsily wriggling out of his clothes and into the new, in the freezing night, and
why can’t this wait until I am inside?
and then someone clutching at his arm and pulling him – away from the house, away from the promise of warmth and normality. Leaves and branches slapping at him, and still being pulled forward by his companion, and then a terse apology and a blanket, and the King of England spent the last hours of the night shivering and writhing among the leaves and soil of the copse.

Dawn in the copse, and then it had started to rain, and still they could not move – ‘This’ll dampen the searchers’ enthusiasm’ – but the King was lost in a permanent shivering cold. Later in the day they emerged, mounted up again and hurried away with talk of Wales. More pounding exhausted miles, legs and back a constant ache, avoiding human contact as much as possible, stopping to rest, a blissful moment of ease on solid ground in warm sunshine and then a challenge barked out of the shadows and they were up and away again, and all the Severn crossings were guarded. Words muttered to him; they dared not risk it. So back again as they had come, the hours and the miles passing as distant figures on the horizon, half glimpsed as he lived with the aches and the deep tiredness. They rode through the night, and came to some new destination at dawn; but it wasn’t new, it was the place they’d left the day before. Familiarity made it a kind of comfort, but now there was talk of soldiers nearby. A day in hiding, and at last in the evening he was allowed into the house.

Sleep and wakefulness were no longer distinct states. Instead he lived in weary haze between them, emerging once to voices.

‘. . . White Ladies here, and then to the border, but the crossings were guarded so we returned. We hid him today—’

‘Where?’ A voice he recognized, old and hoarse.

‘In an oak on the—’

‘In a tree?’ It was the voice of the man called Shay. ‘God’s sake, this is no game!’

‘We thought to make for Wales.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

But Shay could not be persuaded to explain why not Wales, and the military presence at the Severn crossings had spooked them all.

Finally, hustled into a secret room: a fumbling in the corner of panelling, the snap of a sprung catch releasing, and a section of the wood coming loose. A candle pressed into his hand, and some bread and a pot. The urgent voices, telling him to hide, hide quickly. Then stumbling forward into the hole, the panelling pushed close behind him and the candle guttering and threatening to go out.

This then is monarchy in England. A sordid past; a body to be buried. This is my inheritance, and I am the last relic of it.

They were frustrating, tiring days of travel and waiting. Thomas Scot had been to London and come back again, a dogged old man determined not to lose clutch of possible victory over the Stuarts. Thurloe had made the same journey twice, and was feeling almost as old as Scot. Tarrant and Lyle came and went on searches and investigations and interrogations.

Tarrant was as tired as the rest of them, but movement was his instinctive demonstration of relevance. He stepped to the table where Thurloe was reading papers, and knocked on it. ‘Military law. That’s the answer.’ He was looking at Scot.

Scot and Thurloe glanced at him warily. There was a young Army Captain with them, and he looked startled – as if, the only representative of the military present, they were offering him the Crown personally.

‘Until now we’ve made no fuss. We must put the whole country on alert. Everyone must be looking for Charles Stuart.’

‘I disagree,’ Thurloe said. Tarrant’s volume always made his own words instinctively quieter. ‘We’ll make his sympathizers as active as his detractors.’

‘No time for half measures. Whole country must decide which side it’s on.’

Scot said uneasily, ‘But military law? The Army?’

‘We just make a list of the most prominent Royalists and round them up. Make the pretender unpopular, too.’

Scot: ‘Stuart’s protectors won’t use the obvious contacts, surely.’

‘We put pressure on them regardless!’

Thurloe thought:
I have such a list
.

While the conversation continued, he pulled from an inside pocket the sheaf of paper retrieved from the hearth in Worcester, placed it inconspicuous on the other papers in front of him.

His closest examination of it had been the first, in the thrill of discovery. A list of names, presumably contacts for the Royalist network he’d been fighting. Names divided into groups, distinguished by letters or pairs of letters. Names followed by two or three letters, and then crude symbols – lines, circles, curves. But until he could decypher the symbols and letters, it was just a list of probable Royalists, and most of them would hardly be a surprise. He had put the sheaf away, looking forward to a quiet evening that had not yet come.