Traitor's Field (78 page)

Slumped in a chair by the fire.
Have I never slept?
And still the murmurs around him, the physicians with their patient.

‘We can’t stay in a place alive with soldiers.’

‘We can’t show that we care.’

‘He was recognized! In the yard. I’m sure of it.’

‘Shay’s arranged a boat. The coast is only a mile off. We must wait.’

Another arrival, heavy boots, bringing Shay’s voice: ‘Ill news. My man was watched; followed. I’m sure of it. If they think we’re here we can’t trust to the bluff.’

So up again and out into the yard and out through a different gate, and behind them murmurs, and then a shout, and a hiss in his ear and the horse bucking and lurching and they were plunging into the night and someone had grabbed his rein and pulled them away into a lane and then eased them to a halt, and they waited in the darkness, begging the horses to breathe quietly and waiting for the sound of life coming into the lane that would mean capture and death. Then on again, another town, another arrival, more soldiers in the streets. A bed at last, and fitful sleep, and through the door and the light-chinked floorboards came the raucous jollity of the soldiers relaxing in the room beneath, the men hunting him.

‘We found an ostler, Mr Thurloe. Former soldier. Swears he saw the King – the young Charles Stuart, that is – in the inn yard.’
So close
.

‘And there was someone who was desperate to get away from us, that’s certain.’

Thurloe found himself oddly untroubled by the near miss. ‘They know the net is closing on them, and that will make them more hasty. The man you were following – Marsden. Arrest him – now. He’ll have something to tell us of this network, at least.’

‘Yes, sir. I was going to. But he’s. . . gone, sir.’

Instinctive frustration, but then Thurloe smiled at the Captain.

‘Bad luck, Captain. Next time, eh?’ The Captain smiled back, uncertainly.

I’m walking right beside you now.

The Royalist network worked as he thought it did. Now the better he understood it, the better he would be at manipulating it.

‘Captain, would you come back in half an hour? I’ll have a longer list of names, and they must all be followed. You’d better find some assistants. I’ll have orders for every harbour along the south coast, and they’ll need to report back to me regularly. Those orders must go out tonight.’

The dreams of the young Charles II: 

They say these stones were here at the time of Christ himself.

I am tiny against them, and my life is tiny against theirs. I am a fieldmouse, hunted by scavenger birds, in the shadows of the history that these stones have seen.

They say the heathens used them for magic; for sacrifices.
A perfect circle of pillars and lintels, vast altars.

Is that me? Another of their sacrifices?

A week’s travelling, with its exhaustion and its muscle torture and its heart-battering encounters with the soldiers of his enemies, had brought him back to the house where it started. Two weeks there. Two weeks of rest, but longed-for rest became numbing boredom, and the steady pounding of his protectors’ failures to find a way out.
Could I live the rest of my life like this? A fugitive, a non-person, an invisible being. The guilty conscience of my race, never seen but haunting them.
A sudden memory of the surgeons coming to his mother, when baby Anne was sick. Optimism and then regret. Optimism and then regret. Optimism – and eventually baby Anne had died. His protectors had arranged a boat at Southampton. But it was commandeered by the navy. Portsmouth, perhaps, but they could find no contact. There was a man in Chichester who could help, but then it became clear that he could not. Bognor. Worthing. Other places he’d never heard of, and the same outcome. Unknown names floated before him and then proved insubstantial. Every afternoon a possibility, an enthusiasm; every morning a disappointment. Now another haven, and the same rhythms. At night, the cramped and stifling hiding hole, generations of fugitive priests teaching him their devotion. During the day, the heathen stone circle, safely away from the house.

I wish I could become one with these stones.

The stones towered over him, impervious to history, ageless. By afternoon the stone against his back was warm, and the grass seemed more comfortable than most places he’d slept in the previous month.

I wish Juliana Coningsby were here.

The face of Thomas Scot lowered itself into Thurloe’s vision, and watched him uncertainly. Thurloe finished the note he was writing, and looked up.

Scot was perched on the edge of a chair. ‘You are ploughing your own furrow, Master Thurloe.’

Thurloe shrugged. ‘As Tarrant pointed out’ – Tarrant shifted somewhere behind Scot – ‘the Council of State’s order overtook my little efforts. But I’ll keep trying to do what I can to help. I’ve been collating reports from the south coast.’

‘That’s good, of course.’ Scot’s whine was uneasy. ‘We all want to succeed.’ The beak leaned forward. ‘We all work together in this.’

Thurloe looked at him, and at Tarrant, and back again. ‘Exactly as you have taught me, Master Scot.’ He glanced down at the papers. ‘I’ve identified some likely Royalist sympathizers – the ones they’d really trust – and—’

‘How?’

‘And I’ve had them watched. Tighter checks on ship movements, and I’ve got reports of attempts to charter ships. Nothing certain, of course.’ Tarrant was still looking for a chance to interrupt, but Thurloe kept on. ‘I think there may be a pattern. I think we chased them out of Dorset. There was a report of the King near Salisbury. I think they’re moving eastward along the coast. Southampton and Portsmouth too big, too military – too much risk for them. I think they tried in Emsworth’ – he touched a paper with one finger – ‘but failed, around the end of the first week in October.’ Another paper, another finger. ‘I think they’re into Sussex now. I think they failed again a day or two later, in Chichester.’

‘What does this give us?’ Tarrant. ‘You’re talking about miles of uninhabited coast. There must be dozens of coves; God knows how much empty beach. They’ll wait for darkness or fog, and—’

‘Brighton,’ Thurloe said. ‘Two or three men among hundreds, and one ship among many.’

The George Inn in Brighton, freshly but badly whitewashed, and clean enough. The landlord was a young man already wearied by the struggle to survive. ‘But that’s—’ and a hand clamped over his mouth and drove him back against his shelves, and half a dozen mugs juddered and fell, and a dagger was pricking his throat. The attacker glanced anxiously over his shoulder as the door opened, relaxed as he saw who it was, and turned again to the panicked face close in front of his own.

The new arrival saw the scene, saw the empty room, threw the bolt across the door and strode down the steps and across the room. ‘What have we?’

‘Our host thinks he’s recognized someone.’

The landlord felt the heavy hand distorting his mouth, felt the sharp pain of the blade in his throat, and watched mesmerized as the new arrival came closer with eyes that stared at him and never blinked.

The face thrust in, so that there were three of them intimate around the blade and the muffled mouth. The landlord’s eyes were wide and screaming.

‘A lucky evening for you, landlord.’ An old face, impossibly worn, with dark dark eyes that reached into him. ‘My friend is going to take his knife and his hand away, and as long as you stay utterly silent he’s not going to cut your throat. I’m not going to cut your throat either. Even if you breathe a word of who you think you’ve seen.’ A flicker of a frown as the words registered. The hand and the blade dropped, hovered near him. ‘You think you know your guest, don’t you?’ A panicked shake of the head. ‘You know him, and that might earn you a purse of gold. But you don’t know me, do you?’ Frowning, desperate for sense and desperate for escape. ‘You never will. I’m not the man who’ll kill you. But if you breathe a word of who you think you’ve seen, I’m the man who’ll hunt down every last member of your family, be they one or one hundred years, and gut them. I’m the man who’ll burn every building you try to take a minute’s rest in. I’m the man who’ll tear your clothes from you and leave you alone on the beach, more alone than any man has ever been, and wait for the seagulls to pick you to death. And you’ll never know who I was.’ He stooped suddenly, and the landlord felt his stomach heaving.

The old man stood, with a mug in his hand, and replaced it on the shelf. ‘Take a glass of wine with my friend here, landlord, to celebrate your luck.’ He turned to the other: ‘My contact’s watched; this will have to do. I have final arrangements to make.’ Then he was gone, and the landlord’s knees began to buckle.

The dreams of the young Charles II:

Another bleary awakening, another hand across my mouth, another set of tired earnest eyes staring down into mine. I am so exhausted it will kill me, and that will be relief. The weariness crouches behind my eyes, the nausea; if they take me will this end?

‘Again?’

‘Yes Majesty. Quickly now.’

‘There’s a boat?’

‘Not here. We have horses ready.’