The Bleeding Land Read online

  About the Book

  A nation divided.

  England is at war with itself. King Charles and Parliament each gather soldiers to their banners. Across the land men prepare to fight for their religious and political ideals. Civil war has begun.

  A family ripped asunder.

  The Rivers are landed gentry, and tradition dictates that their allegiance is to the King. Sir Francis’ loyalty to the crown and his desire to protect his family will test them all. As the men march to war, so the women are left to defend their home against a ruthless enemy. And as Edmund, the eldest of Sir Francis’ sons, will do his duty to his king, so his brother Tom will turn his back on all he once believed in ...

  A war that will change everything.

  From the raising of the King’s Standard at Nottingham Castle to the butchery and blood of Edgehill, Edmund and Tom Rivers will each learn of honour, sacrifice, hatred and betrayal as they follow their chosen paths through this most savage of wars.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Also by Giles Kristian

  Copyright

  THE

  BLEEDING

  LAND

  Giles Kristian

  For James, this tale of brothers

  ‘That country is in a most pitiful condition, no corner of it free from the evils of a cruel war. Every shire, every city, many families, divided in this quarrel; much blood and universal spoil made by both where they prevail.’

  Robert Baillie, 1643

  PROLOGUE

  Sunday, 23rd October 1642, Edgehill

  If he closed his eyes Mun could almost convince himself that the great booms were peals of thunder rending the grey October sky. But for the screams. Men did not scream and shriek and wail at thunder, though they did when twelve-pound iron balls ripped off their limbs, smearing the air crimson and leaving splintered bone and mangled flesh in their wake. They screamed then and it was a sound from Purgatory itself; tormented, agonized and hopeless.

  Horses whinnied, stamped and snorted, steam rising from their flanks to thicken the fug of men’s breath and stinking fear that hung above them all like a veil through which God could not see. Which was just as well, Mun thought, for murder was about to be done.

  ‘There, Hector, good boy. Steady, boy,’ he soothed, pushing against his stirrups to pat the stallion’s neck where the thick veins throbbed beneath the skin. Hector snorted gruffly in reply and Mun glanced into the throng of restless riders around him, judging his fear against theirs, for they were in the first line of the Royal Horse and it was nearly time. Surely.

  For the best part of an hour the cannon had roared their defiance, the fury of each barrage like a bully’s bluster, hiding the fear and revulsion that really squirmed in men’s guts. For they must be terrified as I am, Mun thought, a shiver crawling up his spine at the sight of thousands of armed men in all their rebellious glory massed thick as briar at the far end of the ploughed field. And there are more of them than us. Damn them.

  As for the Horse of the Royalist right wing, in which Mun waited like a man on his way to hang, it was said there were upwards of twelve hundred. Yet Mun felt as vulnerable as though he were naked. His skin crawled at the thought of flying lead being drawn to him like wasps to jam. His guts churned at the vision of wicked sharp pike blades gouging into his flesh. He knew, too, that the passage of so many horses would plough the field again, churn it to a killing quagmire.

  And yet, when the order came he would ride at the enemy as though Satan were at his back.

  He pulled all two-and-a-half feet of carbine round from where it hung suspended on his right side and checked it was at the half cock, the lead ball snug in the barrel, then made his eyes trace the swirling scrollwork in the polished beech stock. He tried to imagine the craftsman, quietly, carefully etching by candlelight long before this bitter trouble had come to the land. He wondered after the man from whose dead hands he had prised the gun following the fight at Powick, but then a horse screamed nearby, yanking him back to the present.

  ‘At my word we go like Hell’s hounds!’ Prince Rupert yelled, vigorously wheeling his mount round to face his men. He wore back- and breastplate over a long buff-coat. His scarlet sash and helmet plume matched the red and gold embroidered saddle cloth and the pistol holsters that lay in front of the fine leather boots that reached his thigh. His black mare tossed her head spiritedly, impatient to charge, but instead the Prince had her perform the Passage, lifting each diagonal pair of legs high off the ground and suspending them in a slow trot.

  ‘Damn beast looks like it’s dancing, not going into a fight,’ O’Brien growled on Mun’s right, leaning over in the saddle and spitting. ‘I’ll wager the Prince’s horse can fence like a bloody French gentleman too.’

  Mun knew his father, a master of training and riding horses, a student of manège, would appreciate the horsemanship and he twisted in the saddle, looking for him amongst the three hundred men of the King’s Lifeguard whom the Prince had placed in the second line. But he could not see him and turned back.

  ‘A horse will do that for a prince,’ he said with a tight smile. In truth, he thought, a performance like that, with the big guns singing to the world, would impress anyone, even a man snagged by the fear of pissing down his own leg.

  ‘You will keep your ranks and let the rebels see your blades!’ the Prince hollered, then drew his own sword, which gleamed dully, and held it aloft like a challenge to the heavens. He clung on with one hand as his horse neighed and reared, pawing the air before stamping down and blowing fiercely. ‘You will not give fire until we are amongst the enemy man to man.’ He grinned and his mare bared her teeth, foaming spittle flecking at the bit. ‘In their fright the rebels will give fire too soon, but we shall not. And that is how we will beat them.’

  Men cheered and the Prince hauled on his reins and, still waving his sword, galloped along the line, his horse’s hooves flinging up great clods of earth as he went.

  A foul taste, sour as vinegar, rose in Mun’s throat. Fear. He tried to spit but found he could not, for his mouth was dry as saltpetre. Beside him young Vincent Rowe looked as if he was about to vomit, his face ashen as the dead.

  ‘Lord, I am afraid,’ Mun muttered, feeling the words on his lips because he could not hear them above the cannon and the horses, the yells of officers and the flat beat of the drums, which had started up again. ‘We are all sinners. I more than most men. If I deserve thy retribution, be it a bloody end or maiming, then so be it. But I beg you, Lord. I ask o
nly this. Preserve Tom and keep him from harm. Though we are enemies on this field, he is my brother.’ He grimaced because the prayer felt pathetic amongst that gathering maelstrom, like a moth in a rain-flayed, ball-jangling storm, and he suddenly thought he should check his pistols once more. Too late.

  He sensed a tremor in the ranks, felt the whole right wing shudder and saw men craning, shifting in their saddles to get a glimpse of the Prince, who was walking his mare back along the line to the cheers of his men.

  ‘Just run, Hector, I’ll do the rest,’ Mun growled in the stallion’s ear.

  ‘For God and King Charles!’ the Prince roared, standing in the stirrups, and the words were echoed along the whole Royalist right wing as twelve hundred swords rasped up scabbard throats into the grey day.

  ‘For God and King Charles!’

  And then the shouts were not words at all but the senseless clamour of men rousing themselves to butchery, yelling as though to defy the agony that was coming for them.

  ‘Keep him safe!’ Mun gnarred at the sky. ‘Just do what I have asked.’ Then he put his spur to the stallion’s flank and rode.

  August 1632, Parbold, West Lancashire

  The grass in Old Gore meadow had been left to grow long and would have reached the boys’ shoulders had they not been mounted. At the end of the summer it would be scythed and dried to provide winter fodder for livestock, but that was a lifetime away. For now it was a wilderness and the Rivers boys were hunting Spaniards.

  ‘Let’s go into Gerard’s Wood,’ Tom piped. ‘If I were a Spaniard that’s where I’d hide out and plot against the King.’ His voice was reed-thin and years from breaking, but the challenge in it was clear as spring water and Mun felt his lip curl.

  ‘It is getting late,’ he said, glancing up at the darkening sky. It was stained red, as though the heavens were on fire, and Mun reckoned it would be a fine day tomorrow. ‘You know how Father gets when we keep the horses out past dark,’ he muttered. It was true that Sir Francis had only recently scolded them for riding at night, saying that it was all too easy for a horse to injure itself on uneven ground and go lame. Next day, however, and with the boys still numb from their father’s wrath, their mother had confided that Sir Francis had been worried for their safety rather than the horses’. There were Godless men and cut-throats abroad after dark.

  ‘But it is not yet dark,’ Tom said now through a wicked smile. ‘Besides, Father is in London.’

  ‘Maybe tomorrow,’ Mun said, tugging the reins to wheel his mount round towards the stream that would lead them south-west and home. Being eleven and the elder by three years, Mun knew he would bear the greater part of the punishment if they stayed out after dark. Their father’s riding crop left angry welts that smarted for days after.

  ‘You’re not scared are you, Edmund?’ Tom needled, weighting his brother’s full name the way their mother did when they were in company and Lady Mary was painting a bonny picture of her polite, darling young men. Mun bristled, twisting in the saddle and wrapping his tongue round a grown man’s curse. But the words were scattered in a gust and lost as Tom kicked his heels and galloped off through the long grass, sending a kestrel careening up from its kill, crying shrilly at the dusk.

  Mun grimaced at the thought of a dozen burning weals peppered up the backs of his legs, then flicked his reins, cursed again and raced after his brother.

  Once across the shifting green sea of Old Gore meadow Tom followed the ancient sheep path past clutters of boulders and a few stag-headed Scots pines all cloaked in pale green lichen. It was dusk proper now, the sun having all but sunk far beyond the Irish Sea and the western edge of the world. Over the centuries countless sharp-footed herds had dragged up stones from the soil, so that even Tom slowed his mount to a walk now to lessen the risk of injury. He could smell the woodland beyond the rise – musky, green, rich and damp – and after a little further he wheeled his bay north across a dense scrub of nettles and onto a ridge thronged with bright yellow St John’s wort, where he waited for Mun. He had known Mun would follow him. For all his brother’s high-mindedness – born of the responsibilities that attended being the eldest – Tom knew that Mun too loved nothing better than galloping across the countryside to fight the imaginary enemies of the King. England needed brave warriors, men who could fight and ride and who feared nothing. What were some hard words and a few lashes of their father’s crop compared with the defence of the kingdom?

  ‘I expect we will miss supper,’ Mun moaned, catching his breath as he came alongside Tom, who was leaning forward letting his bay crop the yellow flowers.

  ‘Maybe Bess will save us some,’ Tom suggested hopefully, suddenly realizing how hungry he was. They had not eaten since waking and nothing whetted the appetite like fighting Spaniards.

  A sound brought both boys’ heads whipping up. ‘Did you hear that?’ Tom gasped.

  ‘It came from the woods,’ Mun said, nodding towards the mass of beech and oak that sprawled before them, at once both inviting and forbidding.

  ‘Sounded like a girl,’ Tom piped, blue eyes wide as he stared towards Gerard’s Wood. Sir Gerard had been dead for twenty years and in the absence of an heir the land had gone to the Church, but folk still knew the swath of broadleaf forest as Gerard’s Wood. It was a no man’s land, a place in which children highborn and low wiled away the summer days confined only by their imaginations.

  Mun clicked his tongue and his horse started forward. ‘Is your powder dry?’ he asked, mimicking the austerity of some of his father’s stiff-necked friends who were veterans of the Dutch wars.

  Tom clutched at an invisible flask hanging from an invisible bandolier. ‘Dry as bone dust, sir!’ he snapped with a nod.

  ‘Good man. Then let us round up these Spanish curs.’ Mun started down the flower-bright ridge and across another clump of nettles. A flutter of swallowtail butterflies scattered chaotically and Tom grasped for one but missed. ‘Don’t give fire until my word, you hear?’ Mun ordered, looking straight ahead as they passed the first trunks and entered the forest. Again Tom nodded, clenching his jaw and easing his horse on with a stab of heels.

  The last shafts of golden dusk light arrowed eastwards through the trees and all around them leaves rattled one against another in the breeze. Tom shivered with the thrill of the hunt and the bay, sensing its rider’s excitement, whickered, the sound stifled by the dense cluster of undergrowth. Deeper they delved, through corridors and passageways, across glades and clearings and babbling streams. The forest grew so thick that any sense of direction came only from the nature of the slope. Here, where the evening breeze could not penetrate, the only sounds were the clinks of their own tack, the occasional snort of a horse, and the creaks of boughs rubbing against each other, stretching, twisting as they had over centuries. Until—

  ‘I heard it again,’ Mun hissed. ‘Over that way.’ He pointed towards a stand of beech marked with a clear browse line some six feet off the ground where deer had eaten the twigs and branches as high as they could reach. Nearby, an ancient holm had been savaged into contorted, outlandish shapes. ‘We should ride home,’ Mun said, though he was leaning towards the sound, ears straining. ‘What do you say? Shall we go back?’ He twisted in the saddle now and glared at his younger brother.

  Tom shook his head, his blue eyes wide and his imaginary carbine still in his right hand. Mun nodded and, clicking his tongue, moved off in the direction from which the noise had come.

  Someone was shouting now, cursing in a tone barbed and malicious. Someone else was laughing and then the boys heard the girl’s voice again, just as they pushed their horses between a holly briar and a dead beech standing in ruins and perforated by generations of woodpeckers.

  ‘What in Jesu’s name do we have here?’ a skinny, ashen-pale boy of about sixteen said, brandishing a gnarled lump of oak towards the mounted intruders.

  Mun took in the scene: three boys, all with sticks, all bigger and older than he. In the middle of them was Zacharia
h the cripple. Zachariah’s nose was bleeding and his breeches and hempen doublet were filthy and bloodied. And there, standing just behind the ashen-faced boy, her hands to her mouth, eyes round with fear, was Martha Green.

  ‘What offence has he done you?’ Mun asked Henry Denton, the boy he knew the best of the three. It was nothing he had not seen before – Zachariah’s twisted foot invited the worst cruelty boys were capable of and though Mun had never beaten the boy himself, he had never defended him either.

  ‘Little boys should be in bed,’ Henry Denton spat, pointing a stubby finger up at Mun. A stocky youth, Henry Denton was handsome, but a mop of fair hair, clear skin, ruddy good looks and a rich father had made him arrogant too. At least, that’s what Mun had heard his mother say.

  ‘Everyone is little compared with you, you fat toad,’ Tom said from Mun’s left.

  ‘Hold your tongue!’ Mun snapped at his brother, keeping his eyes on Henry who was staring balefully at Tom, his lips twisted in a grimace.

  ‘Thomas, isn’t it?’ Henry said, tilting his head to one side. ‘Does your wet-nurse know you are out?’ The other two boys laughed and Tom glowered, looking to his elder brother to do something. Anything.

  But Mun sat his horse like a statue, legs gripping like a vice, holding the beast still as it snorted and dragged a foot across the ground. Henry shrugged broad shoulders and turned, nodding to his pale, reed-thin companion, who slammed his club between Zachariah’s shoulder blades knocking him to the ground. Martha Green screamed and stepped forward but Henry snarled at her to stay back. ‘Leave him be, whore!’ he said and even the boy with the oak club seemed shocked at that word. The third boy, a fat bully with a face full of pimples, merely grinned, spitting on Zachariah and threatening another blow, so that the cripple dared not rise again. He lay there, face in the forest litter, ruined leg trembling and, Mun noticed, wet.

  ‘You are evil!’ Martha cried, her green eyes blazing, finger pointing. ‘God will punish you, Henry Denton. He’ll punish you all!’