Treason's Daughter (14 page)

‘Look, Henrietta! Over there, Lady Middlesex and Lady Anne Waller! There, carrying the carts of soil. What a shame to get such
fine linen so dirty. I don't suppose Lady Middlesex owns an old gown for such work.'

Despite the dirt and the shock of physical labour, Hen is immensely enjoying herself. There is a festive atmosphere here, on this first day of digging. Children dodge in and out of legs. Carts laden with food have been pulled up from the City to feed the workers. Somewhere a drum beats, and a small boy with a pure alto sings a simple, rhythmic song to aid the diggers.

Hen enjoys the sense of a universal purpose, and the easy fellowship that comes with a common physical goal. And then, suddenly, as twilight sinks down towards the freshly dug soil, Will is standing beside her.

‘Will!'

‘I saw you. I was working over there.' He points at random towards the far end of the trench.

Hen spins round, looking for Mrs Birch, but she is too far away to be seen in the gloaming.

‘Will, we had word of Ned. He was at Edgehill, and hurt, but not badly.'

‘Thank the Lord!' he says, and she loves him for his sincerity.

Silence, then. An awkward, lingering one.

She traces the lines of his face with her gaze, trying to capture it. His dark hair, almost black, falls over his eyes, and he pushes it back in that well-remembered gesture. There is a smudge of mud on his forehead, and he is flushed from the digging. Hen is suddenly aware that she, too, has been grubbing in the mud. What she sees in him as endearing, he could perceive as marks of a slattern. Her hair hangs in ratty tangles down her face. And still the silence lingers like an intrusive chaperone.

‘I should not—' she begins.

‘I must—' he says at the same time.

They laugh.

‘You first.'

‘You.'

‘I know that it is impossible,' he says. ‘I shall not see you again, I promise it.'

‘But this was an accident,' says Hen. ‘It doesn't count,' she adds, childishly.

He smiles, and his beauty hits her again, punches her in the stomach and catches the breath in her throat. ‘No, indeed, it does not count. Oh Hen, I miss you. I miss seeing your face, and hearing you talk. I miss kissing you.'

‘And I you.'

Silence, again. But this time, not awkward.

He takes her hand and they stand near each other in the half-light. She feels taller, more lithe, under his gaze.

‘I had hoped that this would fade,' she says.

‘But it has not.'

‘No.'

‘I will move to another section of the fortifications,' he says.

She clenches his hand tight.

She hears her name being called through the darkness.

‘I must go.'

And she walks away.

All through that chill autumn, Hen labours at the fort when she can. She loves it; the work brings a freedom she has never known. The tiredness at the end of each day feels blessed and profound. Each morning she wakes and relishes the absence of the question: How shall I fill my day?

The fort grows higher, even as the hopes of a new peace settlement mount. She is happy. And yet, every time she reaches the new top of the fortifications, and sinks her feet into the freshly turned earth, she scans the ranks of labourers. Hoping. But Will is never there.

CHAPTER TWELVE

November 1642

‘N
ED CHALLONER. NED CHALLONER.'

Ned thinks he hears his name. It is a cold dawn he wakes into, and he shivers. Taffy, lying close next to him, snores with extraordinary vigour. Holy Joe is curled into the Welshman's side, sharing the one cloak the three have left between them. Ned has somehow wriggled free in the night. Must be your stink, Taf, he thinks, without rancour. He remembers – how could he forget? – another cold dawn.

Ned wakes with the soldier's lament in his belly, in his goose-pimpled flesh and in his heart. Fucking hungry, fucking cold and fucking miserable. Who'd be a soldier? But he listens to his mates' guttural breathing and it softens his morning rage. Their snoring is a loud and rattling affirmation of life.

‘Ned Challoner, Ned Challoner.' It comes in a high-pitched singsong. Ned raises himself onto an elbow, and looks across the huddles of sleeping men. A boy, an irritatingly chirpy-looking boy, picks through the bodies. ‘Ned Challoner.'

‘Boy!' hisses Ned.

‘You him?'

‘Who wants to know?'

‘Who's asking?

‘Who is . . . Plague take you, boy. I am Ned Challoner. What do you want?'

‘I've a message. From a man says he's your father.'

‘Aye.' Ned's pulse quickens. He sits upright, wiping the sleep from his eyes. ‘And what does he say?'

‘He's here.'

‘Here!' Ned, absurdly, looks around his sleeping fellows, as if his father will loom up next to them.

The boy jerks his head.

‘Not
here
!' he says with scorn. ‘Come, I'll take you.'

Ned nudges Taffy, who stirs from his sleep with a growl.

‘Sores on your member, Ned. I was somewhere lovely.'

‘Tight and wet, Taf?'

‘You know me, boy.'

‘Listen. My father's here. I'm going to see him.'

‘Rich, your old man? Bring us back something, man.'

Ned smiles, and Taffy closes his eyes again, settling back somewhere lovely.

The boy leads Ned through the sleeping soldiers, towards the river and the road that meanders alongside it and heads into the City. Beyond the sleeping soldiers, there are units of men moving through the darkness. The trained bands on the move, coming up from London overnight to join Essex and his men, Ned guesses. Reinforcements, God be praised.

Then he smells something. Bread, by God. Freshly baked,
warm. The smell makes him almost giddy with desire. There are other smells too, drifting over the dew-soaked grass. Meat pies, he thinks, and sausages. I'm still asleep. Imagining it. Must be.

A cart trundles past, with a linkboy running alongside it. Ned can just see the outline of baskets, piled high with loaves.

‘What's all this, boy?' he says, as they wait to cross the road. He fights the urge to jump face down and mouth open into a breadbasket.

‘The city's alive with the coming battle. Bakers up all night, goodwives cooking by candlelight. Half the city's turned up to bring you food, or stand with you. I've come to fight.'

Ned looks sideways at the boy, who barely reaches his waist. He says nothing.

‘Now,' says the boy, and they dodge between two carts. ‘Here somewhere,' says the boy, peering through the crowds in the gloom. ‘By this tree, he said.'

‘Ned?' A tremulous voice from the darkness.

‘Father.'

Lord, Lord, thank you, thinks Ned, as his father's familiar bulk becomes obvious in the half-light.

‘Oh, my boy,' says Challoner. ‘Your hair! And you so thin.'

Ned has forgotten how he must have changed. The surgeon shaved off all his hair when he came in from the cold at Edgehill, the better to pick the maggots out of his scalp wound. He rubs at the bristles, sheepishly. He knows he is thinner, too. The clothes, such as he has left, hang off him.

The small boy holds out his hand, and his father makes to drop some coins in the outstretched palm.

‘Wait. Father, have you any food, and an extra coin?'

His father points to a basket at his feet. Ned rummages. Bread. Pies. A chicken! Cheese. He steadies himself, quelling the desire to stuff himself. He fights for control. The bread is still warm. He breaks it in half, grabs a pie, and a couple of smaller cooked birds.

‘For my pals,' he says to his father.

‘Of course.'

He wraps the food in cloth, and hands the parcel to the boy.

‘Take these back to where you found me. The snoring man. Wake him with these and tell him the birds are poxed and his mother pissed in the bread. Do it quietly, or he'll have to share.'

Pocketing the extra money, and holding the cloth parcel, the boy dodges back across the road.

Ned turns back to his father.

‘What are you doing here?'

‘We had no news of you since Edgehill, and we were afraid you were victims of Prince Rupert's rout at Brentford. I came to find you.'

‘And here I am.'

‘And here you are.'

Ned realizes that his father is crying. He shivers, from cold touched with embarrassment.

‘Sorry, Ned, I forgot. I brought this. In case.' Challoner pushes a cloak into his hands, and Ned puts it on. It is heavy, warm cloth, lined with soft lambs wool. He wraps it round himself.

‘How did you know I'd need it?'

‘I was a soldier too, boy, remember. Now, food. And there's ale here. Or wine, if you'd rather.'

‘Ale,' says Ned.

They sit on the damp ground and, with the cloak heavy on his shoulders, Ned stops shivering at last.

‘When we heard some of Holles' men were near the walls and the king's troops on their heels, Hen and Cook took to the kitchen.'

‘Hen in the kitchen?'

He senses his father's smile in the gloom.

‘All night. She said she could not sit idly by. You can tell her pies from Cook's, I fear.'

He puts one fat pie and one shrunken, misshapen thing in Ned's hands. Ned is curiously moved by the funny little one. But he puts it down, and cracks open the pastry case of Cook's pie. Still just warm, the steam rises in the cold air. It smells of meat and ale and carrots. It smells of the kitchen at home, and Cook's apron. Ned takes a moment to savour it, to enjoy the anticipation, the saliva rushing into his mouth. He bites into the meat at last. This is the greatest pleasure of my life, he thinks. Nothing will taste as fine as this again. Nothing.

His mouth full, he says: ‘Tell Hen I ate hers, will you, Father, and it was delicious.'

Richard Challoner chuckles.

‘We got your letter, after Edgehill,' he says, while Ned eats on. ‘We knew already that you were well. Oliver Chettle came to tell us – he'd heard tales of you wandering into the camp, naked in the morning.'

Ned just nods. He's tearing the leg off the chicken now. Cook has basted its skin with honey as it turned on the spit. She knows that's how he likes it best. He licks the heavenly mixture of honey and skin from his fingers, and thinks he might faint with the joy
of it. Gluttony is a sin, he thinks, even as he rips a strip of meat from the bird's breast.

‘He's doing well, Chettle. Rising fast. Advising the Committee of Safety on legal revenue-raising to fight this war. None of it legal, in my book…' Challoner tails off. ‘I will not talk politics, Ned. I promise it. Mind, I promised it on the way here, and I've broken it already.'

Ned waves a gnawed bone at his father, as he drinks deep from the ale. The warm pie, the cloak and the hoppy hug of the ale are combining to make him almost deliriously happy. The pleasure of small things. I would not have understood that, had I not become a soldier, he thinks. His father had always understood the pleasure of small things, he realizes suddenly, and he looks across at the old man with renewed affection.

‘Hen is well, but anxious,' says Challoner. ‘If I find you, I'm to give you a hundred kisses. Consider them bestowed.'

Ned, his mouth full to the brim with a ripe cheese, grins, and clasps a hand to his breast.

‘And Sam. Poor lad is eating his heart out to join you. Sends his love through gritted teeth.'

‘Don't let him,' says Ned, spitting crumbs.

‘I shall not. Is it bad?'

Ned nods. ‘I was at Brentford yesterday.'

‘Jesus wept. We heard of it, last night. Bad news travels on wings.'

Ned looks up at his father. ‘Did you, in the Low Countries, know the thing they call the panic fear?'

‘I saw it myself, once.' His father's eyes look beyond him, seeing past horrors.

They are silent, and Ned lets the food settle. A warmth spreads
through his body. He wriggles his toes, glad to be whole and alive. He feels the shame moments later, alongside the gladness. The unbearable burden of surviving your friends.

‘They told us, Father, when we trained. Stand together, and you'll make it. Break ranks, and you're done. A row of pikes can take a horse. A lone man with a pike? He is just a dead man running with a big stick.'

‘Aye. But it's one thing to be told it, and another to stand fast,' Challoner says. ‘All it takes is one or two.'

Ned nods, remembering.

It was misty, cold. Fear fluttered up, down damp skin. Numb hands gripped slender ash pikes. He stood shoulder to shoulder with his brothers, with more crouching in front and standing close behind. He could feel Holy Joe's breath hot on his neck, and the nervous yammering of Turnip's leg as it hit the back of his thigh, repeatedly. Inky Pete behind him on the other side sang a psalm to himself. He half-sang, half-whispered, so quiet Ned couldn't tell which psalm it was. He smiled to himself, briefly, thinking of Pete's relentless psalm singing. Like the oaths falling from a Cavalier
.

His smile faded as quickly as it appeared. He was boxed in. Chalk to the left of him, Taffy to the right. So close that, glancing sideways, he could see the puckered ridges of Chalk's pimples. On the other side, Taf's face was immobile, but his mouth was pursed so tightly his lips had disappeared. The Welshman caught Ned's glance and winked. They all stood together, physically bunched and mentally entwined by training and loyalty and the strong desire not to be the one who cracked, who let the others down. Ned understood, then, the courage that is borne of fear; the fear of failing, of seeming a coward in the eyes of men you respect. He
was still detached enough, rational enough, to enjoy the irony as if at a distance from it: that bravery is just fear worn in public view
.

Tight in, together, they waited. Hands clenched and unclenched on pikes. Their breath and the heat from their bodies punched through the cold air in clouds. Like a dragon, bristling with pikes, they shuffled and breathed, waiting, listening
.

Ned's stomach churned. He heard someone retching, and muffled curses. There's no room to vomit among the pikemen without hitting a brother. The sour smell mingled with the stench of frightened men. I have smelled fear, Ned thought, and it smells of shit and puke. On the wings of the five-deep pike unit, the musket men nervously checked their gear, anxious fingers jumping from barrel to match
.

The mist was the worst of it. At Edgehill, Ned had known the battle blindness, as the haze of smoke hanging thickly over the battlefield destroyed all visibility. But battle had already been joined. The enemy was in front, a pike's push away
.

This blind, silent waiting was worse. The pike unit twitched at rustling leaves, shuddered at cracking twigs. The scouts' shouts, which sent them running to their gear and into formation, the orders of the office, all had abated, leaving this deep and unsettling quiet
.

Then came the rumbling of horses' hooves. From somewhere else came the excited yapping of a dog, like a hound on a scent. Packed in with his brothers, part of them, Ned could feel the chain sag before it broke. The few veterans spoke up. Taf to the side of him growled, ‘Hold fast. Fast, you whoresons.'

A high-pitched gabbling came from behind Ned's left shoulder: ‘Jesus Lord. Jesus Lord. Jesus Lord. Watch us, Lord.'

‘Shut your mouth.' This came grumbled from somewhere behind Ned. His helmet was hot and heavy, and the sweat ran down to catch the chill November air, cold on his cheeks
.

‘Jesus. Oh my Lord.'

‘He can't hear you, boy.'

‘Them fucking Cavaliers can, though.'

A laugh, and the unit stood firmer. Ned held his pike so tight he imagined his fingers freezing in that position, claw-like
.

Inky Pete's psalm tumbled out, fast and louder: ‘“For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.”'

‘The ungodly shall perish. They shall perish,' Ned muttered under his breath, and still the rumbling grew, and Ned could feel the tremor of it beneath his feet. He forced himself to listen to his brain, even as his legs twitched with the urge to run
.

Stand, you fool. Cavalry can't break pike. Cavalry can't break pike. Can't break pike
.

The end of his pike was jammed against his left shoe, its point angled up at horse's head height. He tried to imagine the point driving through a nag's neck, catching it on the soft underside
.

He could sense his brothers caught in the same battle between brain and legs. Fear gripped the pikemen, vice-tight
.

Stand fast, for Christ's sake. Fast
.

Suddenly the horses broke through the mist ahead of them, nostrils flaring and hooves tearing up the turf. They came with a noise like thunder and the crack of pistol shot. A shrill screaming and, in a blink-space, the formation behind Ned collapsed. He heard Taf's urgent, fierce swearing and he found himself running, running. The fear was a demon clinging to his soul. He tried to run from it, but who can run from his own soul? The demon obliterated thought, loosened bowels, gripped his stomach and galloped on his racing heart. He let go of his pike and didn't stop to watch its fall
.