Traitor's Field Read online

  Then there had come a shout from among the wagons – a sentry, two sentries. He’d waved and kept his distance. And so to the bridge, through the dead men.

  His legs, his back, feel dangerously cold now. His boots are good – most important part of the uniform: Stiefel vor Stahl, like the Brandenburgers used to say – but they can’t keep out this damp cold for ever. No sound from above, so the stiff old back stretches up and the numbed legs slip through the water to the bank.

  The bridge itself is a shambles. Shattered soldiers – Scottish musketeers again – are sprawled all over the narrow way, thick in the dust and slumped over the parapets. The northern end of the bridge is choked with bodies, and they’ve been dragged aside to allow the cavalry to pursue the fleeing Royalists, or lie broken by the horses charging over them. Here, as the ground opens out towards Preston, the uniforms change. These are Roundhead dead – pikemen, mostly; the bridge was won hard, by men rushing again and again into barrages of musket shot, until at last their pikes could reach the desperate bodies trying frantically to reload and reprime their weapons.

  I’m too exposed here.

  The eyes can see the battle in the dead men. He’s come through the flight in the hours before dawn. The struggle for the bridge, the close-quarter wounds and the vengeance of men who’ve paid too heavily for their objective, is easily told. But here? The few bodies leading to the town tell a fast assault against the detachments who’d found themselves cut off by the fall of the bridge, and are now either prisoners or scurrying back to Scotland. The main thrust of battle has come from the right, along the river. A lane nearer the water, no bodies but badly churned: Cromwell’s legendary cavalry, no doubt, his ironsides, and there had been no one to stop them: the troops trying to defend the bridge had been caught in the flank and caught hard. Another shake of the head.

  The trail of death leads away from the river’s edge along a muddy road, and he walks it slowly, eyes and ears wide for signs of pursuit. This is still contested ground. He reads the battle in the uniforms and in the deaths. A clump of men entangled together – the same clothing, the same symbols tucked in their caps – means a standing fight; musket wounds mean the same. English soldiers among the Royalist dead, now. Langdale’s men. Have you died with them, Langdale, you old goat, or have you survived again? Cavalrymen, too, and their horses. This fight took many hours, and every fifty yards of it was a mad screaming assault by pikemen and riders on musketeers and on other pikemen, a hacking swirling orgy of noise and metal, the cold fire of a wound in your side and the screams in your ears, and the mud treacherous beneath your feet. They’re sodden with it, all the dead men: their blues and reds are a uniform stupid brown, so that it’s harder to tell Royalist from Roundhead in their slippery death, and their hands and hair and faces are smeared and clogged and turning brittle grey.

  He walks those yards, and he refights those hours, in the faces. Mannheim. Magdeburg. Vlotho. Too many dead faces. Pain: screaming cheek-slashed chest-cut pain; groaning gut-shot pain. Exultation: glory; malice; madness. Shock: so surprised; so frightened; so cold; so this is hell. I have become an accounter of deaths.

  A horse slumped in the mud, two pikes buried in its great chest, face stretched out wild. The rider half beneath him, a sword protruding from under the edge of the chest armour. You saw that coming and you couldn’t do anything about it, could you? The helmet grille grins up at him. More horses, shot and stabbed and bled, and he knows the screaming that these beasts added to the carnage as they died.

  Why did Cromwell stay north of the river?

  It’s the smell that’s lifted his head, nose instinctively seeking higher ground. The wounds are more savage here, the putrefaction more advanced, and the sharp syrupy rancid stench of death and shit hangs low over the carnage. His wider gaze brings him the other bank of the river, the fuller scope of the battle. A chase is fun but futile; nothing more than a clumsy violent race, and the man more determined to escape with his life will always outpace the man more determined to loot what he’s left behind. Properly, logically, Cromwell should have come south of the river, to block the Royalist advance.

  Cromwell got lucky: with the terrain, with his opponent. Or perhaps the Godly warrior has the devil in him like they say.

  Faces at peace, and faces now in an eternity of disquiet. Faces molten and faces viciously distorted and faces absent, with the indiscriminating violence of war. A slumped man with his throat cut in the aftermath; a body naked from the waist down, white and silly in the morning, fancy boots and breeches long gone and worth nothing to him now. The dead in heaps, grey and glistening in the frost.

  Further away to the south there’s movement again. Another patrol, perhaps, or off-duty men on the scavenge. The battle is not done.

  The lane drops below the surrounding fields, and the bodies cluster like flies around the mud.

  This is where it started.

  The wounds tell him. The sheer volume of death tells him. He’s walking on the bodies now, bodies torn and shattered by the violence, bodies that drowned in the mud. He remembers the endless rain of yesterday as he galloped across England, and he sees today what he was too late for then: the bleary blinking through the downpour as the endless attacks come across the fields, the slippery hacking in the sunken lane as finally a wave of men breaks through the musket fire to the pikes, the gasping for breath and for a mouthful of water through the torrent, the vast onslaught of noise.

  Why did Cromwell stay north of the river?

  This is where it started, but still he has not found his man. The battle was thickest here, and longest. There will be more officers among the dead. There should. . . but no, their finery will not betray them now, because it will have betrayed them already to the scavengers.

  A naked torso. He wrenches at the slippery shoulder; sure enough, the face tells breeding. But not his man. The blackened chest tells close-range musket fire.

  A glimpse of brighter cloth at the bottom of a brown pile of death, and he’s on his knees rummaging in the squelch of limbs and wounds, the eyes wide with horror and the mouths packed with mud, until he pulls another pale unknown face towards the light for the last time.

  Have you somehow slipped away?

  The forward edge of the sunken lane, knee-deep in bodies and the wind stinging his ears, trying to see the very first instant of battle, the first fact: a shout of alarm, a musket shot, a thunder of mounted death coming across the Lancashire fields.

  He turns away, towards the distant huddle of the town. Much nearer, there’s a single oak, and as the wind gusts again something waves to him from behind the trunk.

  His boots and legs belong more to the earth now than to him, brown and misshapen and pulling him down with them as he tramps up out of the lane and over to the tree.

  You poor fool. Was this what you wanted?

  The old man is sitting against the tree as if asleep. He reads the wounds in the torn clothes. The old man has taken a deep cut across the shoulder and a worse one in his side.

  Did it feel like heroism? Did it feel like manhood?

  The man wasn’t really so old, but dying has hurried things along. The face is the distant empty grey of the morning sky beyond. The eyelids hang frail and wrinkled above the hollow cheeks. He had staggered away from the carnage to die, seeking some final moment of privacy, some last trace of the privilege for which he fought. The oak kept its secret well from the scavengers.

  He makes a swift search of the body: pockets, but also boots and sleeves, pulling the dead weight away from the tree to be sure he has missed nothing. A few coins, which he leaves. Three or four rose petals, likewise. Then, inside, stubborn among the distorted clothes, a folded piece of paper. He pulls it free, glances at it, and black frown lines rip across his face. This he takes.

  The dead face coughs.

  Surely not. And something like frustration flickers in him. He crouches closer to the face. Hand against the temple; finger and thumb pulling up the eyelids. There
is something stubborn still at work in the old head. Ear and cheek tilted close towards the lips, trying to isolate a ghost of a breeze in the cold morning.

  Surely not. He checks the wounds again – especially the side, pulling the clothes uneasily away from the gore, teeth set. These wounds will not be endured for much longer.

  Then voices in the wind. A glance behind him. There are men on the bridge again. The eyes come back more intently to the face, to the wounds.

  There is no such thing as capture for this man.

  For a moment, the two old faces are close. Two grey men alone in the wilderness of the death-blasted moor, ghosts of a fertile age long past.

  As gently as he can, he pulls a ring from one of the wounded man’s cold fingers; it catches on the old rolls of knuckle-skin. Then he pulls a dagger from his mud-clutched boot. He places the blade tip against the old man’s breast, and a simple kiss on the forehead, and then he pushes until the dagger’s hilt comes hard against the body.

  Thus passes the Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey.

  1648

  The Kingdom in Twilight

  ‘There’s men, Miss Rachel, in the trees.’ Brown eyes came up fast from the book. ‘In the trees?’ Her body seemed sharp, strained; she felt the muscles pulling at her to stand up.

  ‘Yes, miss. Just across the lawn. They might – they might be coming here, miss.’

  She was up and across to the window in four long lithe steps, the sweep of her dress hurrying behind her.

  I cannot remember when I was not afraid.

  Stubborn raindrops still held to the glass, and the pale spread of the front garden flickered at her crazily, distorted and strange through a hundred panes. The garden was a fresh breath of green stretching away, but the oaks fringed dark around its edges.

  Among them, the black shapes of men were moving.

  VERITAS BRITANNICA

  Liberty under God in a Kingdom under God

  he Lord GOD has shown thoſe who would need it new PROOF of His great MERCY to this our troubled land. At the town of PRESTON in Lancaſhire he has ſmitten with righteous VIOLENCE the upſtart band of Traitours and Scots and Criminals and Cut-throats, which had invaded England with clear and foul intent to uproot the cauſe of RIGHT and GODLY government. The Lord GOD saw fit to grant His armies complete VICTORY, and the invaders are ſundered UTTERLY. General CROMWELL was His inſtrument, and he has harried the fugitive raſcals without compromise or heſitation, as befits the proper execution of GOD’S JUSTICE.

  With the ſpurious claim that they were ſupporters of Kingly governance, the invaders croſſed the north of England with much devaſtation and blood; now that army is broken at the hands of the RIGHTEOUS, and thoſe few who eſcaped deſtruction, their cauſe being quite loſt, are returning with violent haſte whence they came, or being captured, wretched and pitiful, by General CROMWELL. General CROMWELL came up on the invaders, under the traitour Duke of HAMILTON, on Auguſt 17 and, finding them ill-diſpoſed athwart the river RIBBLE, fell immediately upon, his conviction being rewarded with complete SUCCESS. The treaſonous HAMILTON and his crew of generals fled at the firſt trump, leaving behind their moſt wretched followers, who died by thouſands. Among their DEAD on the field were SIR JOHN HOUGHTON, THOMAS FERRAND and SIR GEORGE ASTBURY, known for a cloſe adherent and confidant of King Charles.

  This is the final CATASTROPHE for the coterie of CORRUPTED and MALEFICIENT adviſors that ſurrounds the King; their avowed intent to uſurp the cauſe of TRUE and LOYAL government having been ſo confounded, which can only be accounted the WILL OF GOD, they muſt now be ſtripped away from the King’s perſon as the traitours they are, leaving His Majeſty in direct and proper relation with his loyal ſubjects and their PARLIAMENT.

  The door slammed open against the wall, the noise gross and wrong and sending her instinctively backwards, and a soldier was standing on the threshold. He had a smashed grin in a stained and unshaven face, a caricature of impurity and mischief.

  ‘What’s here, then?’ Big eyes patrolled the room, smiling at the effect of the door slamming and his own words, and then widening with an uneasy excitement as they absorbed the long brown waves of hair and the full sweep of the female body.

  He said it again – ‘What’s here, then?’ – but the words were a hesitant substitute for anything better to say; a little tongue wandered over the lower lip. Rachel Astbury tasted revulsion in her throat. Her breath came in an uneasy hiss.

  The man began to sway towards her. Was he drunk? Or was this shamble his broken norm? Some stiller part of her brain was telling her that she couldn’t even be sure this was a Roundhead, a soldier of Parliament, and not a fugitive King’s man.

  But then, what did that matter?

  ‘Who’s this, then?’ He seemed to be conducting a dialogue with his own sly mind. Three yards away he stopped, and his spread hand came up and then travelled down over the undulating image of her body, as if gauging it, or practising the movement.

  ‘Eh? Who, eh?’ Somewhere in the house there was a shout, and hurrying steps.

  He was swaying forwards again. ‘Does the lovely lady have a name, does she?’

  She’d rehearsed this scene so often, full of tactics that now seemed somehow obscure, and fears that had by contrast solidified and sharpened.

  ‘Rachel!’ But it was not her own voice, and she stood for a moment with her mouth open and her name stumbling on her tongue. ‘Rachel!’ – Mary’s voice, nearer, with footsteps distinct on the flagstones.

  Now there was another figure in the doorway, but it wasn’t her sister. Another soldier, and there was no way out and no way in for anyone else.

  The man was a yard away, eyes wide and hand trembling. The backs of her legs pressed hard against the edge of the bench and her upper body shrank away clumsily above them; her hands clutched at their opposite wrists and against her bodice, in obvious show of defensiveness.

  The hand came up again and this time it was right in front her face, dirty fat unsteady fingers reaching for her throat. She felt the palm flesh under her chin, the fingers pressing her skin against her jawbone. ‘Rachel!’

  Mary was a pale blur behind the soldier in the doorway. Her own focus was wholly the face looming in front of her, every bloodshoot distinct in the eyes, the black hair-stubs sharp on the nose.

  The teeth appeared as individual characters in the smile. ‘Rachel, is it now?’ The little tongue wandered over the lip again, and the mouth pulled open in preparation for some horror. Her fingers scrabbled clumsily at her cuffs.

  ‘Come on, matey.’ These, from far away, were not words she could distinguish. ‘Hurry along, won’t you? The Captain—’

  A whistle squealed somewhere, and the vast face flickered in irritation. ‘That’s us,’ the other voice said, ‘hurry along.’

  The mouth moved closer to hers, and the eyes widened, and her fingers fumbled like frail trembling heartbeats, and then the big egg-white eyes shifted and the focus broke and the hand dropped from her throat and reached behind her.

  The man stepped away, staring intently at the silver goblet that the hand now held. ‘Lovely,’ he whispered, ‘lovely.’ He looked up at her again, and there was no intent or malice in the eyes any more. He was human again, and simple, and there was a strange innocence to his greed.

  The soldier swayed briskly to the door and followed his comrade out, still watching the goblet held proud like a torch, past Mary shrunk close to the wall.

  Rachel Astbury collapsed to the bench, the little dagger came free of her cuff and fell from her useless fingers, and she began to shake and gasp uncontrollably, huge painful sobs that lurched in her chest.

  Astbury House was everything the Captain hated: complacent, rich, Royalist – and not even bold about the fact. Standing in the hall, stolidly fighting his own weariness, he was trying and failing to maintain his politeness in the face of the wheedling of the lord of the manor: always happy to receive the Army, bravest of men, my house
is your house, especially if you can eat with a fork, surely no need for the rank and file to be loose in the premises, perhaps we might come to some arrangement?

  Sir Anthony Astbury was everything the Captain hated too, and for the same reasons.

  He knew the type. Bit of genteel service when the going had been good, retired hurt once it was clear that the King’s was a lost cause. Paid his fine to hang on to the estate, God bless Parliament and now please leave me in peace. He could afford to lose some linen and trinkets.

  Then two younger women – daughters? – edging in in the wake of the last of his scavengers. The daughters were rather fine, weren’t they now? One was sort of stern-looking, and the other was sort of wild – bit upset, perhaps. He hoped there hadn’t been anything too nasty. The good Lord knew it was hardly surprising: keep a man in camp for months on end with nothing but small beer and the sad old whores who followed the army, brittle cackling boisterousness and eight kinds of pox, and why wouldn’t he go a little moon-crazy when he saw something like this – something so lovely and so fresh, and frankly just so damned clean? Had to be careful, though. A village tart found face-down in a ditch didn’t seem to register with anyone now, but the gentry tended to complain when their women got knocked around, and complaints would find their way sure as the sun back to him.

  That stern one, now. Probably a bit stuck-up, she was, and that was fine; might like to look after a man. Bet she’d run a tight home. And hidden fires inside, perhaps.

  The old man was still whining on. Been most devoted in his just obligations to the state, Sir Somebody Somebody could surely vouch for me, paid up prompt and regular. Bet you did, too: all above board and please go away with your dirty little war. Sir Anthony Astbury wouldn’t be fighting six men for a licey mattress in a tavern tonight.