Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) Page 8

  ‘This God-forsaken winter will be the death of me,’ the spy said, flexing slender fingers as though he feared he might lose the use of his hands. Just to look at this man, Mun knew he would not trust him. That the Prince’s agent was a friend of the Dentons made Mun all but despise him. Their persecution of Minister Green and the horror of seeing him hanged, coupled with Lord Denton’s cruel use of Martha when she had sought his mercy for her father, had driven the girl to suicide. This in turn had led Tom to turn his back on his family and his king in the pursuit of revenge.

  ‘The Prince and six thousand men took Cirencester in four hours,’ the man went on, ‘and marched back to his uncle with one thousand prisoners as well as much-needed arms and provisions.’

  ‘That was well done,’ Mun acknowledged with a nod. ‘Cirencester gains the King a stronghold between Oxford and his rich recruiting grounds in the north-west and Wales.’

  ‘And allows us to growl at Bristol and Gloucester,’ the man added, glancing at O’Brien and Cole who were trying and failing, it seemed, to get a fire going near by.

  ‘Where is the Prince now?’ Mun asked.

  ‘When I left, His Highness was rampaging through Hampshire. But now I expect he is striking terror into our enemies in the Midlands.’

  ‘The Midlands? So not all of the King’s regiments are bottled up in Oxford waiting for spring.’

  ‘Rupert rides to Yorkshire to meet with Her Royal Majesty who is returned from the Continent with men and weapons,’ Hook Nose said. ‘On his way north he means to carve himself a corridor, thus ensuring the convoy a safe return journey with its precious load.’

  ‘The weapons?’ Mun deliberately goaded.

  ‘The Queen,’ the agent snapped waspishly, as though, the weather being foul as it was, he did not need Mun compounding his considerable irritation.

  ‘I still don’t know your name,’ Mun said.

  The miserable man drew his narrow, sloping shoulders even closer together, if that were possible, and Mun felt his own contempt for him bristle across his back like a dog’s hackles. Any friend of the Dentons was no friend of Mun’s. Despite being near neighbours the two families had never got along; Lord Denton’s son Henry had been Mun and Tom’s enemy since they were all boys running wild. That made this man a bastard by association if nothing else.

  But there was plenty else, Mun suspected.

  ‘My name is unimportant, Sir Edmund.’ A full-blown shiver ran from the top of his head to his toes. ‘We both serve God and our king, and that is enough.’ He smiled then and it seemed almost genuine. ‘Even though our methods … our roles in this play, if you will … are very different. In fact, you might say I am one of those whose talents remain hidden from the crowd. The scenery changes and the players play on.’ He lifted his cloak and with two fingers fished inside his doublet’s sleeve, pulling out a handkerchief. ‘I change the scenery, Sir Edmund. I leave the spilling of blood to others.’

  It was clear that that last was aimed at Mun and he accepted the bait. ‘I am spilling no blood sitting here with you,’ he said, ‘so what is it that you want with me?’

  ‘Indeed, let us come directly to the point. The Prince wants you to do something for him. He needs a man he can trust.’

  ‘The Prince barely knows me,’ Mun said, ‘and I fail to believe he would choose me for any task.’

  ‘The task is of a sensitive nature. We need the right sort of men.’

  Mun glanced around, feeling a smile find its way onto his lips. ‘Men that look like cut-throats and villains?’

  ‘Just such.’ The agent secreted the handkerchief back up his sleeve. ‘Your men’s wild aspect is what makes them perfect for the purpose.’ He looked over to where O’Brien and Cole had at last managed to nurture a flame into life, the feathered kindling beginning to catch. O’Brien, looking like a half-drowned troll, growled a satisfied curse. ‘The Prince wanted to ask your friend Osmyn Hooker first but the man was nowhere to be found.’

  ‘Hooker is no friend of mine,’ Mun said.

  The face before him looked surprised. ‘Is that so? And yet the man won you back your estate.’

  ‘I’d sooner trust a mastiff with my meat pie,’ Mun said.

  ‘And there’s another man who comes highly recommended. A fierce-looking fellow. Captain Stryker.’

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ Mun said.

  ‘I dare say, but Stryker is already engaged on the Crown’s business. So here we are.’

  ‘I am also busy serving the Crown, as you can see,’ Mun said, sweeping an arm across his wolfpack’s makeshift den. ‘I kill rebels.’

  ‘You were supposed to ride south and join us at Windsor weeks ago. Once Shear House was safe you had your orders to return to your regiment, not skulk around the moors like a rogue hound.’

  ‘The war goes on here,’ Mun said.

  ‘I could have you up on a charge for desertion, God knows—’

  ‘Be careful, friend,’ Mun said, returning the man’s intense stare. ‘You are far from your comforts and I do not take kindly to threats from men without name or rank. For all I know you could be the keeper of the Prince’s chamber pot.’ The man’s lip curled at that insult but he held his tongue. ‘Until I know that my family and estates are safe from rebels I will continue to … hunt.’

  The man turned his face and looked out at the gathering dusk. The rain was slowing but the fog was thickening and the air was turning even colder.

  ‘Your brother Thomas is a traitor, is he not? An impulsive young man as I recall.’ Mun bristled, clenching his teeth so as not to take this bait. ‘I have heard a rumour, and I am certain it is just a rumour, that Thomas Rivers, second son of Sir Francis Rivers who died bravely trying to save the King’s standard, was one of those prisoners that escaped from our camp at Meriden.’ He frowned. ‘You recall? Someone blew up that powder cache and in the confusion the rebels were sprung from their gaol.’

  ‘I remember,’ Mun said, holding the man’s eye.

  ‘A terrible business,’ the spy said, glaring at him. ‘The perpetrators were never found and the Prince took the whole thing very badly, considered it a monstrous insult that the miscreants thought they could carry out their brazen act under his very nose and get away with it.’

  ‘They did get away with it,’ Mun said, aware of his own heartbeat, hoping that his eyes gave away nothing. For with the help of the mercenary Osmyn Hooker, Mun and Emmanuel had broken the five rebel prisoners out of their gaol that night. They had made traitors of themselves and risked everything. Because one of those rebels had been Tom, and Nehemiah Boone, Mun’s captain – another bastard in Mun’s book – would have seen Tom hanged the next day and taken altogether too much pleasure in it.

  ‘Indeed,’ Rupert’s man said. ‘I have been considering hiring Mr Hooker to find out who was responsible. He is a very resourceful fellow. When one can find him.’ He knows, Mun thought. Or at least he suspects. ‘Can you imagine what would happen to the men if they were found? Especially if, as is suspected, they are King’s men.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘You recall what we did to the traitor Blake, the Prince’s personal secretary?’

  ‘I watched him hang,’ Mun said. ‘He deserved it.’

  Hook Nose’s eyes flicked from left to right, taking in every aspect of Mun’s face, like maggots trying to wriggle deeper inside flesh. ‘Enough of rebels and traitors,’ he said. ‘Let us get back to the issue of your duty. Furthermore, if duty is not in itself enough to lure you away from this desolate, freezing land, if that fruit is yet too tart, let me sprinkle some sugar in the pie. If you perform the service that we require of you, your reward will be not ungenerous. I am sure Mr Hooker’s services cost you dear, even though I had agreed with him to settle that account.’ He tilted his head then, gauging Mun’s reaction to that.

  That bastard Hooker, Mun thought, for with the rebels beaten the mercenary had indeed duped him into draining his family’s silver reserves, just as Mun had suspected at the time. ‘You
paid Hooker?’ Mun asked.

  The agent nodded. ‘You only got Hooker and his men because of me. It was my doing.’ He wafted long white fingers through the numbing air. ‘But that is not important now.’

  Mun’s head was spinning. He felt nauseated by the thought that this man had been manipulating events all along. Perhaps Hook Nose had had it from Osmyn Hooker’s own lips that it had been Mun who had broken the rebel prisoners out at Meriden, but here was someone who would only use that leverage when he needed it.

  Could he even have fashioned the rope that had hanged George Green? Surely not, Mun thought. And yet somehow this man, whose name he did not even know, had manoeuvred him into a position of weakness, something the rebels had been unable to do since Mun had broken the siege of Shear House and begun to hunt them across the moors, forests and valleys of Lancashire.

  Mun looked at his men now as they came out of their shelters to add fuel to, and gather by, O’Brien’s fire, the rain having all but stopped. They were good men. Mun knew that they would follow him.

  Then he looked back at the man before him, who looked nothing much but was as dangerous as a blade in the dark.

  ‘What is it that you need me to do?’ he said.

  Bess did not like Alexander Dane. The man was arrogant. Or else plain rude. He had arrived at her grandfather the earl’s house just after midday and with a pallor that only accentuated the dark circles burrowed beneath his eyes. His breeches, shirt, doublet and cloak had about them all the neatness of having been slept in and his whole appearance slurred of a night drenched in ale.

  ‘By God, man, you’re still at your altitudes!’ Lord Heylyn had remarked as Dane dismounted from a sorry-looking Welsh cob, snagging his foot in the stirrup and all but falling on his face. He muttered a curse at his horse, which lifted its head and snorted as if to say it had heard it all before, then he bent, placing his hands on his knee, and Bess thought he would vomit. Instead, he spat into the mud, dragged a gloved hand across his mouth and stood up nearly straight, his broad-hat in a worse condition even than Joe’s.

  ‘My lord, if you had seen the strumpet I was forced to share my bed with last night you would have downed a cask of the first water just to get over the shock.’ Stifling a belch he glanced at Bess and Joe, then looked back to Lord Heylyn, suspicion thinning his eyes as he removed his hat and raked dark hair off his face.

  ‘Your father would be ashamed,’ Bess’s grandfather said, though he had only just finished a jug of malmsey himself.

  Dane squinted at the sky. ‘At this hour my father would have still been in his cups with a whore on each knee, my lord, as well you know,’ he replied through a scowl, hitching back his cloak, so that Bess could see two pistols tucked in a belt and a brutal-looking sword scabbarded at his left hip. The sword was nothing special but Bess knew enough about weapons to know that the firelocks were of good quality, easily the most expensive items about his person, and that included the cob.

  ‘I have a job for you, Dane,’ the earl had said, pulling his own thick cloak tight around himself, his grey-flecked hair ruffling in the chill wind. ‘You still owe me, for all you seem to squander every penny that comes your way. This is my granddaughter Elizabeth,’ he said, gesturing to Bess, ‘and she means to find her brother, my grandson, who is currently enlisted with Essex’s rebels.’

  The dark points that were Dane’s eyes grew at that, though Bess could not tell which bit of what her grandfather had said interested him more – the fact that she was his granddaughter, or that his grandson was a traitor.

  ‘You are to accompany my granddaughter, however long it takes, and make sure that no harm comes to her. You will have money enough to last, so long as you don’t piss it all away.’

  ‘And the boy?’ Dane said, at which a flush spread across Joe’s face.

  Lord Heylyn shrugged. ‘He is no concern of mine. Keep my granddaughter from harm. Whatever it takes,’ he said, the word whatever the ballast of the command.

  Dane had seemed indifferent to the task being asked of him, preoccupied instead with the misery of his self-inflicted condition. On top of this he struck Bess as disrespectful, inattentive and slovenly, which made the prospect of travelling in his company not in the least bit appealing. Still, she had Joe, who if anything seemed to like Dane even less than she. Furthermore – and this made her heart sing, threw light upon the world and vanquished a great shadow – she had succeeded in prevailing on her grandfather to help. Somehow she had done that. She would find Tom and Tom would be pardoned. Then they would weave the broken threads of her family back together and make the picture whole again. No, not whole. Never so. But it would be a new beginning.

  Thus had they provisioned and set off south from Kingsley that very day with the aim of travelling the ten or so miles to Winsford before dark. Part of Bess wished she had brought her own mare, Chryseis, but she had feared that such a fine-looking horse would bring her unwanted attention and so she had taken a bay called Millicent, who was usually ridden by servants running errands in the village or Ormskirk. Lord Heylyn had provided them with a good-tempered dun mare to help carry provender for man and beast as well as spare furs and waterproofed canvases should they for some reason find themselves sleeping underneath the stars. Dane, Bess noticed, now wore a buff-coat, though made sure it was covered by his bad-weather cloak and a ratty old bear skin which he wore across his shoulders, so that on his short-legged cob he looked more like some grizzled, itinerant pedlar than someone in whose hands you would place your safety.

  For the most part the man kept his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself and this was fine by Bess, fine by Joe too, she suspected from the young musketeer’s silence. He was sulking, she knew, presumably because he felt his position as her protector usurped, and Bess had given up another prayer, an utterance steeped in frustration, that they might find Tom soon, before such gloomy company made of their venture some sort of purgation.

  And yet Alexander Dane’s stony-faced silence irked her, too, for how could the man have no questions? How could anyone show such scant interest in her purpose or in the charge commanded of him?

  They overnighted in a hostelry in Winsford, the men sharing a room adjoining Bess’s, and set off next morning at dawn along the River Weaver’s eastern bank, the rising April sun on their left cheeks making white blooms of each breath. Bess had spent the first mile wondering if Dane would exhibit a more affable temperament now that he should have at least recovered from his indulgences of two nights before. But by the third mile it was quite clear to her that the man was simply a boor and even that acceptance was a knife in her heart, because it made her think of Emmanuel, good, joyful Emmanuel, and how lucky she had been to love him and be loved by him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘I STILL DON’T see why we couldn’t have ridden the first forty-five miles and walked the last ten,’ Weasel griped, sharply tugging the halter of the ass he was leading, as though it were the animal’s fault that they were footsore and comfortless. ‘Might as well have bloody enlisted with the musketeers.’

  ‘I’d give you a week before you forgot about the match between your fingers, stuck your hand in the black powder and blew yourself to Kingdom Come,’ Trencher said, sweeping his cap from his head and mopping his slick brow with it.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re moaning about, you little runt,’ Dobson said to Weasel. ‘Try pushing this damn thing half a mile and then let’s see what you’ve got to say about it.’

  Tom suspected it was time someone else took a turn pushing the handcart but said nothing, enjoying seeing the big man’s pride take him further with it than he ought to have gone. It was dusk and they had been on the road since dawn, so that Tom knew they would have to lie up for the night before long.

  ‘When we get to that oak tree yonder, I’ll take the cart,’ Guillaume Scarron said, his English thick with French, ‘and after me Tristan will take it.’

  ‘He’s all right for another mile yet, Scarron,’ Tom s
aid, lifting his chin towards Dobson who muttered something foul under his breath.

  ‘Well, this bloody beast stinks like a dead dog left out in the rain,’ Weasel said, ‘and I’ve been downwind of it ever since Stokenchurch.’ Each man had a knapsack slung across his back in which he carried spare clothing, money, flint, steel and charcloth, a wooden bowl and spoon, a leather bottle and some other essentials for the journey, but the ass was saddled with more knapsacks containing food, blankets and dry tinder. The animal also carried five skins full of small beer, two large mattocks and a pickaxe.

  ‘I doubt the beast likes your stink any more than you like his,’ Penn put in, ‘yet you don’t hear him complaining.’

  Just then the ass flared its nostrils, opened its mouth and brayed, startling a pair of pigeons that clapped into the darkening sky and raising laughter from the small band of stonemasons on the road to Oxford. Except, only three of the men were real masons: Guillaume Scarron the master stonemason, and his two companions – one a squat, square-headed carver of marble named de Gombaud, and the other Scarron’s apprentice, a dark-haired, fine-featured young man named Tristan. All three were Frenchmen and like many of their profession they spent their lives travelling across England from one great house-building project to the next. But the war had put paid to many such building ambitions and now the three men, originally from the village of Brimont five miles to the north of Reims, found themselves in the employ of one Captain Crafte of Parliament’s army and earning more, Tom guessed, for not shaping stone than they would working on some cathedral or lord’s hall.

  ‘No horses, no firelocks or swords or any of a soldier’s accoutrements,’ Crafte had told Tom and his small band of volunteers, ‘for you must appear to all the world no different from any company of roaming masons and labourers, though you may of course bear what crude weapons are common to such fellows.’

  ‘No weapons?’ Trencher had blurted, turning to Tom, his eyes bulging incredulously.