Traitor's Field (83 page)

‘That was quick.’ Lyle’s blood was up: a mouthful of bread and wine snatched from a Derby sentry post, a fresh horse under him, and he was agitating to be away. ‘You’ve asked everywhere she might have got a new horse?’

‘Didn’t have to.’ The soldier pulled himself up into the saddle.

‘What do you mean? Where in hell’s Baines?’ This to the other soldier with him. ‘How long does he need for a piss?’

‘I’ll check.’ 

Lyle turned back to the first soldier. ‘Well?’

‘She got a new horse here.’

‘Here? But—’

‘There’s someone with her. A Government man like yourself, sir. He got them both horses, no bother. An hour ago, no more.’ Lyle’s lively face showed its surprise. ‘Who might that have been, sir?’

‘I can’t—’ He snatched at the idea, rejected it, picked it up again. ‘Surely not. Surely. . .’ He stared at the soldier. ‘There’s one man it might be, but. . . but he’d have to be a hundred times more peculiar than I thought.’ The third man stepped back into the yard. ‘Where is he, then?’

Bewilderment. ‘Baines is dead, sir. Stabbed in the throat outside, whiles we were talking here.’

Nottingham grew in front of them on the road, and Rachel bargained with her shoulders and legs that they would rest if they reached it. But when they reached it, Thurloe showed no sign of stopping, slowing to a fast trot and continuing through the side streets, aware of the great yellow shadow of the castle watching him.

She pulled up her horse. ‘John – can’t we stop?’ A flash of pride. ‘The horses—’

‘They’re good for a while yet.’ He circled her, keeping moving.

‘Even for a moment?’

‘We must keep ahead of them. They can get more horses than we can, more quickly. By Derby they’ll have known they were on our track. They’ll have sent messengers on every road.’

‘We could hide for a while. Let them pass us.’

‘If they get past us, they block us. Every town they reach means more patrols looking for us. Now is all we have, Rachel.’

She looked at him, and then nodded. ‘Well, then,’ she said, and smiled, and kicked her horse into the canter again.

A mile after they crossed the Trent, Thurloe’s horse lost a shoe. He swore, dropped to the ground, glancing anxiously back towards the town.

‘We can’t go back.’

He shook his head. ‘And we can’t look for a smith on the road, and have them catch us as they please.’

A track led to a village a mile off the main road, and with urgency and gold Thurloe had the smith at work in minutes. But the diversion cost them half an hour or more, and when they regained the main road his uneasy glances were ahead as well as behind.

Lyle had taken his anger out on his horse, and the three men changed their gasping rides at Nottingham. Lyle’s feet hardly touched the ground between animals. Another great mouthful of wine and he was spitting out orders: patrols on the roads north and south, now looking for a man as well – a man claiming to be in Government pay. Then he was kicking the new horse into the gallop, and his two companions exchanged a weary glance and hurried after him, eastward for the sea with the sun starting to fall behind their backs.

Thurloe’s jaw was clamped tight in apprehension as they approached Bingham, the next settlement on the road. Over a decade he had grown used to seeing soldiers everywhere, and for the last few years they had become regular contacts in his work. Now, in one act of bizarre heat by Rachel Astbury, and his own instinctive reaction to it, every uniform was a threat.

Could I somehow have done this differently? Explained away Tarrant’s death? Isn’t there some way I could be stability and legitimacy after all?

Tarrant’s shocked face. Beside him, Rachel Astbury flying over the ground with hair billowing behind her. Somewhere out in the afternoon, men hunting him.
I can no longer explain things away. I can no longer hide behind words. In this mad day I am become the enemy of my own state.

The first houses of the village were in sight. He slowed his tired horse to a trot, and felt Rachel matching him. He had to be normal, he had to be calmness.

Movement on the road ahead, coming from the village, and the sun coming low over his shoulder sparkled on metal.

‘John—’

‘Keep going. We have to keep going. Not every man and woman in England is hunted.’

Soldiers; dragoons. Half a dozen mounted men, trotting in a line, helmets and swords shining dark as they came. Twenty yards, and then ten. Was the leader looking at him? Now they met, and the leader and then some of the others had turned their heads and were watching as they passed. Thurloe forced himself to look straight ahead, caught himself in the unnatural pose, allowed a glance to the side, an indifferent nod to the eyes that he met.

But they weren’t looking at him; it was Rachel they were watching. The news of his own flight hadn’t travelled this far, and—

No. They were watching Rachel because she was a beautiful woman, murderess or not, and because underneath the madness they were only men.

There was a simple barrier of two crossed pikes in the centre of Bingham, and as they came nearer Thurloe saw the sentry beside it register the two of them, and then duck his head into an adjacent doorway.

‘This way!’ he hissed, and grabbed at Rachel’s bridle and turned them into an alley; her horse, sluggish, pulled against him and came with bad grace. Twenty yards, a turn, and another turn, straight across a side street into another alley and he stopped them in an empty yard.

‘You think they’re waiting for us?’

‘I can’t be sure, but. . . It looked like – We must assume we could’ve been overtaken; when I lost the shoe; or on a faster road through Nottingham.’

‘Perhaps they don’t know us by sight.’

‘Perhaps. Perhaps they’ve just sent gallopers with orders to set up checks and patrols. But if Lyle was at Astbury this morning he’ll be after us like all the powers of hell, and he knows us.’

‘And you can’t risk bluffing your way through?’

‘At Derby we had a head start, and it was a fair bet. Now it’s too late.’ He looked at her, at the big intent eyes, and then down at their two hang-necked horses. ‘We need new mounts, and we need a safe place to think, even for a few minutes. It’s not a big place, and we’ll be noticed soon enough.’

‘If I knew people near here. . . But it’s too far from home.’

Thurloe alive;
people who know people
. ‘What county is this?’

‘What?’

Thurloe had the sheaf of papers out of his coat. ‘Nottinghamshire, would you say? Or have we reached Lincolnshire?’ He saw her bewildered face, and smiled heavily. ‘Pray that your uncle once came this way.’

Lyle and his two companions rode hard into Bingham, and Lyle stopped only to interrogate the sentry at the barrier, and then his stolid Sergeant who came out to see what the fuss was. Had a man and a woman come through? Were there patrols out? Instructions and urgency, and then Lyle had kicked his horse into jumping the pikes and was away.

The afternoon light was starting to thin when two strangers walked warily into the dairy in Bingham, a sad-looking man and a beautiful woman, both somehow strained. The man asked for Hugh Miles, and the boy in the dairy hurried off into the shadows to find him.

‘You think he’ll just give us horses. So easy?’

‘There is no easy any more. Perhaps there’s a signal; a word of recognition. But since neither of us knows it, we have to bluff.’

The owner emerged through the shadows and the straw.

‘Hugh Miles?’

‘Me, sir.’ Hugh Miles waited, watching the man and glancing at the woman.

The man looked around himself quickly. ‘I understand that you. . . that you provide help sometimes, Mr Miles. To friends.’

Miles’s face screwed up in a frown.

The stranger leaned forward, voice low and urgent. ‘I need two horses.’

Miles shook his head slowly. ‘I’m a dairy, sir. I don’t—’

‘Mandeville!’ She blurted the word, surprising herself.

The man staring at her, and then stifling his own surprise; Miles uneasy.

The watermill at night. Shay unhesitant.
‘I – I should say that. . . we’re friends of Mandeville.’

Miles’s eyes widened slightly, and he glanced beyond them. ‘Of course, miss; sir. Take a little while – I have to get them from my brother – but you can rest up here.’

Half an hour after the two had departed on fresh horses, another man came to the dairy, with the same word and the same request. Something about Miles’s response struck him odd, and Hugh Miles was pushed to observe, softly, that their friends were busy this afternoon.

Mortimer Shay was thrown for a moment, and then something twisted at his lips.