Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) Page 18

  ‘You will come with us, Lord Lidford,’ Mun said, ‘for I will not have you rounding up men to try to hamper our progress.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry. His friends are halfway to bloody France by now, their arses playing a merry old tune,’ John Cole said, raising a few chuckles from the others.

  ‘We go to fight,’ Mun said, stepping into his stirrup and hauling himself up onto Hector’s back, ‘and your gun will be more useful aimed at the rebels than it would be sitting in your damn barn. Fitch, Jones, disarm Lord Lidford and his fool son. Keep them on a short leash. If they give you any trouble, kill them.’

  ‘You heard Sir Edmund,’ Fitch barked, dismounting. ‘Your swords, gentlemen, if you please.’

  ‘The King will hear of this!’ Lord Lidford protested, unbuckling his belt and handing it with its scabbarded blade to the broad-shouldered, broad-grinned former stonemason’s apprentice.

  ‘I have no doubt he will, my lord,’ Mun said, turning Hector with his right knee and a click of his tongue and walking him westward after Goliath. ‘I dare say His Majesty would be cheered to hear that you have brought your cannon to aid his nephew in reclaiming Lichfield for the Crown.’

  And with that Lord Lidford had the sense to hold his tongue.

  The rest of the slog to Lichfield was arduous and ponderous and uneventful. Three miles east of the city one of Prince Rupert’s troops of dragoons came upon them and if Mun’s allegiance was not immediately obvious, one look at Goliath told the dragoons that the ragged men had come to help prosecute the siege. Their captain, a smartly attired young officer with impeccable breeding and a penchant for ostrich feathers, judging by the plumes – two blue, one white – trimming his wide-brimmed hat, appeared less than impressed by Mun’s troop. This Captain Assheton had ridden up, swept his hat from his head to unleash a mass of curls, and demanded to know to which regiment they belonged.

  ‘Looks like a damned owl in an ivy bush,’ O’Brien had muttered.

  ‘I command here,’ Mun had replied coarsely, choosing not to mention his own title though he knew it would likely smooth his way, ‘and I answer to no man but His Highness the Prince.’ Captain Assheton had raised his eyebrows and eyeballed Mun, his dragoons bristling behind him. But then he had curled his lip and nodded, assuring Mun that he would provide safe escort to Lichfield, for the rebels, he said, were like toadstools and liable to spring up where none had been before, so that caution was advised. Mun knew that it was not his mention of the Prince that had blunted Assheton’s bellicosity but rather that the captain was enough of a soldier to recognize fighting men – dangerous men – when he saw them. He must have been awed by Goliath too and likely wondered how such a powerful gun was in the hands of so few.

  It had not rained, thank God, for that would have made moving Goliath impossible, but the day had grown overcast and now the grey, rain-filled clouds were brewing a storm and blending into the dusk as they rode into the town.

  ‘It’ll be pissing on us before we can find warm billets, a wee drop and a fond welcome,’ O’Brien grumbled, ignoring the gawping faces of musketeers and artillerymen who had gathered thick as hounds on a bone around the cannon.

  ‘I’m sure Captain Boone will be overjoyed to see us,’ Mun said through a half smile, knowing full well that the Irishman’s idea of a fond welcome involved rather more assets than their captain boasted. He inhaled the myriad smells: some terrible, but all strangely comforting, of a camp full of soldiers. His mind bore him back to the last time he was with the King’s army, at Oxford, and that memory was closely followed by a pang deep in his chest which he tried to ignore. For being back with the army dredged up events much darker than the rain clouds which threatened them now. He could all but see his father in his neat buff-coat and high boots, adorned for a war he would have preferred no part in. He could almost reach out and grab Emmanuel, wrist to wrist in the warrior’s way: Emmanuel who had been braver than any man and eager for the fight. Yet both of them were dead. And Mun fought on.

  ‘Ours must be bigger than anything they’ve got here,’ young Godfrey suggested, thumbing at the artillery sergeant who was thrusting his halberd this way and that, barking at his men to get Goliath moved to the main battery further west. Godfrey was sitting his dappled grey mare as proudly as if he had brought the five loaves and two fish to feed the multitude, as were several other of his men, Mun noticed, albeit they gladly relinquished responsibility for the cannon to those who had been prosecuting the siege.

  The oxen began lowing again, complaining at being made to pull the encumbrance further still when they had already hauled it twenty miles and thought their labour done for the day. ‘Fresh beef, lads! Dinner on the hoof compliments of Lord Lidford!’ O’Brien called out, earning a look from Lord Lidford that would have taken the skin off a rabbit.

  ‘These cattle and this gun are mine!’ Lord Lidford countered from his saddle, his voice cutting through the din of cattle and men and musketry near by, ‘and if any man mistreats either, if any man so much as salivates in front of one of my animals I shall have his hands cut off. Do you hear?’ Some of the seasoned musketeers grumbled obscenities and Lord Lidford’s son, whose name Mun had learned was Jonathan, had the decency to look embarrassed, for all his puffed-up chest and defensive posture.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ O’Brien grumbled, catching the first spits of rain in an upturned palm as he and Mun, relieved of the cannon, led their column towards the immense imposing pile that dominated all before it. To Mun’s eyes the cathedral resembled more of a challenge to God’s authority than a grand demonstration of His glory. Its three great spires proclaimed a martial power more than a hopeful, spiritual endeavour; looked for all the world like spear points thrusting for Heaven’s belly. Which was fitting, he thought, knowing the blood that had been spilled within the cathedral’s shadow over the last weeks. For having neither walls nor a castle, the Earl of Chesterfield had established his garrison in the Cathedral Close which was encircled by a high wall, and there he had held out against Lord Brooke’s Parliament for several days before his inevitable surrender. Now, the rebels held the Close. The besiegers had become the besieged.

  ‘Looks as if our lot took a battering,’ O’Brien said as they drew nearer. Even in the dark Mun could see the damage Parliament’s cannon had wreaked amongst the towers and spires.

  ‘They still shouldn’t have given it up,’ Mun said, taking in the sight of Prince Rupert’s forces gathered behind their siege lines, sheltering behind ruined walls and in the shells of houses, milling behind earth-filled gabions, keeping their match dry, smoking their pipes and resigning themselves to another night out in the open. ‘Because now we’ve got to take it back again.’

  ‘O’Brien, you red Irish devil, is that you?’

  O’Brien grimaced. ‘If we turn round now, Sir Edmund, we can ride out of here before it’s too late.’

  ‘I fear it’s already too late,’ Mun said, feeling a smile tug at his lips at the sight of Richard Downes and Vincent Rowe threading their way through the soldiers, the rain and the gloom towards them.

  ‘No, it’s not me, Downes,’ O’Brien replied, showing a palm, ‘I’m just a Heaven-blessed handsome Irishman who happens to look like your old friend O’Brien, though I’ll confess ’tis a strange thing that two men should share such good looks.’ He reached down and gripped Downes’s wrist and then Rowe’s, the four of them grinning like fiends, and as they greeted Mun in turn he felt warmth bloom in his chest, vanquishing dark thoughts. For it was a fine thing to be reunited with his brothers-in-arms, men with whom he had shared the fear and the frenzy and the madness of battle.

  ‘You tosspots are still giving the rebels cause to piss in their boots and regret taking up arms against their king?’ Mun asked, noting that young Vincent Rowe had a more steely look in his eyes nowadays. Perhaps they all did, he thought.

  ‘I’m not so sure we’ve been keeping those traitorous bastards from their sleep,’ Downes said, gesturing back tow
ards the Cathedral Close, ‘but I’ll wager we’ve got the men of Lichfield keeping a close eye on their women.’ He gripped Rowe’s shoulder with a filthy, powder-burnt hand. ‘Even the whelp here has been swinging his nutmegs around the town. As fortune would have it we’ve been knee-deep in quim since you two buggered off and left us in Oxford.’

  ‘Now I know you’re lying,’ O’Brien said, nodding at Rowe, ‘for youngen’s got a face like someone set it on fire and put the flames out with a spade,’ at which they all laughed, for Vincent Rowe’s high cheekbones, full lips and dark eyes made him handsome enough to turn many a girl’s head and cause husbands to tighten their grip on their wives.

  ‘The boys will be glad to see you back,’ Rowe said, rubbing Hector’s muzzle like an old friend.

  ‘And how’s our good friend Captain Boone?’ O’Brien asked.

  ‘Still alive. Still a bastard,’ Downes said.

  ‘Now now, Trooper Downes,’ Corporal Bard said, appearing from nowhere and nodding in greeting to Mun and O’Brien. The guard of his three-bar pot was pushed up, exposing his skull-like face. ‘Good to have you two back with us,’ he said. ‘Do I take it there are no more rebels in Lancashire? Rumour is you and your farm lads have been hunting ’em down like the bloody plague.’ His eyes ran the length of the column behind Mun but it was impossible to know what the man was thinking.

  ‘There are still plenty of Parliament men up there, Corporal,’ Mun said, ‘but I heard that Captain Boone has been heartsick ever since I left.’ He shrugged. ‘I couldn’t think of him suffering like that and so here I am.’

  Bard hawked, turned his head and spat a wad of tobacco and phlegm into the mud. ‘And you happened across a bloody great gun on your merry way,’ he said. ‘A bloody great cannon no less.’

  Again Mun shrugged, glancing at O’Brien, who smiled. ‘It was just sitting there by the road, Corporal,’ Mun said. ‘Seemed a shame to ride on by and leave it to the enemy. We thought His Highness might find use for it.’

  ‘The cannon is mine, Corporal,’ Lord Lidford said, walking his Cleveland Bay up, so that Mun noticed Bard taking in the fine horse with its large, white-star-marked head and well-muscled withers, before he fully appreciated the man upon it.

  ‘And who might you be?’ Bard asked, the respect he would usually have afforded a man in full cuirassier’s armour blunted by the man’s apparent lack of a sword.

  ‘Insolence everywhere I turn,’ Lord Lidford announced despairingly and Bard looked up at Mun for an explanation that Mun did not have the time or patience for.

  ‘I must speak with the Prince,’ Mun said, peering through the torch-lit night towards the siegeworks before the Cathedral Close.

  ‘Aye, I expect you must, Sir Edmund,’ Bard said, as though the title still tasted curious on his tongue, ‘but I warn you His Highness has cursed you more than once since Oxford. You were supposed to join us at Windsor once you had broken the rebels attacking your house.’ He raised one eyebrow. ‘Perhaps you forgot,’ he suggested, scratching one hollow cheek upon which the bristles were thick and grey. ‘Besides which, he’s been in a foul mood since we got ’ere.’ He thumbed back towards the rebel defences which Mun now saw were surrounded by a moat. ‘Getting that lot out will be harder than getting a quart of ale out of Walton,’ he said, which made the point well for Humphrey Walton was a known niggard though he always seemed flush with coin for whores and gambling.

  ‘I suspect my cannon might cheer him,’ Mun said.

  ‘Aye, it might,’ Bard admitted, glancing again at Lord Lidford and the young man at his shoulder and cocking his chin in their direction, wanting an explanation. But Mun did not want to get into it and so he ignored the corporal. Bard shrugged. ‘Downes, Rowe,’ he barked, ‘now that I’ve found you why don’t you make yourselves useful for once in your miserable lives? Get Sir Edmund’s troopers’ horses picketed and find this lot billets and ale.’

  ‘Why don’t we find them each a woman, a warm bed and a suckling pig while we’re about it?’ Downes dared, earning himself a look from Bard that promised cold horrors.

  ‘Let’s not go spoiling them,’ Bard replied, ‘they ain’t bloody heroes. And I’m no military genius but I reckon that there cannon would be a great deal more use if they had brought shot for it.’

  ‘Don’t ask for much, does he?’ O’Brien grumbled.

  ‘You haven’t changed a bit, Corporal Bard,’ Mun said, dismounting, impressed that even in the dark with the cannon being taken off by the artillery sergeant and his men, Bard had known from the way the cart rode that it could not have contained shot.

  ‘I’m older, Sir Edmund,’ Bard said, ‘but I blame that on the damn rebels.’

  ‘We’re all older,’ Mun said.

  ‘Praise the ripe field not the green corn,’ O’Brien said, as Rowe took Hector by the bridle and Downes took O’Brien’s mare and the horses blew and nickered excitedly for they knew they would soon be fed.

  ‘Lead on, Corporal,’ Mun said.

  ‘Aye, off we go then,’ Bard said, turning back towards the looming cathedral as Mun and O’Brien, Lord Lidford and his son Jonathan followed through the siege lines that smelt of wet wool and tobacco smoke, the latrine pit and, more faintly, the sharp metallic and earthy scent of burnt black powder.

  To find the Prince.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BESS HAD NEVER seen London before. She had heard enough about it – too much if truth be told – from Mun who had visited the capital several times and then from Tom who had been full of it all after his time there with his father and brother before the war. They had told her that London was a great monster, spreading out beyond the confines of the medieval city, stretching from Stepney in the east to Westminster to the west. They had told her that London was home to four hundred thousand souls, though she had not been able to conceive of so many people and had listened to their stories with a quiet detachment, as though they talked of a foreign country which she, in all likelihood, might never see with her own eyes.

  ‘The streets flow like rivers,’ Mun had said, ‘and like a river in which it is impossible to touch the same water from one heartbeat to the next, there flows an endless tide of faces which once seen are never caught sight of again.’

  ‘All the country is stuffed into London,’ her father had said once on returning from the place, ‘so that soon England will only be London and the whole country left waste.’

  And yet none of their talk had prepared her for it. Because it was not the same place any more. She had been struck by its size, its vastness, but where were the multitudes thronging the streets which her brothers had spoken of? She had been awed by the palatial buildings of the Strand and made dizzy by the grand classical piazza of Covent Garden, its space so at odds with the random and haphazard arrangement of London’s winding streets, alleyways and courtyards. She had been horrified by the atrocious housing of the poor labourers and apprentices and desperate migrants who massed in London like flies on a corpse, their appalling and unsanitary living conditions like nothing Bess had ever seen or imagined.

  Yet London was but a shadow of itself. Even Bess, who did not know the city, could feel that. If London had been an open hand before the war, now it was a closed fist, scalded by the conflict, withdrawing from it like flesh from the flame. Absent was the feverishness she had expected to see but should have known she would not, for with the King and his court removed to Oxford, London’s apprentices off fighting, other men having been conscripted, and those folk that remained burdened by Parliament’s new taxes, parts of the city had a stillness about them. The great law courts, the chancery, and the King’s Bench at Westminster had seemed all but abandoned and now, as they crossed the bridge into Southwark, Bess could tell that Dane sensed it too, that there was a cloud over the city as thick as any you might see on a cold day when the coal fires belched their smoke into the sky. Dane’s eyes had lingered on the boarded-up shop fronts and the lifeless trading and livery companies which would
normally have buzzed with craftsmen and manufacturers.

  ‘It is a pity you and the boy should see London like this,’ Dane said now, careful to step around a pile of fresh dung as they led their mounts southward down Long Southwark. ‘This damned war has ripped out the city’s heart and soul.’

  And yet to look at Joe Bess would have thought he was gazing upon St Peter’s gates. The young man had never before been north of Preston or south of Wigan, so that he had turned dumbstruck the moment they came into the city. Was dumbstruck still, and they had been in London two days.

  ‘I’ll wager one can’t even find a comely whore any more with so many Puritans wagging a finger around Westminster,’ Dane said.

  ‘Then you can blame the rebels for your loss,’ Bess muttered as soon as an old white-haired brewer had trundled out of earshot on his cart.

  ‘I blame both parties,’ Dane replied, letting go the bridle to sweep his unkempt dark hair back off his forehead, tying it with a thong as his little Welsh Cob walked dutifully behind.

  Without the lank hair to obscure his face, his cheekbones and strong dark eyebrows announced themselves, and Bess considered that some women might think him handsome, at least until they knew the man for a boor and a drunkard.

  ‘Royalist and Parliamentarian garrisons have spread like a pox over the country,’ he said. ‘Every town along the Thames from here to Oxford is choked with them and London suffers for it.’ They had been approached by so many starving, wild-eyed beggars that Dane now walked out in front just ahead of Bess, his hand never far from his sword. Joseph guarded the rear, though his blunderbuss and Dane’s pistols were well hidden amongst the blankets carried in sacks upon the dun mare’s back. ‘The normal trade routes are tightly controlled or blocked completely,’ Dane said, ‘and London is hungry. But Parliament is hungrier. It milks the city’s merchants as much as – perhaps more than – did the King.’ He grimaced then and Bess caught a glimpse of the other Dane, the man who had slaughtered those clubmen with terrifying ease. The killer. ‘Parliament’s war chest fills and men’s bellies do not.’