The Bleeding Land (17 page)

Eventually Mun rose on stiff legs and walked over to the
couple
, standing silently for a long moment, loath to interrupt. ‘Let me take her,’ he said gently. Tom did not look up, did not break the rhythm of his hand stroking her hair as he whispered tenderly, as though they two were the only people left on God’s earth. ‘She can ride with me,’ Mun said, placing a hand on Tom’s shoulder, which made him flinch. Tom’s eyes locked on his, though they were glazed, somehow unseeing. Far away.

‘We should get back. Take Martha home. Mother will know what to do.’ Tom blinked slowly but said nothing, then bent to Martha’s bloodless face once more and continued whispering words Mun could not hear. So Mun waited a while longer, watching flocks of rooks and jackdaws sweeping into a distant field. They came in widely spaced drifts like flurries of black snow, settling behind a man and boy plough team to pillage the turned soil. ‘We must go, Tom,’ he said at last. Though he did not know why they must go. In truth they could have stayed on the old bridge until dusk and still made it back before dark. And even then, what? Yet he itched to be away, to shrug off the black cloak of the thing. To stay was to indulge Tom’s pain, to let it seep deeper into his own soul where the weevils of guilt began to feed. Guilt for not helping Martha when she must have been desperate. Guilt for not standing beside Tom against the Dentons. For not being with his brother when Tom needed him.

‘I will take her,’ Tom said, swallowing hard. He did not move.

Mun shook his head. ‘Let me do it.’ For a heartbeat Tom glared at him, but then the younger man’s eyes softened, which Mun took to be assent. And so, carefully, more carefully than he had ever done anything in all his life, Mun bent and took the dead girl into his arms, trying not to look at her face.

The ride back to Shear House seemed to take for ever. But he had thought it unseemly to gallop with Martha’s body lying across Hector’s rump and he knew his brother thought the same, though neither had spoken of it. So they had walked,
each
adrift on the darkling sea of his own thoughts, as the bright day dimmed and turned colder still. There was no wind to talk of now and yet he could smell wood smoke on the air when they were still half a mile from home. He guessed the others would be back from their respective searches by now. He imagined Bess and Jacob standing in the forecourt waiting for him and Tom to arrive, expecting to see Martha mounted behind Tom, arms circling his waist. But when they passed through the main gateway under the scrutiny of the majestic stone lions on their plinths, and eventually came within sight of Shear House, Mun saw no one waiting in the cold gloom. He did not know whether that would make the thing harder or easier.

‘I want to carry her this last part,’ Tom said. Mun nodded, stopping to dismount, understanding his brother’s need to take responsibility. For draped over Hector’s rump Martha was somehow less human. More like the prize kill after a hunt. So Mun watched Tom take Martha carefully into his arms whilst he took their mounts’ reins, and then, side by side, they walked towards the house which loomed before them in the purple-tinged dusk.

Of the family, Lady Mary was the first to realize what had happened. She was in the hall when Isaac opened the door to her sons. When she saw Martha in Tom’s arms her hands flew to her mouth and she shook her head as though refusing to see what her eyes were showing her. Then the parlour door opened, spilling flamelight into the lamp-lit hall, and Bess was there. When she saw the girl’s body she called on God and stumbled, flailing, gripping the doorframe to steady herself.

Mun glanced at Tom and saw that tears were spilling down his cheeks and so, swallowing down the lump in his own throat, he took it upon himself to explain how they had found Martha at the bridge. That there had been nothing they could do, for the deed was long done by the time they arrived.

‘My poor boy,’ Lady Mary said, wringing her hands, ‘my poor, poor boy. Francis! Take Martha and lay her in the parlour. Isaac, have Edward bring some hippocras for the boys. And make it strong,’ she called after the servant.

Sir Francis stood behind Bess, one hand on her shoulder, the other still gripping a fire iron he had been using a moment before. He stood the poker against the wall, firmed his jaw and nodded, moving towards his younger son, his arms out in readiness to take the burden from him.

‘Get away from her!’ Tom yelled, glaring at Sir Francis, who recoiled startled.

‘Let your father help you,’ Lady Mary said, eyebrows lifted, the skin beneath them stretched. But Tom ignored her and, tears soaking his face, carried Martha past them all into the parlour.

Sir Francis looked to Mun who shrugged, and they all followed towards the parlour just as Jacob appeared from behind the screen which ran along the hall towards the kitchen. His thick copper hair stuck up in tufts and his eyebrows met in a suspicious frown as he took in the scene. Bess nodded at Mun to follow their father, then went over and took the young boy’s hand, leading him off towards the dining parlour to break the news of his sister’s death. Mun cursed under his breath because the poor boy now had no family at all, then he closed the parlour door from the inside.

‘Let us help you, son,’ Sir Francis said, his arms out towards Tom who had laid Martha on the floor and now knelt beside her, head bowed. The dead girl lay on her side, her body making a grim crescent for it had stiffened, bent as it had been over Hector’s rump. Flamelight played across her face, the warmth raising a stink from her fouled skirts. A knotty log cracked angrily in the grate and Lady Mary nodded at Sir Francis as though he should repeat his offer of help.

‘Let me take her, Thomas,’ Sir Francis said softly, stepping closer. Tom’s dishevelled hair hung either side of his face, so
that
Sir Francis leant in awkwardly, trying to meet his eye. ‘Your mother will wash the girl and—’

‘I said get away from her!’ Tom screamed, launching himself at his father, driving him back and sending a table and two glasses flying as he slammed Sir Francis against the wall.

‘Tom!’ Lady Mary exclaimed. Then Mun was hauling on his brother’s shoulders as Sir Francis stood wide-eyed, his arms flat against the wall behind him.

‘Let him go!’ Mun barked. ‘Step back, Tom!’

‘He’s the reason she’s dead!’ Tom yelled, spittle flying from a mouth twisted in fury, his broad shoulders trying to shrug off Mun’s grip. ‘If he’d spoken up for George Green none of this would have happened!’ He was glaring at Sir Francis. ‘He’s a coward!’

‘Stand off!’ Mun roared.

‘Coward!’ Tom spat into his father’s horrified face.

Mun wrenched Tom’s right shoulder and Tom let go of their father, twisting and flailing with his arm, but Mun blocked with his right forearm and slammed his left fist into his brother’s face, sending him staggering. Now it was Tom who looked shocked to his very marrow as he stared at his brother from his good eye, the split in his still swollen lip glistening with fresh blood.

‘He could have saved her father,’ he said, smearing blood across the back of his hand. With the other hand he pointed accusingly at Sir Francis, and that hand was trembling. ‘Instead that bastard Denton raped her and she could not live with the shame of it.’

‘Your father could not have saved the minister!’ Lady Mary said. The parlour door had opened and Bess and Jacob stood there transfixed, both of them weeping.

‘I had to keep my family safe,’ Sir Francis said, stepping out from the wall. ‘I could not risk the consequences of going up against Lord Denton and his kind. Don’t be a fool, Thomas.’

Tom turned back to Sir Francis. ‘You are a coward!’ he spat.

‘Hold your damned tongue!’ Mun heard himself yell, feeling his fists become hard knots. ‘He is our father!’

‘He is a bastard coward and no better than Denton,’ Tom snarled, the words dripping venom even as his lip dripped blood.

Mun strode forward and threw up an arm, and the next thing he knew Tom’s throat was in his grip, his brother’s good eye glaring with hate.

‘No, Edmund!’ Sir Francis yelled. ‘Let him be.’

‘Let him go, Mun! Don’t hurt him!’ Bess screamed like the cry of a hawk, still clasping Jacob’s hand, and that cry cut through Mun’s rage and he felt himself jerk as though he had been the one struck. He let go of Tom and stepped back, raising his palms to show Bess he meant their brother no harm.

Tom cuffed blood from his lip and turned to Lady Mary. ‘See her buried, Mother,’ he said, tears of heartbreak and rage gleaming in his good eye and lacing the puffy slit of his injured one.

Lady Mary nodded, frowning. ‘Of course we will, Thomas,’ she said, glancing down at Martha’s corpse, at the blue lips forced apart by the bulging tongue.

Then without another word Tom strode past Mun, a shoulder knocking him aside. Bess and Jacob stepped out of his way as they would for a passing carriage and Tom stormed from the parlour.

Lady Mary made as if to follow him.

‘Let the boy go,’ Sir Francis growled, ‘let him go. Thomas needs some time to gather himself.’ Then he turned to Mun. ‘You should not have struck him,’ he said, straightening his shirt and doublet as though to shrug off the whole sorry incident. He dipped his chin and looked accusingly at his elder son. ‘That was grievous, Mun. He is your brother.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Mun murmured, flexing his right hand to check that none of his finger bones was broken. He wanted to blow across his swelling knuckles, but the hot pain blooming in them
was
the least he deserved, he thought, eyes resting on Martha Green. Whom poor Tom had loved.

‘Fighting as boys is one thing, but to strike your brother as a grown man? It is inexcusable,’ Sir Francis went on. ‘You will apologize to your brother when he is himself again.’

‘And will you, Father?’ Mun heard himself ask, his eyes riveted to his father’s now, daring to hold that steely gaze.

‘Mun!’ Lady Mary exclaimed, her eyes wide. ‘You forget yourself!’ Sir Francis coloured, crimson rage flooding his cheeks. Mun looked away, readying himself for a barrage that never came. Instead Sir Francis glowered and said nothing, his steel grey eyes puncturing Mun’s defiance, which was worse, Mun thought, than if he had bawled at him.

‘Bess, take the poor boy away.’ Lady Mary broke the moment, steering all eyes to Jacob who had not left Bess’s side. The boy’s scowling face glistened with tears and snot, clenched in confused anger as though he was desperate to understand why Martha had left him, whilst despising her for it.

‘Come with me, Jacob,’ Bess said, swallowing hard with a resolute nod. And taking his hand in hers she turned him from the grotesquely bent figure on the parlour floor. ‘Let us go and find out what’s keeping Edward with the hippocras,’ she said, catching Mun’s eye before leading Jacob off.

‘O’Neill and Marten are not back from Ormskirk yet,’ Lady Mary said to Mun, bailing the silence that was trying to flood in. ‘Knowing those two they’ll still be searching the taverns, looking for Martha in the bottom of their ale cups. I want them back here tonight, not staying in town at your father’s expense.’

O’Neill and Marten were good men and Mun doubted they would be shirking their responsibilities, but he kept his mouth shut and waited for what he knew was coming next.

‘We’ll be lambing before we know it,’ his mother went on. ‘I want the animals pastured closer and the ewes looked after as though they belonged to the King himself. I will not lose as
many
lambs this year,’ she said, almost accusing Sir Francis, ‘I simply will not.’ Then she turned back to Mun. ‘If you go now you’ll reach town before nightfall. Bring the men back if you find them easily. If not, bring them back first thing in the morning.’ Mun nodded. ‘We shall deal with the poor girl,’ Lady Mary added without looking down at the body.

‘He shouldn’t ride in the dark,’ Sir Francis put in, taking a pitcher and glass from a table and pouring himself some wine.

‘There’ll be enough moon to see by,’ Mun said to his mother, for he knew her scheme was less about retrieving O’Neill and Marten than it was about putting some distance between her husband and her sons. Which was no bad thing, he supposed.

‘And three of us on the road have nothing to fear,’ he went on. ‘O’Neill’s face would put the fear of God into anyone of ill-intent.’ Sir Francis conceded this with an arched brow and Lady Mary seized the advantage, telling her husband to move Martha Green away from the hearth. Because the girl begins to stink, Mun thought, despising himself for not being oblivious of it.

So his father bent to the task and Mun turned his back on them and prepared to go back out into the freezing dusk. To bring back O’Neill and Marten.

Three days after Martha hanged herself Tom arrived in Manchester and there spent two nights before moving southward again. Two weeks after leaving Shear House he found himself in London, in a stinking, dingy hostelry on Long Southwark. And he found himself drunk; undoubtedly more drunk than he had ever been. He had considered lodging at the famous Tabard Inn, which his father had spoken of, but then the fact that he’d learned of the place from Sir Francis was reason in itself not to stay there. Besides which, in his haste to flee Shear House he had not considered practicalities and the purse tied to his belt was not nearly heavy enough for the Tabard. It contained halfpennies, pennies, shillings and crowns amounting to a
grand
total of a little over one pound, roughly a day’s income for a man such as his father. A hostelry like the Tabard and its associated pleasures would leech that money away in no time and so Tom had taken a room at the Leaping Lord, a grubby, run-down place that stank of human waste. A fine drizzle had urged him off Long Southwark’s greasy cobbles and through an archway fronting on the street big enough to accommodate wagons, and there, surrounding a courtyard littered with the rotting scraps of vegetables and scurrying with rats, stood the Leaping Lord and its lodgings. Telling himself he would grow accustomed to the stench, and supposing biting fleas had been the reason for the lord’s leaping, Tom had paid up front for a room for one week and now, feeling the purse against his right thigh, he wondered how long one pound would last him in London. Not long if I keep pissing it away, he thought grimly.