The Bleeding Land Read online

  ‘We need more men,’ Mun said, stating the obvious but wanting to say something, hoping conversation might edge thoughts of Tom out of his mind. The wind’s fury had abated and the day promised to be hot and dry. A good day. A new day.

  ‘They’ll come, Mun,’ Emmanuel said. ‘Their king has called them and they will come.’

  King Charles turned his back on his army and, accompanied by his officers including Sir Francis, made for the castle.

  But the men they so desperately needed did not come, not enough of them anyway, which was why Sir Francis, lately made a Colonel of Horse by King Charles himself, had ordered Mun and Emmanuel, yet to be placed in a troop, to ride out amongst the nearest towns and villages and gauge the mood of the people.

  ‘Better to use a neat hammer and strike the nail true than a rock and see it bent,’ Sir Francis had said, meaning the two of them would have a better chance of perceiving men’s willingness to fight than would a company of infantry marching through the streets beating the muster drum.

  So on the fifth day, Mun and Emmanuel rode some seven miles north to Hucknall Torkard. Lying in a valley on ground rising towards the north and west, sloping south-east and watered by a lively brook flowing to the River Leen, Hucknall Torkard was typical of those towns that still clung to the open-field form of farming. Champion lands bristling with crops and thick with woodland surrounded a great cluster of habitation that could potentially field, according to the King’s officers, at least five hundred good fighting men, perhaps more still.

  It was Friday and market day and Mun hoped also to get some measure of what quantity of provisions the town could rightly be expected to yield up for His Majesty’s army. Certainly there was plentiful grain from the looks of the carts laden with golden sheaves that were coming in from the fields.

  They rode leisurely along the main thoroughfare up towards the town square, keen to appear at their ease and thus observe Hucknall Torkard in its natural state rather than to agitate folk who must be every day expecting the King’s men to come recruiting. They had dressed simply, too, for the same reason, though both were armed, Emmanuel with his wheellocks and Mun with his prized possessions: a fine pair of pistols whose lock-plates were engraved with the name of their maker, the renowned London gunsmith William Watson. They had been a gift from his mother the night before he, Emmanuel and Sir Francis had left Shear House for York to answer the King’s call. The pistols were similar, Mun knew, to another pair that Sir Francis had owned, a pair of man-killers twenty-six inches long which had gone missing around the time of Martha’s death. And though none had spoken much of it, Mun knew full well who now carried those weapons. Wherever he might be.

  They wore swords too, slung from buff-leather baldricks so that their hilts rested against their left thighs. Perhaps the folk of Hucknall Torkard did not fear these two strangers had come recruiting for King Charles, but they did see their fine mounts, their weapons and the other accoutrements of highborn gentlemen, and so they doffed their hats and some of the women curtsied, and all scrambled out of their way, as far as was possible on market day. For the streets were thronging with townsfolk, swelled further by those come from nearby villages. Mun felt the warm August air itself – thickened and hazed as it was by floating chaff from the threshing – thrum with the excitement of the market. Cobblers, tailors, coopers and leatherworkers plied their trades from open-fronted stalls. Wool-merchants, fruit-sellers, fishmongers, butchers and bakers yelled in lilting, sing-song voices, entreating folk to examine their fragrant wares. Dogs yapped and fought over scraps, children ran wild, threading nimbly through the crowds, released for a few hours from the grain harvest, and livestock lowed and bleated, excited to be turned out onto the common fields to feed on the stubble and leavings.

  ‘Sir Francis was right,’ Emmanuel said, his dark eyebrows arched above kindly hazel eyes, ‘these folk are too busy making money to think of making war.’

  Mun rubbed Hector’s poll just between his ears and the stallion snorted contentedly, for they had pulled up to wait behind a wool cart that had spilled seven or more of its bales. The merchant and his two young sons were frantically trying to reload the cart, ignoring the insults some hurled their way, yet clearly nervous to be holding up two armed and mounted gentlemen.

  ‘Reports have it that the rebels have left London,’ Mun said, raising a palm affably towards the merchant to show that he was in no rush. ‘These folk and others like them must be brought to the King’s standard without delay else we run the risk that they will go over to Essex.’

  One of the oxen yoked to the cart was bellowing furiously, its ill-temper likely to have caused the accident in the first place, Mun suspected.

  ‘They would not dare,’ Emmanuel blurted as though the very idea was preposterous.

  Mun thought about it, then shrugged. ‘Maybe not,’ he admitted. ‘But Father says that if we can raise a proper army, twenty thousand or more, it may be enough to win without a shot being fired. The rebels would piss their breeches and beg His Majesty’s forgiveness.’

  Ahead, the boys hefted the last bale back onto the pile and the man gave a ‘Heya!’, yanking on the reins to get the oxen moving again.

  ‘But we don’t want the rebels to abandon their treachery, do we,’ Emmanuel said through a mischievous grin, ‘not before we’ve bloodied their noses. A disobedient dog must be beaten.’

  Mun half smiled but said nothing. In truth he was not sure what he wanted. Certainly there was part of him that welcomed this fight. He had trained with sword and pistol from a young age. Under Sir Francis’s guidance he had become an excellent horseman and knew he could outride most men. The thought of riding against His Majesty’s enemies thrilled him. He could just imagine Essex’s apprentices fleeing for their lives before a full-blooded cavalry charge. And yet there was another part of Mun that knew war was no game, that it maimed and ruined men. That it brought destruction and despair.

  And so he decided to do what his mother would surely do were she, like him, caught in two minds. He would ask God.

  ‘That looks to me a good place to start,’ Emmanuel said, nodding across the street beyond a noisy crowd that was gathering to watch a cockfight, and Mun guessed his friend was referring not to the smoke-belching smithy or the brewhouse, but rather the Dancing Bear alehouse that sat between them. Two buxom women with loose curls falling to their pale, half-covered bosoms stood outside hefting cups which they swept after by-passers, inviting them to taste ‘the sweetest ale in all of England’.

  ‘There is somewhere I must go first,’ Mun said, ‘but buy me a pint of that if it is good and cold and I’ll be there soon.’

  Emmanuel frowned and for a heartbeat Mun resented having to explain himself, but then, Emmanuel would be family soon. So he nodded ahead, drawing his friend’s eye above the bustling crowds before them. ‘I must visit the church,’ he said. Three hundred yards away, overlooking the thronging town square and its commerce like a silent witness to Man’s greed, stood the church of St Mary Magdalene. ‘I’ve heard it said that the tower was built in the eleven hundreds,’ he added, the implied reason for his wanting to visit preferable to the truth.

  But Emmanuel did not take the bait and smiled knowingly. ‘If there was ever a time to make amends,’ he said, rolling his eyes Heavenward, ‘it’s now. Before the fighting starts. Say a prayer for Bess and me,’ he said, then hoisted an invisible mug into the air, ‘and I’ll make an offering to the old Roman gods. Just in case.’ And with that he pressed with his right knee and flicked the reins, wheeling his mount off the road, towards the Dancing Bear. ‘Make it a good prayer!’ he called, still holding the invisible libation.

  ‘Aye, I’ll pray that that ruin of a house you’re building doesn’t fall in on your heads,’ Mun called after him through the warm, clamour-filled August air.

  At the church, Mun dismounted and gave a boy and girl a farthing each to look after Hector, then he stood in the shadow of the tower, allowing his eyes to be dr
awn up to the narrow pointed window arches, higher still to the merlons and crenels of its crown and then the bright blue sky beyond. Then he lifted the latch on the ancient oak door and went inside, closing it behind him so that the sharp noise of the chaos beyond faded to an ocean’s murmur.

  The church was cool, dark and empty, the last hardly surprising on market day. It had stood here for five hundred years. And will be here when the merchants, traders and craftsmen pack away their goods and take down their boards, Mun thought. It will be here when we are all in the grave.

  If he had not been alone Mun might have removed his weapons and left them outside. But then leaving Hector with strangers – children at that – was one thing. Giving them charge of his pistols and sword was quite another. Besides which, he had come to talk to God about war and a righteous war too, and so in some ways it seemed to him fitting that he should come to the Lord’s House bearing the arms he might soon use to discharge his duty; to protect his King whose right to rule derived directly from God’s will.

  He walked down the nave and chose a stall on the north aisle that was partly washed in pale light from a small window, and there he knelt, letting the light bathe his face, his clenched hands resting on a low shelf in front of him. For a moment he let the radiance warm his eyelids, then he opened them. Beside the window was a fresco the likes of which the Puritans had been defacing all over England. But this one was perfect and when Mun recognized the scene it portrayed, a shiver of portent ran up his spine. It showed the Prodigal Son returning to his father. The son was kneeling, his hands stretched up to his father whose arms were open to receive him. And yet, far from joyful, both faces looked full of sorrow.

  ‘Where are you, brother?’ he whispered, watching motes of dust shimmer and swirl within the shaft of light crossing his gaze. Then he put his forehead to his knuckles, closed his eyes and prayed. He prayed to God to give him courage to do his duty if it came to a battle. He prayed that his father and Emmanuel would come through unscathed. He prayed that it might not come to battle at all, but even in the weaving of the prayer he felt the snag of that thread, knew the Lord could see through the tapestry to the man beyond. For, deep in his heart, faint enough that Mun hoped God might not hear it (yet knew that He did), beat the drum of war.

  For a while he lost himself in his thoughts, some of which had strayed from the path of prayer, for which he felt vaguely guilty, but then something hauled him back to the present so that he felt the cold stone flag beneath his knees and the indentations in his forehead made by the bony knots of his fingers. A sound. Or rather a change in the sound. The ocean murmur of the market of which he’d been only faintly aware had altered in pitch, like a pot of water rising from a simmer to a rolling boil.

  Mun cocked his head, his ears straining to untangle the sounds that were louder yet nevertheless dampened by the thick dressed stones of St Mary Magdalene’s church. Screams, he knew with chill certainty. Women. But horses too.

  Surely it was not possible that Essex’s army could have come this far north already! He strode back down the aisle, his boots scuffing loudly against the cold flags, and lifted the latch, pulling the big door open and stepping out. Into chaos.

  Men and women were running in all directions. No, not all directions, he realized, but north and south mainly, into the messuages, the residential plots and gardens, and up the alleys between, to get off the main street. Market stalls were toppled and fruit and vegetables, cups and platters and countless other goods littered the ground. Then he saw what was making the folk of Hucknall Torkard scatter and flee like mice from a swooping owl. Riders, and lots of them, coming up the main street at a trot, blades unsheathed and glinting in the late afternoon sun.

  Hector was waiting where he had left him, tossing his head nervously at the commotion. The young boy, it seemed, had run away but the little girl with the fiery red hair, no more than twelve years old, had not. She stood wide-eyed, one small white hand clutching the stallion’s bridle, the other stroking his muzzle to soothe him.

  ‘Thank you, my lady,’ Mun said, affecting a bow and smiling as he took the reins from her. ‘Now run home,’ he said, scooping another coin from his purse and pressing it into her little palm. She grinned up at him, delighted more by his bow, he knew, than the farthing, then she curtsied neatly, turned and ran fleet as a hare up a narrow street between St Mary’s and what Mun guessed was the minister’s house.

  When he turned back the riders had reached the north side of the town square and there they swarmed in a mass of horseflesh, blades and bright feathered plumes, skilfully weaving their mounts between the traders’ stalls and each other.

  ‘Not Essex’s men,’ Mun murmured, judging their attire far too rich and their horses too well bred for them to be the apprentices and trained bands of London, Surrey and Middlesex. And yet, some men of substance had thrown in their lot with Parliament. Nobles such as Henry Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, William Russell, Earl of Bedford, Edward Montagu, Viscount Mandeville, and more besides.

  A hail of pistol and carbine fire shredded the hazy afternoon as some of the cavalry discharged their weapons at the blue sky. Mun glanced across the street to where men and women were pouring from the Dancing Bear, but he did not see Emmanuel.

  ‘Who are these wild gentlemen?’ someone beside him asked in a voice reed-thin with alarm. He turned to regard a lean, elderly man whose bushy silver brows arched either side of a long pointed nose.

  ‘The King’s men,’ Mun said, sure now that the riders could be no other.

  ‘The answer to your prayers by any chance, young man?’ the minister – for Mun was sure that’s who the man was – asked suspiciously, removing his hat to run a claw-like hand through some stubborn strands of sweaty grey hair that lay across his peeling, liver-spotted scalp. So Mun had not been alone in the church, he realized.

  ‘Nothing to do with me, rector,’ Mun said, though the minister looked far from convinced.

  ‘A man brings pistols into my church, then soldiers ride into town firing their carbines and scattering my flock . . . and you, sir, expect me to believe that you and they are not in league?’

  ‘Get inside your church, rector, and lock the door,’ Mun said curtly, for some of the riders were spurring their mounts towards them. And those riders had not sheathed their blades.

  ‘I will do no such thing!’ the minister replied. ‘The people of Hucknall Torkard have nothing to fear from His Majesty! You may be assured of that, young man.’

  Mun glanced round to see that they were no longer alone. A dozen or more of the townsfolk had gathered around them. Men and women, merchants and farm labourers clustered anxiously, clutching their hands, frowning, asking of their neighbours what was happening, or giving of their own ideas. Mun knew they had been drawn to their church, or their minister, or both, for their symbolic authority. Their protection. And whilst he admired them for not vanishing like musket smoke as the others had, he thought them fools, too, for there was much to fear from armed strangers who would wilfully disrupt a royally granted market. Men who thought nothing of wasting powder and ball on the empty sky.

  Of the ten or so riders who had come as far as the church, one walked his enormous chestnut mare right up to them and took a cursory glance at the tower’s apex behind them, then sheathed his sword. He was proud-looking, verging on haughty, and his curled locks and coiffured moustaches and beard were perfectly formed despite the afternoon’s exertions.

  ‘Why have the men of this town ignored the summons of His Royal Majesty King Charles?’ the man asked through a twist of lips. ‘We are at war, damn your eyes! And yet you hold your market? Are you traitors?’

  ‘We are no traitors!’ a man exclaimed, stepping out from the crowd on Mun’s right. A leatherworker by the looks of the tools in the sack slung across his hips, he was short and ruddy-faced and either brave, or a fool.

  The rider glared at the leatherworker and Mun saw blood-lust in his eyes, knew the man for a hunter who sought
his kill at the chase’s end.

  ‘The folk of Hucknall Torkard have never broken our faith with the King! Not this king or his father before him!’ the man shouted, stirring a chorus of ayes from the crowd which was growing bolder now, inspired by their new spokesman.

  ‘We are loyal subjects,’ the minister agreed, ‘and you trespass, sir! You break the law by threatening honest folk exercising their right to hold a market here in this town.’

  ‘Threaten?’ the horseman clamoured. ‘You count a few shots into the sky threats, rector?’ He smiled but there was no joy in his eyes. ‘This, sirrah, is a threat!’ And with that he spurred his mare forward and the crowd edged back in panic, but for the minister and the leatherworker. And Mun. The rider swung his blade, smacking the flat of it against the leatherworker’s head, and he dropped like a stone to the baked clay earth.

  Mun wanted to move, to either run or fight, but he could not. His muscles gripped his bones, paralysing him, and he stood there uselessly, his right hand clutching Hector’s reins, his left gripping the rapier’s hilt at his hip.

  ‘How dare you attack us?’ the minister challenged the cavalry officer, even daring to step closer to man and beast. ‘What is your name, you devil?’

  Some of the other riders laughed at this, seemingly enjoying the fear on the faces before them. Their horses neighed and whinnied, their blood running hot.

  ‘My name is Captain Nehemiah Boone,’ the officer announced proudly, ‘of His Highness Prince Rupert’s Royal Horse. And you, sir,’ he spat, ‘are a traitor!’

  ‘I say again we are no traitors!’ the minister declared. No one had dared move to the aid of the leatherworker who lay motionless. But still alive, Mun was almost sure. ‘I will answer His Majesty the King myself. Let him judge what we are,’ the churchman said.

  Nehemiah Boone seemed to consider this for a moment, then he glanced at one of his men who still brandished a carbine that was cocked and ready to tear a hole in a man.