Treason's Daughter (26 page)

Dear Hattie, thinks Hen. Strange to have grown close to someone so different. Can she read? I wonder. I have never seen her.

In the bookshop, as the dust dances in the columns of light, she wonders where her father's soul is, and what it looks like. She thinks of his corporeal body swinging on the gibbet, the knife coming in to slice out his organs. Rowan says that her father will be pleased, wherever he is, to know if he was right. A predestined heaven, or an earned one. She can imagine Challoner's soul haranguing the angels.

Hen shivers, though it is not cold. She loathes the idea of Sam and Ned standing against each other. She concocts elaborate daydreams where they pause on seeing each other, embrace like brothers and walk away from the fighting. She imagines them sitting together by the fire in her rooms, sharing a bottle of wine, laughing at their lucky escapes. She will not think of the alternative. She cannot.

At least it's June, not winter. Poor Ned, he hates the cold. No wonder, after what happened to him at Edgehill. Dear
Ned. If they all get through this, she will make sure he is never cold again.

Pudding shuffles beneath him, and Sam reaches down to pat her neck.

He hears a voice behind him from the troop: ‘Fucking nancies, we look – full battle deployment and no bastard in sight.'

‘Maybe we're fighting them cows.'

Sam thinks about ordering the men to be silent, but lets it go.

Below them, in the dip underneath the ridge, a herd of cows grazes, their herdsman leaning on a stick and seemingly unconcerned about the appearance of a full army above him. Sam remembers the herdsman at Marston Moor, his placid surprise at the troops' appearance, and Sam's hurried explanation of the king's quarrel. The laconic reply: ‘Himself fallen out with the parliament, then, has he?'

The men laugh at some ribald humour about MPs and cows. Sam smiles at the laughter behind him. Suddenly he hears the signal to form a marching order. Ahead of him, Captain Fenwick appears alongside Prince Rupert himself, the massive bulk of their chief unmistakable next to the slim-hipped captain.

‘Explain as we go, man,' the prince instructs Fenwick, and wheels round to set off at a slow trot.

‘Right,' says Fenwick, his voice so low they strain to hear him. ‘The rebel bastards are here somewhere. Must be. Our boys clashed with them two days ago, and the scoutmaster-general, may God grant the poor blind sod a miracle, has failed to find
them. So, like every dirty job in this fucking war, us noble horse must do it ourselves if we want it smartly. If we find the bastards, no heroics. Your lieutenant,' he gestures at Sam, ‘may want to take the bastards on without our two-footed simpleton friends in the infantry, but I intend to see my wife's teats one more time before I die, boys. So eyes open, mouths shut, and follow my lead.'

‘That what your wife says, sir?'

‘Lucky we're going on a forlorn fucking suicide run, Peters, or I'd kill you myself,' says Fenwick.

The men smile through taut, hard faces.

They ride down the hill. A couple of scouting parties are detached and sent ahead. This is strange, tricksy land. It folds and curves in hillocks and mounds. It is pitted with false horizons and deceptive slopes. The bastards could be ten feet away, over a ridge, and you wouldn't know it until you landed in their laps begging to be spitted.

The prince rides back and forth along the line, stopping here and there for a word. He falls back until he is riding next to Sam.

‘Lieutenant…' He pauses.

‘Challoner, sir. Your Highness, sir.'

‘Sir will do in the field,' says Prince Rupert. Their horses walk side by side. Pudding is small beside the prince's mount, and Sam pats her neck in case she feels it. He is confused by the great man's presence. The junior officers and troopers hold him in such awe. Rupert's life is already a legend, and he is barely twenty-six. Royalists tell of his courage, his battle-madness and glory. He is a new Alexander. And yet Sam can remember running with the London apprentices, who sang of Rupert's bestiality, of his
moonlit dances with the devil, and of his ferocious coupling with witches that spawned Boy, the imp dog.

Sam watched from afar, last summer, as Rupert mourned Boy's death in the grisly aftermath of Marston Moor. He watched Rupert cry for the companion of his youth, and at that moment had given in to the consuming hero-worship displayed by the other boys in Rupert's horse. The dispossessed and the younger sons and the glory-seekers – they worshipped their wandering prince. Now not theirs alone; he is commander of the king's whole army. To have him ambling alongside is horribly disconcerting – as if Ares himself has tumbled out of Mount Olympos for a natter.

Rupert breaks the silence. ‘Of course, I remember. The linen merchant's boy. I hear good words of you.'

Sam can only nod. Say something, you fool.

Rupert speaks first. ‘Will your troop change its colours, I wonder, now that the Lord Essex is no longer commanding the enemy?'

Sam thinks of their colours, the streaming banner he used to carry with such pride as a cornet. And the words ‘Cuckolds, we come' emblazoned on green-flowered damask.

‘I think, sir, the words still hold true. All the time those bastards spend on their knees, their wives must be crying out for red blood.' He regrets the words even as he says them, remembering too late Rupert's reputation for sobriety and propriety. He is relieved to hear a low chuckle.

‘Well, then, perhaps it may serve. Now silence, I think. We are near the edges of where the cuckolds may be lurking.'

They ride on, slowly, stealthily. Up hill and through the unnaturally quiet village of Clipston. The only sound is the squelch
of their hooves in the muddy path, which doubtless heralded their arrival to the hidden locals. Who'd be an artillery officer? Sam imagines the job of pulling the heavy pieces up and down these rain-drenched, boggy mounds. They clear the last house, then crest the top of a hill, and suddenly, there they are. Thousands of the joyless bastards, beetling across the opposite hill. They look like they are retreating. Are they? Or just repositioning? It is impossible to tell.

Rupert's horse follow his lead and pull up to watch. Nervous men soothe twitchy, panting beasts.

Nearby, the prince takes counsel with his advisers and the locals he co-opted last night in Market Harborough. Sam hears the unmistakable Germanic inflection in his demi-god's voice as he curses the king's council for deciding to confront the New Noddle.

‘I told them we should withdraw to Leicester until Goring arrives with his horse.'

A lower voice reminds him of the king's council's view; a retreat could leave them trapped between Fairfax's army and the advancing Scots.

‘So here we are,' Rupert says, louder, intending the whole party to hear. ‘Outmanned, outhorsed, outgunned. Still, gentlemen, we have faced worse odds. We shall find ways to amuse the rebels.'

Rupert calls out over his shoulder. ‘Captain Fenwick, to me. Your two best riders with you.'

Fenwick barks: ‘Jenkins, Challoner.'

They move forward. Jenkins is a small boy, younger than Sam. The son of a horse breeder, he is said to have suckled a mare as a baby, after his mother died in birthing him. He is more horse
than human. Sam canters alongside him, his back pike-straight, thighs tight, trying not to let this great and swelling pride obscure his concentration.

‘Sir,' says Fenwick. ‘Corporal Jenkins and Lieutenant Challoner.'

Prince Rupert says: ‘This ground is pure shite, gentlemen. We'll break our necks before we can swing a sword at a rebel head. Fenwick, take your troop and ride for the king. Give Jenkins the letter in case of an ambush. He must get through. Tell the king our position. There's Mill Hill for your waypoint. Tell him we must flank the enemy to engage on our terms. Tell him Dust Hill is where we will stand, and hope to God the bastards follow us. I'm sending Challoner here with a flag up Moot Hill, to show the angle of advance. It's all in this letter. The field word is “Queen Mary”.'

Rupert takes the letter from Sir Bernard de Gomme, the Walloon staff officer at his side. He squints at it, reading it through, before handing it to Jenkins.

The prince turns to Challoner. ‘You understand, lieutenant? The far side of the hill from the enemy, so they can't see the flag, but place it so we can see it at Dust Hill –' he points – ‘and the king can see it from the current billet. Do you understand? Your cornet will hold your place in the line until you rejoin, when we're all in place.'

‘Yes, sir,' says Sam, accepting Rupert's colours from the aide, and settling the point of the lance against his hip as he used to as a cornet.

‘Don't fail,' says the prince. ‘This is it, I think, gentlemen,' he says to his small band of horsemen. ‘Their way or, God willing, ours – all will be decided today.'

The ground is horribly boggy and pockmarked with warrens. Sam can see the rabbits scurrying about, ignoring the lone horse walking though their terrain and its nervous rider. A broken ankle here would be disastrous. Sam whispers to Pudding as she picks her way across the treacherous ground.

‘Careful, my Pudding, careful, my darling.'

He wonders if the captain and Jenkins have reached the king. And he wonders about Ned, before cursing himself for losing concentration.

The terrain begins to slope upwards and, for a lurching moment, Sam loses his bearings. Is this the right hill? He imagines the royalist foot following the flag into an ambush, rebel pikes scything them down like wheat. His palms are sweating. Holding onto the reins and the lance becomes difficult. He wedges it against his belt.

I would rather charge pikes, he thinks, than have this responsibility. What stuff must Prince Rupert be made of, to bear the whole army on his shoulders?

Pudding, untroubled, continues her early morning saunter uphill. Sam forces himself to breathe. Think. This must be the right hill. He tries to remember the map they studied yesterday on the march. Only yesterday? If this is Moot Hill, I would have walked through enemy pickets. If it is Mill Hill, I would see the sails of a windmill – and more to the point, I would have a rebel sword in my bowels. Yes. The right hill.

They continue to climb. They aren't big hills, for all that they
play with a man's senses. Not like those big sods in the north they gadded about in the summer just gone. Jesus wept, but that was a tough campaign. And you survived that where thousands didn't, he tells himself. Man up, boy, man up.

As he approaches what looks like the top, Sam stops and dismounts. Tying Pudding's reins to a low bush, he walks up the rest of the hill, checking for a false summit, and getting his bearings. He steps on a dry branch, which cracks like a gunshot. His heart thumps so violently it near batters its way out of his chest.

The summit flattens out to a small plateau. It seems like a flat field, and Sam has the sense, for a moment, that he has walked down instead of up. He walks forward, and the edge of the field falls away suddenly. To his right is a deep valley which ridges and folds like a tangle of thighs. Ahead, he can see, far away in the distance, the rebels are on the move. They're marching west on top of a ridge. They're following Rupert's flanking march. There will be a fight today, God willing. The rebels seem game. Fools. Staffed by God-botherers, officered by butchers and bakers; how can they prevail against the king's own? But, God's blood, there are a lot of them.

‘More for us to kill,' Sam says aloud, and feels foolish. What use is the Cavalier's fearless banter if nobody is there to hear it?

He looks behind him, and he can see the king's army. Too far to make out any colours or banners, but they seem to be on the move. They are marching, in full battalia, the three or so miles to where the prince stipulated. An hour, then, to go. Less until they pass below him. He slithers back down to Pudding, who tosses her head when she sees him. He plants the banner where he thinks
it must be visible, pushing the point of the lance into the earth. Pudding is idly nibbling at a bush, and he pats her neck.