The Bleeding Land Read online

  ‘Quite so, Will,’ Penn said, ‘only, Tom has never so much as told us his father’s name, let alone how it is that he rides the finest horse in Essex’s damned army, owns expensive pistols and a pretty sword and yet became a guest of the Leaping Lord. Not to mention a conscientious student of hard drinking.’

  Trencher frowned and a tributary of sweat was channelled to run off the end of his bulbous nose. September was just a few days away but it was hot enough that the air above the fields either side of the road seemed to shimmer like water. ‘Aye, Penn’s got a point there, lad. I’ve never seen you praying, neither, not that I’d take you for a God-fearing man even if I had.’ He hawked up a gobbet of phlegm and spat it onto the dry ground. ‘Why have you come?’

  But Tom gave no answer. He glanced down at the polished, flared handles of his father’s firelock pistols holstered either side of his saddle. And he hungered for the killing to start.

  Mun looked up at the grey sky, felt a fat raindrop splash on his cheek and cursed. He wished he was wearing a buff-coat like some of the others in Boone’s troop, for the tough leather would keep the rain off much better than the steel back- and breastplate he now wore over his tunic. Little brown spots of rust were already beginning to appear even though he had cleaned and oiled the plates just three days earlier. But the harquebus armour had belonged to MacCarthy, in whose place Mun now rode, and he had been obliged to purchase it along with the man’s three-barred pot helmet as recompense for breaking his leg – and, moreover, ‘for denying the man the honour of serving his king’, as the Prince himself had put it, forcing a sombre look onto his face in front of Nehemiah Boone and the rest of the troop. And so Mun had bought the man’s gear, paying over the odds at five pounds but hoping the generous price might go some way to lessening the hostility he still felt from the other men, despite having trained and ridden with them for several weeks now. But that had been a foolish hope, he realized, and he wished he’d only paid MacCarthy four.

  That day in the market place at Hucknall Torkard Mun knew he had made an enemy in Nehemiah Boone. Like most of the highborn, wealthy men in Boone’s troop, the captain was used to getting his own way and if it had been up to Boone, Mun knew, MacCarthy’s broken leg would have been redressed with a rare beating. Maybe even with Mun’s death. Instead, Prince Rupert had rewarded Mun. At least, that was how Boone saw it. For Mun had been granted the privilege of riding with the Prince’s own chosen men, thus the pride of the Royalist army.

  And yet Mun had had no choice but to show his skill, to do his best in spite of the beating he had taken which had made the ride through the square agonizing to the point of being almost unbearable. He smiled now at the memory. Boone’s men had jeered as Mun had mounted Hector and those jeers had smeared a grin onto the captain’s face that Mun had wished he could wipe off with a well-placed fist. Instead, he had ignored the insults and he had whispered to Hector, telling his friend that he needed him now. Together they would show these pompous bastards. God damn Nehemiah Boone. And damn Prince Rupert, too, if he was playing some sort of game with him, expecting to see Sir Francis Rivers’s son fall from his horse because of some hurt, because he had been fool enough to stand up to them. Because he had lain a horse down and the animal had broken a man’s leg.

  He had done one circuit of the square at the trot, just to test that none of his bones was broken and to give Hector a taste of the course. Then he had pricked the stallion to a canter and together they had moved as one creature, weaving in and out of the stalls and the debris, as neat as the seam on a silk purse. But on the third circuit Mun raised the stakes. To the men watching it would have looked as though he would pass to the left of a trestle and board upon which were laid some felts which Boone’s men had not wanted. But at the last moment Mun had spoken with his knees and a flick of the reins and Hector had turned and leapt the stall, Mun low against his back, and landed six feet clear and then jumped the next obstacle too before threading between a butcher’s bloody board and the leatherworker’s stall and breaking into a gallop across the hard ground back to the church.

  A couple of Boone’s men, the Irishman O’Brien for one, had cheered. Most, including Boone, had stayed silent. But Prince Rupert had laughed and his dog, Boy, had yapped, which had sounded like laughter. The Prince had laughed so hard that he had placed a hand on his belly and raised a palm in surrender. And it was then that Mun knew he wanted to ride for this man, the King’s nephew. Damn Boone and all the others too, but he would ride for Rupert.

  And now, at last, summer had slipped away and the sky was grey and heavy. And Mun’s armour was rusting because he wore steel instead of buff-leather. And most of the other sixty-nine men in the troop hated him. And he was riding to war.

  From Nottingham they had ridden at the head of the Royalist army south-west to Stafford and then on to Shrewsbury, their number swelling as the unseasonably gloomy sky swelled with cloud. At last, money was coming in too as the King’s cause began to gather momentum and his wealthier supporters gave generously through loyalty or duty, or even as bargaining counters for future rewards.

  Sir Francis and Emmanuel had been sorry to see Mun leave them to join Prince Rupert’s men, but they also knew such an honour could not be spurned, so the three had vowed to meet regularly, at least whenever the army made proper camp.

  ‘And we three shall soon ride home victorious and full of tales,’ Mun had said, sensing disappointment in his father, who, though he might not show it, feared losing Mun as he had lost Tom. ‘It will be a celebration to shake Shear House to its very foundations.’

  ‘I trust we shall have the victory, Edmund,’ his father had replied with a curt nod, ‘and be home before Christmas and grow fat on venison sent from His Majesty for our service.’ He had frowned then. ‘But that will not happen unless we can bring this rebellion to an end . . .’ he thrust a fist into an open palm, ‘with one great blow. A troop of horse requires one-and-a-half tons of bread each month. The horses alone need thirteen-and-a-half tons of hay. War is the very worst kind of business to be in,’ he had said gloomily, and Mun had felt disappointed in his father. He wanted Sir Francis to show a hunger for the fight. Had he not been a fine soldier in his day? Could he not ride and shoot better than most men half his age? For the first time in Mun’s life he’d looked at his father and seen frailties, more perhaps in spirit than body.

  And yet there were, Mun was beginning to see, more selfish motives at work too. There was more to it than simply wanting Sir Francis to share the thrill of the chase. After all, he had Emmanuel for that. No, he needed his father to be a hawk to ease his own conscience, to blunt the point of that spur that gouged his soul at the prospect of fighting against – killing – fellow Englishmen. Father just needs to catch the fox’s scent on the wind, Mun thought. And then we shall hunt.

  A horse whinnied, wrenching Mun from his thoughts as they rode along a ridge skirting a yardland of wheat stubble a mile south of Worcester. The King had sent his nephew to secure the city, for, among other reasons, Sir John Byron was heading there with a large amount of plate from Oxford, which would be smelted into coin to finance Charles’s cause. However, on examination the Prince had concluded that Worcester could not be defended and the Royalists were withdrawing even as Essex’s vanguard was scouting the approaches to the city.

  Now Mun found himself two miles south of the city near a village called Powick. A musket-shot to his east flowed the Severn River. Ahead of them the Teme, a tributary of the Severn, snaked from the north-west. They rode in column, two abreast, with a great hedge of hawthorn, blackthorn, field maple and hazel on their left along which they now and then passed folk, girls and boys mostly, out gathering fruits and nuts. Within this ancient boundary hedge sheep, goats, fowl and some draught horses scavenged amongst the stubble, but these creatures were safe enough from Boone’s men this day. The Prince himself rode at the head of the column, his orders to secure Powick Bridge and thus cover the Royalist rear. Behind Mun’s column
followed another nine hundred troopers, some three hundred of which were dragoons, mounted men who fought on foot as infantry, their job to break up enemy formations with musketry before the cavalry charged. In all it was a sizeable force of men armed with shot, steel and speed. His father’s own troop was with the main army and the King, but Mun was glad to be where he was. Near the enemy. His eyes scoured the landscape for signs of Essex’s rebels, in case any had been foolish enough to try to overtake them. And there was nowhere in all of England that Mun Rivers would rather be.

  Damn this rain though.

  ‘Ground’s getting too bloody soft for cavalry,’ the trooper riding next to Mun said. A raw-boned, grey-bearded man in his forties, Daniel Bard was one of the oldest men in Boone’s troop. He had fought with the Prince on the continent, had ridden at the head of Rupert’s rash – most said mad – cavalry charge at Vlemgo on the Weser four years before and, even more impressive, had survived it.

  ‘It’s those poor wretches in the artillery train I pity,’ said the big, red-bearded man named O’Brien, riding just ahead, raising his voice above the hissing rain. O’Brien was the man who, when they were battering Mun at Hucknall Torkard, had warned him not to go down. The giant’s advice had spared Mun a rare beating, though Mun had never thanked him for it. ‘Those bastards have it the hardest,’ the Irishman went on. ‘I just hope they get the chance to rip the rebels to wet shreds with their guns after dragging the buggers across half of England.’

  The talk round the cookfire was that O’Brien’s enormous buff-coat had been specially made for him at the equally enormous cost of fourteen pounds, but Mun thought it probably a fair price, for the thing looked tough enough to stop a ball from a cannon royal! More importantly right now, it was keeping the Irishman dry.

  ‘You just keep your powder dry, O’Brien,’ Boone called over his shoulder, ‘and don’t let that big Irish heart of yours bleed for those daft bastard gunners. They make a deal of noise and smoke and doubtless some of the rebels will piss down their legs at the sight of ’em, but those muddy whoresons don’t win battles. We do.’

  ‘Listen to Captain Boone, men,’ the Prince, who was riding beside him, added, and Mun did not have to see the Prince’s face to know that that infectious smile was on it. ‘Done properly and with unswerving courage a cavalry charge is a beautiful thing to behold, better still to be a part of it and see the fear in your enemies’ eyes.’

  Mun wondered if Hector was ready for battle, for the noise and the chaos. For the cannon. During the previous weeks he had done his best to get the stallion used to the smell of gunpowder by firing small trains of it in Hector’s manger, at first a little distance from the horse, but repeating the process closer by degrees. He had done the same thing with firing his pistol and banging a blade against his breastplate, and he had even paid a drummer to beat out a rhythm in the stable to get Hector accustomed to the noise until eventually the horse would eat his oats from the drum head. Nehemiah Boone had said that it was an achievement for any raw trooper not to cut off his horse’s ears when training to fight mounted, and Mun, who had his father to thank for his advanced skill in this regard, knew his commanding officer had not spoken in jest. Now Boone had them galloping up to an ancient set of harquebus armour hung on a pole and for the first fifty charges Hector would veer off at the last, Boone screaming that Mun would never ride in his troop until he could bend his mount to his will. But in the end and partly to Mun’s horror, though he did not admit it, Hector would overthrow the obstacle and trample it viciously. But still Mun did not know how the horse would behave in a real fight; did not know how he himself would react, either, and feared shaming himself or proving a coward in front of the other men.

  Something down amongst the nettles and brambles caught Mun’s eye. A weasel stood tall on its back legs, a half-eaten blackberry in its paws as it watched the men and horses for a few moments before bounding off into the undergrowth. Run to your hole and hide, little one, he thought. Do not linger here, for war is coming.

  ‘We will rest in yonder meadow!’ the Prince called, pointing back the way they had come, beyond the hedged enclosures to the open meadow on the other side. To his front, three hundred paces further along the narrow road, stood Powick Bridge, its five stone arches spanning the River Teme, carrying the road southwards. ‘Dragoons will take up positions behind these hedgerows either side of the road. Captain Boone, bring your troop across the river so that we may appreciate the terrain beyond.’ Boy, the Prince’s white poodle, echoed his master’s orders with a salvo of shrill yaps as two officers peeled off and rode back down the column repeating Rupert’s commands. Then the Prince led seventy men up onto the road and across the bridge, the horses’ hooves scuffing and clopping on the stone.

  Mun leant over his saddle to look down onto the slow-moving river and as he did so he saw the last dimples across its surface fade and vanish as the rain stopped. At that same moment a pale gold light broke from the heavens, washing over the bridge and the fields and the glistening hedgerows lining the road, so that Mun almost believed God had stopped the downpour because it was midday and the Prince wanted to take his ease.

  After a brief reconnoitre of the open fields south of the Teme the Prince seemed satisfied and wheeled his horse round, leading them back across the bridge, from which a foggy vapour was rising in the warm sunlight. Yet Mun felt a slight shiver run up his spine as they funnelled back along the road between the two tall hedgerows, because he knew that beyond them now, hidden from his sight, were some three hundred dragoons armed with firelocks, wheellocks and carbines.

  A little further and they left the road and joined the six hundred men who had dismounted and were removing their armour and their buff-coats, watering their mounts, smoking pipes and enjoying the feel of the sun on their faces.

  And three miles away on the other side of the Teme, a force of one thousand horse under Colonel John Brown rode up the Severn River’s western bank. Heading for Worcester.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MUN WAS WOKEN by a Fierce Crackling which in the dream of a heartbeat ago had been a fire blazing in the grate of the parlour at Shear House. But as he pushed himself up from the breastplate and blanket he had been using as a pillow he knew the ragged barrage of cracks for what it was.

  ‘On your feet, Rivers!’ Captain Boone roared in his ear as Mun looked round, for a brief moment taking in the scene of men waking from a haze like himself, others frantically fumbling at the straps on breastplates, helmets and saddles, and still others who were mounted and wheeling their excited horses, trying to keep them under control.

  He glanced up at the sun. Late afternoon.

  ‘Bloody rebels are on top of us!’ O’Brien said through a grin, his pale blue eyes wide with the thrill of it as his thick thumbs thrust the hooks through the eyes sewn down the inside of his great buff-coat.

  ‘God bless the dragoons for giving them a proper welcome,’ Vincent Rowe exclaimed, a smile on his handsome face as he hauled himself up into his saddle. ‘Hope they leave some for us.’

  Prince Rupert was mounted and yelling orders, the butt of his two-foot-long Dutch wheellock carbine resting on his thigh, his other hand loosely gripping the reins. His white mare seemed perfectly composed. This is it, Mun thought.It is happening.

  Mun had just got his backplate in place when Daniel Bard walked his horse up. ‘No time for that, lad,’ the veteran said, leaning over to take hold of Hector’s bridle. ‘Up you get.’ So Mun dropped the backplate and slung his baldrick over his right shoulder, the sword scabbard falling between his legs and almost tripping him as he snatched up his helmet with its woollen skullcap nestled inside. Then he thrust the pot down, fumbled at the thong beneath his chin, placed his left foot in the stirrup and pulled himself up whilst Daniel Bard held the stallion steady.

  ‘Pistols loaded?’ the veteran asked, nodding down at the two firelocks hanging either side of the front of Mun’s saddle.

  Mun tried to speak but his m
outh was too dry so he nodded. Then Bard wheeled off and Mun gave Hector his heels and followed, trotting to join the loose mass of cavalry that eddied and swirled round Prince Rupert like fierce white water around a rock. Horses were moving their bowels with nerves and excitement, and Mun felt a sudden desperate urge to empty his own bladder. To their south towards the bridge, firearms cracked sporadically, the faint noise of battle, of horses whinnying and men shouting, growing louder with each passing moment.

  ‘Do not fire until you are upon them!’ Rupert yelled, his usual easy nature replaced by a savageness, teeth bared like a wolf’s.

  Or . . . a child of war. That was what Sir Francis had said of the Prince and only now did Mun truly understand what he’d meant by that. ‘For King Charles and for God!’ Rupert yelled, thrusting his carbine into the air, and with that he gave the mare his spurs and she screamed and surged forward, and a great roar went up as his men followed.

  Mun filled with the mad, terrifying joy of the chase as he gripped with his knees to show Hector he was still in command, yet allowed the beast’s herd instinct to drive them on through the press of horseflesh, riders, leather and steel. Somewhere in his mind something screamed, Pull back! Let other men be the first. More experienced men.

  Instead he found his voice. ‘Heya! Come on, Hector! Come on, boy!’

  The hooves of six hundred galloping horses beat out a frantic, furious rhythm on the soft earth. Tack jangled and armour clanked and men dug their spurs in, yelling wildly, willing the battle frenzy to seize them in its maw where there is no terror, only madness.

  Then suddenly, up ahead, the rebels broke through a gap in the hedgerow, flooding the meadow towards them, desperate to escape the narrow road and the murderous fire of the Royalist dragoons behind the hedges.

  ‘Kill the traitors!’ a man yelled.