Sacrifice (28 page)

In recent months all the talk had been of King and Parliament, and the great conflict that was brewing between them. By and large, Staffordshire was for King Charles, while those who favoured his enemies were careful to keep silent. In this they were wise, for there were many in the town who made no secret of their desire to strike a blow for the crown. Coarse braggarts, Henry rated them, street drunks and ale-house warriors who would take to their heels at the first whiff of gunpowder.

“Let Pym or Hampden or any of their crew set foot inside our borders,” Henry overheard one such rascal bellow, standing on the step of The Rose & Crown, an inn near the market, “and I shall break their heads for them with these my bare hands!”

The speaker was one John Trapnel, a butcher’s apprentice and well-known ruffian. Henry had once bumped into the man when the latter was staggering drunkenly down the street, and suffered a blow from his fist. The blow knocked him into the gutter and set his ears ringing for three days.

Having no wish for another taste of the man’s dreadful temper, Henry drew up the greasy collar of his old black coat and moved on.

His acute hearing picked up threads of gossip: dark whispers and mutterings, private conversations held on street corners or in the mouth of alleyways, accompanied by a knowing looks and shaking of heads. 

Henry’s desire to know the secrets of others was bottomless. Lost in their private fears and scandals, few took any note of The Weasel as he lurked in the shadows and listened carefully to all that passed. 

“...a tall, well-made man,” he overheard one woman whisper to her neighbour, “ugly, with a face like a mastiff and no hair on his skull. That’s not all.”

Here she leaned in closer to her companion and spoke behind her hand. Henry, who was leaning against the rough brickwork of a nearby alley, strained to listen.

“...his scalp, and one side of his face is covered in a blood-red birthmark. Akin to a splash of blood.”

The other woman nodded. “The Devil’s mark.”

“They say he has met with Joanna Cartwright, and Elizabeth Bell, and made covenant with them. Others too, though I do not know their names...”

Henry sensed the fear in their voices, and the note of excitement.
The presence of evil,
he thought cynically,
does much to enliven dull, workaday lives.

At this point one of the gossips finally noticed him, and nudged her companion. They glared at Henry in silence until he slunk away.

For the rest of that afternoon, while he toiled over account-ledgers in the tiny antechamber to Audley’s office, Henry’s mind was distracted by what he had heard. Fortunately he had long ago mastered the routine of his work, and was able to divide his concentration.

The room where he spent the daylight hours of six days in most weeks was dark, cramped, and ill-lit by a single dirty window. There was a tiny grate, though Audley only allowed a fire during the depths of winter.

This time of year was the worst. Autumn was dying, its passing heralded by slate-grey skies and foul weather. Every day was colder than the next. The cold made Henry shiver as he sat hunched on his little stool, squinting at figures by the light of a single candle. 

He had overheard the tale of the man with the birthmark on Thursday noon. At six o’clock his labours ended, and he stiffly rose from his stool and made his way down the cobbled high street to his lodgings, a one-room garret above a baker’s shop. Henry could have afforded better, even on his low wages, but liked to be near the heart of Stafford, where he could listen to its pulse.

That night, after dark, he donned his scarf and wide-brimmed hat and went out into the streets. He hoped to hear more rumours, and to that end visited several taverns, drinking a cup of cheap ale in each.

Henry was disappointed. All he heard was commonplace tittle-tattle, some conflicting news on skirmishes fought across the country between Royalist and Parliament forces, and the impeding arrival of a troop of Royalist soldiers to garrison Stafford for His Majesty.

Some weeks previously Charles had set up his standard at Nottingham. He was now said to be marching west with all of his power to seize the armouries in Staffordshire and drum up recruits.

“The king wants soldiers,” Henry heard one greybeard say, gazing bleakly into his ale, “he knows there are plenty hereabouts who will raise a pike for him. The folly of young men. Many will be cold in the ground before all is over.”

“Hush,” said the landlord, glancing nervously around the busy tavern, “some would call that treason.”

The old man cocked an eyebrow at him. “Treason? For saying young men die in war, even if they fight in a righteous cause? I only speak the truth.”

“Even so, keep your truth in your throat, if you wish to keep drinking here. There are plenty of young gallants who would march to war for the king, as you say, and a few as would happily break an old man’s head for spreading doubts and fears. Be warned.”

After some hours in this futile endeavour, Henry returned to his lodgings and fell into an uneasy sleep, haunted by images of a towering preacher-type figure clad in a dark suit, his bald pate and hideously twisted features spattered with blood.

In his dream Henry met the preacher on a blasted heath, featureless save for one gaunt, leafless tree bowed by screaming winds. He knelt in terror and shuddered as blood dripped onto the back of his neck. 

“Little man,” cried the preacher, his voice sounding through the gale like a trumpet, “know that the Devil will have his due!”

Henry woke with a start. He sat upright, clutching his sheets in terror and trying to will away the images in his head. Unable to sleep further, he rose, peeled off his night-gown and slowly dressed by the pale light of dawn filtering through the shutters on his window. After a frugal breakfast of bread and milk, he soft-footed down the stairs behind the baker’s shop and went to work.

His master allowed Henry one Saturday afternoon off a month. The following Saturday happened to be his free time, and he decided to take a ride in the country outside Stafford.

“I am sick,” he muttered to himself as he untethered the nag he kept at a stable near the Rose & Crown, “sick of the town, and the secrets it refuses to yield up to me. Come, lass, and help me clear my head.”

Near the outskirts of Stafford lay Doxey Marshes, a wide stretch of low-lying marsh and grassland. The River Sow flowed through it, and when he got the opportunity Henry was fond of following the trail of the river through the wetlands, wallowing in thought.

The morning was damp and grey. A powerful wind swept the marshes, driving the rain before it. Huddled up in his old coat, Henry ignored the bad weather. His mind was still fixed on the mysterious figure with the birthmark.

Who is he? A magician, a witch, or a mere ghost conjured up by bored minds?

He cursed his shy nature.
I should have questioned the women in the marketplace, and risked being damned for my impudence.

Henry had no wife, nor held out much hope of ever acquiring one. Apart from his lack of attractive qualities, he was hopelessly tongue-tied in the presence of women. It didn’t bother him over-much: he preferred to walk the world alone, without someone to bully him into changing his mode of life.

His horse plodded along at a pace that suited his contemplative mood. She was a stolid, barrel-bellied creature, more fit for pulling carts than carrying a gentleman, but the best he could afford. Along with his pistol, kept in a chest at the foot of his bed, she was his most treasured possession.

There were few people out on the marsh at this early hour. Henry glimpsed an elderly man crouching behind a hedge to observe a clutch of wading birds, and a shepherd’s boy grazing his sheep in a meadow. Otherwise the world was empty of human life, which was how he preferred it.

At last he reached a particularly desolate spot, featureless save for a single tree. The tree was much battered by time and weather, yet still clung stubbornly to its patch of earth.

Henry reined in. Fear stole over him. This was the place of his dream.

Slowly, as though compelled by some invisible force, his head turned to the left. His heart missed a beat as he saw the man, the preacher with the bloodied face, standing not twenty yards away.

On second glance the man was not so tall as in his dream, nor quite so forbidding. His suit was made of cheap black cloth, ill-cut by some country tailor, and he was almost as short as Henry. The red colouring smeared over his pate and the left side of his face was not blood, but a livid birthmark: the Devil’s mark, just as the woman in Stafford had described.

He was ugly, though. A face like a mastiff, the woman had said, but Henry thought him more pig-like than anything. The flattened nose, little eyes, heavy brow and jaw,with its prominent under-bite, gave him the appearance of a wild boar.

In his right hand he clutched a staff, a stout length of yew, and for a belt he wore a knotted length of rope. He might easily be taken for a preacher, one of the increasing number of fiery radicals wandering the country. Henry chose to identify him as such.

“Good morning, sir,” he called out, striving to keep the tremor from his voice, “it is not like a clergyman to be out at such an ungodly hour.”

The little eyes glittered, either with malice or amusement, and the grotesque, thick-lipped mouth hitched into a smile.

“Master Malvern,” he said, his voice deep and insinuating, “let us be honest with one another. I am no more of the clergy than you the gentry.”

A man possessed of more courage and spirit than Henry might have taken offence. As it was, teeth chattering, he was hard-put not to turn his horse’s head and flee.

“You know my name,” he said, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the reins for comfort, “might I have the honour of knowing yours?”

The preacher - as Henry still thought him - leaned on his staff. “You may not,” he rumbled, “but you will know much more, if you come down off that old screw and speak with me. We have much to discuss.”

2.

“A soldier?” barked Audley, goggling at his clerk in pained disbelief, “but you’re such a feeble little runt. You can’t go for a soldier. They wouldn’t take you.”

Henry drew himself up to his full height, such as it was. “The King is taking any man willing to fight for him, provided he is hale of mind and limb. I am both. True, my legs are weak from the rickets, but so are His Majesty’s.”

He had a point. It was said that King Charles had suffered from the same illness as a child, and was small and sickly in body. These defects were countered, so his most loyal supporters claimed, by his greatness of heart. He and his army had reached Shrewsbury, and were busy gathering recruits and stripping the local arsenals.

Audley’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. As was his habit in times of stress, he ran his fingers through the bunches of grey hair sprouting at comical angles from the sides of his head.

“Well,” he said at last, “I cannot stop you from joining the King’s army. Nor should I try. God bless any man who strikes a blow in such a godly cause. However, I confess to being astonished. You have always been such a mousy little creature. Good God, man, what do you know of soldiering? You’ve never wielded anything more deadly than a quill!”

“Not so, sir,” replied Henry, “I ride well, and have a pistol, which I am a fair shot with. I know nothing of swordplay, but the basic principle is simple enough. One grips the hilt and endeavours to thrust the sharp end into the enemy.”

Audley rested his chin on his hands and puffed out his sallow cheeks. His watery grey eyes, which had so often regarded Henry with a mixture of contempt and indifference for six long years, now held a degree of respect.

“Am I to understand,” he said slowly, “that you intend to ride off to Shrewsbury on that pot-bellied nag of yours, along with your pistol and your villainous old coat and hat, and offer your services as...what, a dragoon?”

“As whatever the royal officers see fit, sir. I ask only to serve, and do my part in the fight against Parliament.”

Audley closed his eyes and laid his right hand flat on the board of his desk, where he was accustomed to sit and calculate all the monies owed him. His office was large, with dark oak panelling on the walls and a grand fire burning merrily inside a hooded hearth. A glass of sherry stood by his elbow. Henry eyed it longingly. He was partial to sherry and port, though could seldom afford either.

The other man drummed his fingers, which were long and suitably grasping, the joints swollen with arthritis.

“I never thought to say this,” he said, “but you make me proud, Henry. As proud as if you were my own son.”

Audley had no children, his wife having died of an ague some ten years previously. Sighing, he pulled out a drawer in his desk and fished out a heavy iron key.

Henry caught his breath. He knew what the key was for. It unlocked Audley’s private safe, reached via a small iron door two-thirds up the wall behind his desk, and hidden behind a false panel. He usually carried the key on his person, hanging on a chain about his scrawny neck.

Breathing hard, Audley slid open the panel and jammed the key in the lock. “No other living soul has seen the contents of my safe,” he grunted, “not even my wife, God rest her soul. In here are my life’s savings.”