Traitor's Field Read online

  They moved cautiously, from safe point to safe point, corner to stairwell to shadow, and it took fifteen minutes to reach a section of passageway dominated by a large wardrobe. The wood was dark and crude, and starting to rot.

  ‘Here; give hand, Langdale.’ With two men at it, the wardrobe pulled away from the wall easily. In the shadow behind it Langdale saw dimly a darker shadow: a narrow opening in the stone, a gateway to some other world.

  A soft sigh of understanding. ‘The Prince’s passage; I thought this was mere legend. This is how young Edward broke into the castle. And how you got in.’ The old General glanced at the man beside him. ‘The cupboard must have been a bit of a heave for your rotting body. How do you know these places, Shay?’

  A dry smile in the gloom. ‘The little practical curiosities of history, Langdale. I collect them.’

  Colonel John Hutchinson had no interest in being Governor of a crumbling wreck of a castle far from London, and no hesitation in demonstrating it. The long dark curls and the neck-cloth showed elegance, but the pale skin and the hard, indifferent eyes showed the more austere man within.

  He accepted the greetings of his two visitors with no more than basic courtesy, and politely asked after the family of his kinsman Webster. He was clearly confident of his superiority as a Member of Parliament to these two mere clerks.

  ‘Tiresome up here, you understand me?’ Irritation and disdain in the voice. ‘I gave up my regiment because I had a greater duty in Parliament. But if I can’t be there, I’d rather be in the field with my men than acting the sentry here.’

  His visitors murmured their sympathy.

  ‘All very well for you men, trotting the countryside with no responsibility and no greater calling. All most pleasant for you, I’m sure.’ He picked up a folded paper from his table. ‘And you make your arrangements pretty tight, don’t you? We’ve barely received your letter.’

  ‘Our letter?’

  The paper was brandished with more energy. ‘Announcing your visit. Only just got here.’

  ‘What letter?’

  Now openly angry, and waspish: ‘You’ve come to talk to the prisoner Langdale. We’re getting him ready now.’

  ‘We came to bid you greeting, nothing more. We sent no letter.’

  From the open door to the corridor: running boots on the stone, and shouts.

  ‘Langdale: another question.’ The voice was a murmur, the attention focused elsewhere.

  ‘You become tiresome, Shay. I thought you knew everything.’

  ‘Why did Cromwell stay north of the river?’

  The old beaked face was immediately grave, and somehow sadder. ‘It made no sense. By all the calculations of convention, it made no sense. And yet there he was, suddenly and unstoppably. I had many hours to ponder the matter, every minute of them evil.’ He focused on Shay again. ‘You think somehow he knew our dispositions? Scouted us out?’

  ‘I wondered.’

  Langdale shook his head slowly. ‘They say he can smell the secrets of a field: the terrain, the placement of the men. It’s unearthly.’ The lines of the face sharpened and crackled; Sir Marmaduke Langdale was back in the sunken lane again, his men drowning in mud and Cromwell’s horsemen coming at him in waves that would never end. ‘He is a force of nature herself, Shay. He has the devil in him.’

  Shay listened in silence. A military opinion from Langdale was truth. ‘I never thought to hear you superstitious.’

  ‘In thirty years, and as many slaughters, I’ve not seen the like.’ Another shake of the head. ‘I think it’s much simpler, Shay; no secret, nor complicated calculation. That man hungers for battle, for glory and for slaughter, and when he sees them near he comes at them by the straightest road.’

  The cell empty, the prisoner Langdale disappeared: Governor Hutchinson had acted fast, his deeper frustrations channelled into anger at this new outrage to his dignity, anger at those who had allowed this embarrassment, anger at his two visitors for somehow being linked to it. Instant orders to one of his Captains had spread throughout the castle, and soldiers had clattered through the warrens towards the abandoned cell.

  The Governor had himself visited the scene, had returned still angrier from his private maze, now unfamiliar and treacherous to him. More orders. A message to the town. The main gate to be closed. He had been leaving to resume his personal oversight of operations when another sentry had hurried up to him, a bustle of breaths and equipment: a cupboard had been found awry, a hidden passage behind it – the Prince’s passage of legend. More orders: urgent pursuit into the tunnel; soldiers to leave through the main gate and make for the lower meadow with all haste; another message to the town. Then the Governor was striding off again into the maze.

  A Captain was left in Governor Hutchinson’s chamber in case further information should arrive and need to be carried to the Governor. Everyone else was caught up in the search, with one exception.

  John Thurloe sat silently, upright in a simple chair, frowning at the folded letter that still lay on the table.

  Shay and Langdale had passed forty minutes in companionable silence on a crumbling spiral stair that twisted up into the open sky. Two minutes after the pursuit had passed by the entrance to the stair, they were back down it and away towards the opposite side of the castle.

  ‘A waste of a secret tunnel if you ask me, Shay.’

  ‘I don’t. Most likely it remained one of the thousand secret conveniences of our history, but over three centuries I can’t guarantee it’s not become known. And I may have been seen.’

  ‘Now what, then?’

  ‘Now you’re my prisoner, Langdale.’ An irritated shake of the grizzled head. ‘I’ll take that knife, and I’ll bind your hands.’

  ‘I preferred my plan. I liked the sound of the gaoler’s wife.’

  ‘So why did they send the letter?’

  ‘Sir?’

  Thurloe’s head snapped round. ‘The letter, Captain. The forged letter from the Committee. What was its purpose?’

  The Captain shifted uncomfortably, shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t – To distract us, I suppose. Put us off our balance.’

  Thurloe launched up out of the chair. ‘But it put us on our balance!’ He aimed a slow and deliberate kick at the leg of the Governor’s table. ‘You people clearly weren’t paying much attention to General Langdale, and the first thing that letter made you do – very natural – was go to check on him.’

  ‘A bit lucky, then?’

  Thurloe smiled and shook his head. ‘This wasn’t about luck.’ His head was columns of figures, tumbling Greek declensions, the mental disciplines of his youth; he felt the warmth and thrill of rigorous thought. ‘What was the effect of that letter? To send us to the cell to check the prisoner. What was the effect of sending us to the cell?’ The Captain kept opening his mouth as if to try to answer, but Thurloe was looking through him. ‘To have us find the secret passage. What was the effect of us finding the passage?’ The questions and answers came steadily, as if by rote. ‘To have us chasing into it.’

  ‘And we’ll try to block the end, sir.’ The Captain’s efficiency found voice at last. ‘Supposed to come out somewhere in the lower meadow.’

  ‘Which is where?’

  The Captain thought for a second and pointed to his left. ‘Roughly that direction.’

  Thurloe nodded. The castle around him, a shambling warren of holes and tunnels and mistakes and possibilities. He pointed a long finger in the opposite direction. ‘And does the castle have any gate or door on the other side?’

  ‘Help him up then, man!’ The sentry, sullen but quick to take an order, bent to the task, but Langdale had gripped the saddle with his tied hands and swung himself over. Shay on his unfamiliar horse skittered beside him, stared down at the sentries as if in thought. ‘Can you two find mounts?’

  ‘You’ll need men with you, sir?’

  ‘I’ve a troop outside, but. . . No matter. Shouldn’t have a problem with this old reli
c.’

  ‘Pox-raddled, dirty traitor!’ – and Langdale lunged at him; Shay batted him back into his saddle. Ahead, the gate swung open.

  Thurloe striding through the castle corridors, deducing his way through the maze with the Captain trotting behind him calling suggestions; and then Governor Hutchinson loomed in front of him as he spun round a narrow turn. ‘We’ve got him!’

  A confusion of limbs and words and thoughts, then: ‘Got him?’

  The Governor, breathing hard and somehow heated: ‘Got Langdale. They’re taking him away now – that third man of yours and a couple of my men.’ He glared at Thurloe: ‘Your man’s a bit damned rud—’

  ‘A third man?’ A second of confusion, then instinct faster than deduction, and Thurloe barged the Governor aside and was charging through the warren, the Captain still clattering after him.

  Shay was at the gate, ducking his head under the arch as his nag clopped ponderously over the uneven stones.

  Ahead, through the gate, a short wooden bridge and then open ground. Something snagged in his hearing, some imperfection in the stolid rhythms of the castle. The hooves trod hollow and heavy over the stone.

  He had Langdale’s horse on a long rein, following behind him, the old General slumped and scowling.

  ‘Stop those men!’

  The horses’ ears pricked up, and the heads of Langdale and the two sentries whirled up to seek the sound, but Shay had yanked on the long rein and kicked viciously at his horse. Beyond the open ground the trees. If they could make the trees. . .

  Thurloe, a frozen moment as he saw conspiracy happening in front of him, and then he was stumbling down rough steps, hands snagging and scratching against stone, the Captain above him repeating the shout: ‘Stop those men!’

  A uniform meant an order, and the nearest of the sentries lunged for Langdale’s horse. Shay was through the gate, but the unknown horse wasn’t having it. It hesitated, skittered round, and backed into Langdale now accelerating through. The old General swore, pulled at his horse’s neck, kicked into the flanks, but now there was some new pull on him, the beast swerving odd and heavy beneath him. Then Shay moving past him back through the gate, the horses squeezing and shuffling, a flick of a knife to release his hands, and Shay lashed out with his boot at the man clutching the saddle. Suddenly free, the knife grabbed and in his belt, Langdale kicked at his horse again and was away through the gate, Shay spinning and hurrying after, with the man in black no more than a strange stain across his blurring vision.

  Hooves rattling and echoing on the planks of the bridge, and now there were more men closing in on it from the other end. Langdale’s horse reared at the sight of blades, and there were three, four soldiers blocking their way. Shay kicked his animal into the charge and for once it obeyed, but there wasn’t the distance to gather speed. One man went sprawling, but other hands were scrabbling at his legs, reins, saddle. A blade appeared and flashed in his hand, and another man went down with a scream, but he was slow now and stopping.

  Away towards the trees, beyond the soldiers, there were shouts, hooves drumming hard and free on open ground.

  Thurloe had reached the gate, barging through the sentries and roaring them to action. As his boots thumped onto the bridge he saw the two fugitives bucking and grappling with soldiers: saw one soldier grabbing at one of the fugitives and half pulling him down, saw the fugitive, an older man surely, reacting with weird calm and pushing a pistol back under his armpit and firing and the soldier tumbling away. The fugitive swung upright, the horse wheeled, and for a moment his eyes met Thurloe’s. And beyond them all came three riders, haring across the open ground with heads bent low over their horses and swords levelled as they accelerated towards the bridge and the mêlée. Thurloe was halfway over the bridge when the riders struck. The soldiers staggered, fell away in one furious tempest of blades, scattered, and now all five horsemen were free and away and making, unstoppable, for the trees.

  Shay, General Langdale and their three rescuers rode their horses hard and silent for five miles, sometimes by road and sometimes across country. Shay had rapidly assumed the lead, and the others followed automatically. As they’d approached a junction, one of the unknown three had pulled level with him and beckoned to the north, open fields and the distant shadow of the hills across the land. But Shay had shaken his head briefly and bent again to the horse, sitting heavy and intent and urging the animal onward. With a shrug and glance of frustration at his companions, the younger man had fallen back and followed.

  As they came over a rise, Derby appeared on the horizon in front of them, and then disappeared again behind trees as they rode on. Shay slowed to a trot, turned in the saddle and beckoned the young man nearest. A pale face, long fair hair, and he trotted nearer and started to speak.

  Shay cut him off. ‘The wood, ahead there. You three will skirt it southwards until you reach a track running north by west. You will take that line until a junction with a dead elm. There right, and so shortly into the trees. We will regather there.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘We must take the road now, and the road becomes more open and more travelled. They will be seeking news of five riders, not two or three.’ Shay saw the puzzled, irritated expression. ‘You are a hunted man, now, and you must learn fast. The first lesson is that you don’t have time for explanations.’

  ‘But can’t we—’

  ‘You can do as you’re bid, or die on the road where you are. No more than a trot, now.’

  John Thurloe had spent a full hour in silence. He stood at the door to the now empty cell, reached for the handle, then stopped himself. He stood looking at the slit of darkness into the secret passage, took a breath and stepped towards it, then stopped himself. Then he walked back out of the castle as he had come in – the conventional route – and found his way by indifferent sentries to the external entrance to the passage.

  He entered the castle again, as the intruder had entered, scuffling and stumbling through the caves until a boot-tip kicked a rough step, and so up in darkness until the faintest whisper of light promised life again and the old wardrobe. Then he walked softly to the cell, and this time, after a moment, he opened the door and entered. He stood. He perched on the edge of the palliasse. He noted the hiding place in the wall. Men of concealment. Men of initiative. He sat on the chair. He listened. He left the cell, trying to elude the door’s creak.

  He was trying and failing to forget the trick with the pistol, fired back under the arm: an expert’s trick, instinctive and immediate and sure.

  He was clutching at spirits he could neither quite recall nor be sure of, these men who were not like him, spirits from a different time or a different world. At one point, the hot red face of Governor Hutchinson had thrust into his vision again. The Governor was embarrassed, and confused, and trying to find a way in which Thurloe and the Committee for Security were responsible for what had happened today. The words came singly and incoherent, and Thurloe had just looked at him, silently, and eventually the Governor stamped away back to his violated lair.

  The secret passage. The cell. The passages between them and the passage leading to the other side of the castle and the escape.

  There had to be somewhere else. There had to be somewhere to wait while the foolish Parliament men bumbled around in the cold warren of tunnels, while they gaped stupidly at the empty cell and summoned the courage to step into the darkness of the Prince’s secret passage.

  There were any number of places: side tunnels, abandoned chambers, piles of rubble. Compensatory lengthening affects first aorist forms whose verbal root ends in a sonorant. Did the spirits know this place or were they guessing? The secret passage; the escape through the opposite side of the castle. Were they desperate or calculating? The distraction; the bravado. Discount places with inadequate chance of concealment. Discount places that might be simply or accidentally checked. Discount the indefensible, discount the dead-ends.

  In Attic and Ionic Greek, the sigma in t
he first aorist suffix causes compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel. It must be a place between the Prince’s passage and the areas where the Governor and the guards were most likely to be. The spirits needed the pursuit to go past them into the cell and the passage and that side of the castle – clattering and shouting, confused and angry, red faces and conflicting orders – leaving the way clear to the other side.

  Thurloe at a junction of passageways, looking at the grit around his boots, looking at the patterns in the flagstones, looking down the passage in front of him, past a stairwell entrance to where the dust swirled idle and golden in a column of light from a hole in the roof above. In Aeolic Greek, the sigma causes compensatory lengthening of the sonorant. They must have waited for some time: The letter will bring these foolish Parliament men to the wrong part of the castle, but I can’t cut the time too finely. I don’t know how long I’ll have to wait for the foolish Parliament men to snap at my bait. I can’t risk them coming before I’ve reached my hiding-place. Where might I sit in relative comfort for an hour or so?

  Twenty steps up the spiral staircase Thurloe found a spot where the grit had been brushed away by a pair of recent backsides, and scuffings beneath where four boots might have rested for a time. This’ll do. We can hear the foolish Parliament men scampering past below, we can slip out smart enough, but we’ll have time to get ready if someone does by some chance come up here.

  He sat down beside them – on the step below, anyway, as a younger man might.

  These men – the one who broke in, at least – they knew this place. They know places like this. This is their country, and it always has been, and I am an interloper. The remarkable business of the letter. Was this all fantastic chance? The effectiveness of the timings, the smoothness with which the foolish Parliament men fitted into the plan. He knew when the letter would arrive.