Rebels and Traitors (23 page)

The nearest soldier pricked at the child’s jacket. His sword point caught in the wool; he planned to lift the little boy and drop him into the fire — but the sharp blade cut itself free and the red-faced infant sat back suddenly, with a renewed cry.

‘Robert!’ protested the mother faintly. The cavalier who held her gave her a vicious cuff across the face. She struggled wildly as he pulled at her waistcoat buttons. No stranger to beatings herself, Kinchin saw that such violence was completely new to the housewife, but Mistress Lucas only bit her lip, enduring whatever was done to her, out of terror for her child.

Kinchin tried to distract the men. The baby cries. Let me walk him.’ She spoke with fake confidence, but scavenging had taught her how. She went quickly and picked up Robert, bringing his blanket with him to hide him in it. He clutched her, hampering her movements, and was heavy in her arms. Her eyes tried to reassure his mother. She never knew whether Mistress Lucas understood because the young terrified housewife was being dragged backwards out of the room.

Kinchin promenaded with Robert on her shoulder. Hushing him gave her some comfort. The soldiers now ignored them. One was rattling up the fire with a poker, then examining the poker to see if he would bother to steal it. From beyond the inner door came a loud thump, at which the man by the fire made an obscene gesture. Another signalled for Kinchin to pour him ale. She managed to do so one-handed, while Robert grabbed onto her. Nervously, she manoeuvred to keep all the men in view, in case they tried to jump her.

Mistress Lucas was being ravished. Kinchin heard it. She understood what this experience would mean to a chaste woman. It could be her turn next.

The Frenchman stomped back into the room, fastening the buttons of his britches. Without a word, another man stood up and pushed past his colleague, one hand at his belt. They were matter-of-fact. None discussed what they were doing. This was their routine. Enemies were killed; their houses stripped; their horses stolen; their women violated. The more blood shed and the more fear caused, the greater was the victory.

The nearest man had his back to her, shovelling firedogs and pots into a sack. Kinchin sneaked up her courage. Still carrying the Lucas infant, she slipped out of doors.

She crept away down the garden path, desperately trying to keep her steps quiet. Its cinders were painful under her cold, bare feet. She managed to drag open the forge’s heavy shutter just enough to squeeze through with Robert. She had never been inside before, and was surprised that the high workplace seemed bigger than the house. It was dark, but dimly lit by the fire.

Warmth came from the hearth, even though Lucas could not have used it for two days; he would not have worked today because of the fighting and yesterday was Sunday. The cavaliers must have burst in here earlier. They had flung fuel on the hearth and blown up flames with the bellows while they turned everything upside down in their search for valuables. Kinchin squeezed through the strange scattered tools, knocking painfully into large items of equipment and gasping as her bare soles were gouged by pieces of metal on the floor. She crouched with the baby in her arms beside the brick hearth.

‘Be safe, Robert — make no sound.’ Away from the tumult and comforted by her steady voice, the child soon settled and slept.

For Kinchin there was no relaxation that long night. Hours stretched away. Holding Robert, with her cheek against his soft warm head, she stole to the doorway from time to time. It was no use. Throughout the town, cavaliers sat up drinking, blaspheming, tyrannising their prisoners, terrifying women, insolently boasting. With the outside air cold on her face, the miserable young girl wiped her nose on her sleeve, listening to the uproar. All night there was no let-up. Over and over again she slunk back miserably into the forge. She longed to help Mistress Lucas, but could not. If the cavaliers laid hands on her too, neither her youth nor her squalor would save her.

Dawn brought a temporary diminution in the terror. The character of the tumult changed. Carts and horses began clattering northwards in businesslike convoys. The sounds of organised companies of soldiers on the move under orders took over from rampage and riot. For Kinchin Tew some relief finally came.

A new silence lay on the house. Next time Kinchin ventured out of the forge, she made up her mind to go back to the kitchen. She collected the sleepy infant. By the grey light of early morn she spotted a single sword, hung on a rafter in the forge; climbing on a wooden trestle she managed to lift the weapon down and brought it out with her. It was the blade Lucas had made wrongly and kept back, though the heavy weapon seemed adequate to Kinchin.

Kinchin approached the open house door, carrying Robert in one arm with the sword, point down, in her other hand. The lack of noise indicated the soldiers had gone. Even so, she stayed outside, too scared to look.

After a long time watching, she stood the sword behind a barrel and crossed the threshold timidly. Indoors, she found a scene of despoliation. The wrecked kitchen made her feel like a stranger. Once so neat, the room reeked of drink, smoke, and worse. The men had marked the house with their excrement, like wild animals claiming territory. Many domestic implements were missing. Objects that were too cumbersome to carry off, such as the bench and the baby’s heavy oak cradle, had been crudely tossed and upended. Things of little value, or small items that male fingers made clumsy by drink had dropped, lay strewn all over the floor. Kicked ashes besmirched the slabbed floor. A worn cutlery box lay smashed on the table. The fire was dead in the grate, water buckets upset, heavy cauldrons bounced until they were dented beyond repair.

Dreadful stillness hung over the house. Kinchin found the wool-stuffed cradle-mattress, still usable though it had been singed in the fire; for safety she set Robert upon it in his cradle, which she righted and pushed to its normal position. He was hungry and started bawling; she ignored that. Then, bravely, she walked to the door opposite and ventured through.

She stopped. A body lay on the stairs.

Mistress Lucas had been repeatedly ravished right there on the steep, narrow wooden treads. At some time during the ordeal she had died. One hand gripped a banister rail; her head was turned far to one side, as if to avoid seeing her attackers. Her skirts were pushed up to her waist. Her buckled shoes were off. One stocking had wrinkled around her ankle in the struggle, though the other remained neatly over her knee, held by its knitted garter.

Whether she had died of the rapes, or shame, or shots, or suffocation Kinchin could not tell.

She stood at the foot of the stairs, wondering what to do. Noises in the kitchen alarmed her. She spun back there, perhaps to protect Robert or perhaps ready to run and save herself. The baby was now bound to her by their shared hours in the forge, but Kinchin had a loner’s priorities.

An elderly woman had arrived from the house next door, anxious for Lucas and his family. She had a sharp, intelligent face and head of white hair, upon which sat a rather crooked coif. Automatically, she was righting the firejack, while gazing around in horror. Robert, blue-eyed and now silent, was watching. The old woman recognised Kinchin and asked after Mistress Lucas.

Kinchin sobbed, once.

The woman moved quietly past her. With a keening sound, she went to Mistress Lucas and pulled down her skirts decently. She loosened the dead woman’s grip on the banister, and moved her arm. On returning to the kitchen, she found that Kinchin had sunk down amongst the devastation, lost in shock. ‘A good woman. Cruelly used. Yet here’s the poor baby all untouched —’

‘I hid with him,’ whispered Kinchin.

The neighbour nodded approval, though in the way of Birmingham people her reaction was restrained. She knew Mistress Lucas had given charity to this mite. Shaking her head and short of breath, the woman seated herself on a joint-stool. She had to right it first, and sat gently as if it might collapse; some of the pegs had been knocked out during the cavaliers’ riot. They have killed Widow Collins, and fourteen or fifteen others. I heard that two coffins were made last night for men of quality of theirs.’ She held her arms folded and rocked with grief. ‘Many houses are stripped of goods and furnishings; people were forced to hand over all the money they had. Their own supporters have lost as much as anyone, but that is no help to the rest of us … Go to your people, Kinchin Tew. I will find women for what is needed. Here — she does not want this now —’ The old neighbour jumped up, pulled a cloak from a peg on the door and wrapped it around Kinchin. Then she snatched a crust from the ground, blew the dust off and pushed it into the girl’s hand. ‘Have you seen Lucas? Some of our killed men were pushed into the trench and their bodies buried when the Royalists slighted the earthworks. They allowed nobody near to recover the dead.’

‘Lucas was a prisoner. I saw him last night. I saw him at the Swan —’ Remembering how Thomas was shot in cold blood, Kinchin retched. With nothing in her stomach, she controlled it. The old woman gazed at her; perhaps she had heard what had happened to the ostler.

‘The prisoners are all ransomed and free to go. Leave this house now, girl, before Lucas comes home.’

Kinchin was not sure whether this was some warning that Lucas might suspect she had taken part in the theft of his goods, or that he might be angry to find such a starveling had survived while his poor decent wife was murdered. Kinchin had no place here. Women neighbours would attend to Mistress Lucas’s laying-out. Jane This and Margery That, a Bess, an Alice, a Susanna … They had gossiped with the smith’s wife, attended her churching after Robert was born, and they would now bury her, comfort Lucas and help the smith deal with nurturing the child alone. None of that was for Kinchin. She was an outsider, no matter how much grief she felt for the murdered woman.

She left the house without another word.

Clutching the cloak tightly around her and gnawing the hard bread, Kinchin wandered up through the markets, terrified of what she would find. She was carrying the sword from the forge. Under her cloak she held it with care, because there was no scabbard. A cart laden with half a dozen wounded Royalists trundled past, forcing her to press against the side of a house. Her feet stumbled with tiredness and terror. Groups of people, trembling bare-legged in their shirts and shifts, stood outside homes where open windows and doors revealed empty interiors. She saw people who had lost everything. Dazed and depressed, they simply collected in the streets.

Now Kinchin entered a scene that would have seemed to her like hell, had the Tews ever practised religion. As she passed the toll booth, heading into the Welsh End, many cavaliers were still at large. Prince Rupert had gone, but had left behind a group called an antiguard. These men were to protect his army in the rear and secure the route back to Oxford. They knew how to do this work. In every street, triumphal soldiers brandished drawn swords and pistols. They were making excited preparations to set fire to the town. Driving off householders, they used gunpowder, wisps of straw and matchcord. Some fired off special slugs which they said Lord Digby had invented: bullets wrapped in brown paper that they shot from pistols into stables and thatched roofs. Residents pleaded with them to stop, but the answer came back that each quartermaster had orders from the prince to fire his section of the town.

Legitimate arson was a wonderful game. In a market town full of forges, combustible material was easy to find. Laying the fires was easy. Anguished Birmingham people were complaining that they had paid out large sums of money to Prince Rupert, to buy protection for their homes. His men’s response was cold and cruel. Anyone brave enough, who tried to save their goods or their premises, was fired at. Fresh blood ran over yesterday’s dried blood on the cobbles.

Kinchin was frightened by the fire, more frightened by the soldiers’ continuing violence. She pushed her way through to the High Cross, trying to leave town. But all the buildings ahead of her were ablaze. Their destitute owners stood weeping in the street; cavaliers only jeered as thick smoke gusted everywhere. Above Dale End and the Welch End, crackling flames leaped twice as high as the timber houses. To Kinchin’s left, Moor Street was noisily burning, and when she ran into Chapel Street, a strong wind blew a great conflagration across the cherry orchards towards her.

At the Bull Inn, opposite the disused priory, with flames hot on her face, Kinchin stopped. A soldier barged past, carrying a pan of hot coals, on his way to start another fire somewhere. A man waved a besom broom at her, its bound twigs streaking the air with sparks. Too much terror finally overcame the girl. As she stood on the cobbles in confusion, she caught two riders’ attention.

She recognised the red-haired cavalier and his horse: Faddle. A second rider loudly swore at people, The prince deals with you mercifully now! When we come back, with the Queen’s army, you will know our true minds — no one will be left alive!’

Edmund Treves saw her. ‘Get to safety!’ He struggled to control his horse, disturbed by the fires. He could tell how the night’s events had changed the girl. She had lost all her earlier trust of him. Of course she was right. Treves had stayed at the Ship Inn, on the outskirts, but he knew what had gone on in the town. Guilt sickened him — though he would not change his loyalty to the King.

Someone else spotted Kinchin. Her father, Emmett, had been loitering in the hope of grabbing property from open houses. Emmett dropped his robbery sack; with ghastly determination he grabbed his daughter and hauled her right under the cavaliers’ horses. Gripped so fiercely, the nightmare of her encounters with Mr Whitehall returned to her. ‘Here’s a nice clean girl, sir!’

‘Will you make her a doxy?’ Treves retorted angrily.

‘No,
you
may do that!’ leered Emmett. ‘She will know no other trade, sir,’ he wheedled plaintively, as if this excused selling her. He sounded desperate. A kinchin mort — that’s a girl, sir, who is brought to her full age and then —’