William Falkland 01 - The Royalist (12 page)

I had not. ‘Was I supposed to?’

Richard Baxter shared a look with Fairfax. Fairfax nodded. ‘He is a New Modeller now. You’re right. He should have his Bible.’

Baxter took great care in explaining that every single soldier in this mongrel army had his own copy of this pocket book. It was full of scripture to aid a soldier’s spirit and, so Baxter said, nourished him more than any meal. I wondered what the pikemen in the encampment would make of that assertion if they could see us feasting now. ‘I saw you tore apart their church,’ I said when he was done. ‘Was that instruction in the pocket book as well?’

The priest shook his head solemnly. ‘I am aware of the transgression. But, Master Falkland, you must understand: this is a godly army. If sometimes the boys take their godliness to an extreme, it is through fervour and righteousness, not through malice. Some boys saw the glass in those windows and could not stand for it.’

‘For a piece of painted glass?’

At this, Fairfax interjected. ‘I’d ask you to mind your manners, Falkland. You would do well to remember in whose house you eat.’

‘My trouble is,’ I went on, ‘that barely half this army is as
godly
as you would have it. Oh, I dare say, there are many Puritan boys out there. I’ve seen some of them myself, scrapping in the streets. But here is my report: I’m of the opinion that those boys died because they were Catholics.’

Black Tom fixed me with a look. Suddenly the sabre scar across his face seemed more prominent, as if, like his eyebrows, it was arching to make a point.

‘They were taking confessions out by that tree,’ I said.

‘The churchman,’ whispered Baxter.

‘He didn’t solicit it. He had boys going to him. And not just the dead boys, I shouldn’t wonder. This place is crawling with Catholics.’

Black Tom linked his fingers together to make a steeple on which he rested his chin. He smirked. ‘You say it as if it disgusts you. And you a cavalier.’

He was taunting me. Fairfax wasn’t foolish enough to say that all cavaliers were Catholics. It was a fallacy that the rank and file liked to perpetuate: that the New Model was fighting a godly war and hence their enemies had to be
un
godly. It was remarkable how many different ways a sentiment like that could be twisted.

‘Is that the extent of your progress, Falkland? That the New Model is not yet complete?’ Warbeck’s voice was as buttery as it had been the first time we met in the carriage to Cromwell’s chambers; but, while then he had seemed a servant, now he was more certain of his stature. He shifted slightly and I fancied he was trying to make himself seem level with Black Tom.

‘I wasn’t told the third boy survived,’ I began. ‘I thought I was here to poke around a run of suicides and desertions but—’

‘You do not believe them suicides?’ Warbeck purred.

‘I’m yet to form an opinion.’

‘A messenger is leaving for London in the morning,’ Warbeck went on. ‘It would serve you well if I had a report to make.’

‘You can tell your master that he sent me into a nest of vipers. But that’s nothing he didn’t already know, is it? So you see, gentlemen, I begin to ask myself questions. I begin to ask myself why in
God’s
name –’ I took the opportunity to invoke the Lord’s name in vain just to see if it might make them shudder – ‘a man like Oliver Cromwell, who is certainly not squeamish about death and who might hang boys himself and glory in them dangling there, would worry about a few deaths in this monster he’s created? I reckon him for a statistician. A tactician. A man who writes letters to the mothers of fallen soldiers not because their deaths burden him but because it adds to his ledger. A man who can stack good against bad and not trouble himself at night so long as the scales balance. And I wonder – why?’

Before anyone could respond, the serving girls reappeared. We were to be served stewed apples and the sweet smell filled the air. It was enough to make me forget.

‘Well,’ Black Tom smiled. ‘We are at least agreed on one matter: the death of three lads makes not one whit of difference. Cromwell has indeed lost control of his senses.’ He looked at me intently, as if happy at last. ‘Eat,’ he instructed. ‘Yours is a soul that needs nourishing,’ he added, ‘in every way there is.’

The tone of dismissal, the sense that he was almost glad these boys were dead, riled me; but once I’d taken my first spoonful I couldn’t stop. Black Tom took it to his advantage and caught me off guard while I was savouring the taste. ‘What you must appreciate,’ he said, ‘is that Mr Cromwell, above all else, is interested in the
detail
. He is like an embroiderer in that respect. He is like a tailor. But his trade is in people, not in clothes and thread. Mr Cromwell is an exemplary tactician, and not only when he is leading a hundred horse into your screaming royalist ranks.’ Fairfax grinned over his steepled hands. When his face creased the scar shifted. Though it was old it made the impression that it was perilously close to opening again. ‘You and I, Falkland, have fought this war for years. On opposite sides, perhaps, but I’ll fancy the differences are small ones. So we are of one mind. Three boys died. We lose more than that every week through cold and disease. There are rumours in camp – but I’ve already told you, a camp without rumours is like a dancing girl without the itch. I’d be more worried if there were no rumours at all.’ He paused. ‘But,’ he went on, ‘now that
you
appear, now that Cromwell sends his
man
into my camp, well, you’ll appreciate, it isn’t exactly the hangings that are stirring up trouble.’

I listened but could not look him in the eye for I was too busy scraping out my bowl and, besides, I didn’t want to see the way he could look deep into me. ‘And the desertions?’ I asked him when I was done. ‘How many have there been?’

Fairfax fixed me with a fiery look. ‘More than a hundred. But what does Cromwell expect when he insists on pressing royalists and Catholics?’ He banged the table, the sudden violence enough to make all four of us jump. At his side, Purkiss leapt up as if he might be about to swoon. ‘There is only one thing that can stop us from winning this war, Falkland,’ he said. ‘Do you know what that is?’

‘The King?’ I began, though the King could hardly win the favour of his own Court these days.

‘Disunity!’ Fairfax barked back. He brought his fist down to rattle the table a second time. ‘How can a good Puritan pikeman lad fight with the full might of God in his heart when all around his own company are papists and cavaliers?’

‘You can press men’s bodies, sir, but you cannot press their minds. You cannot press their souls.’ As I said the words I realised I believed them. Cromwell had pressed me into his service but he had not turned me to his cause. Perhaps it was only the stewed apples, but I felt warmer inside. Warbeck glowered and twitched his eye to show that I was chancing my arm, but I thought they would not have brought me to dinner to do me any harm.

Fairfax grinned, showing off his rotten teeth. ‘Exactly so.
Exactly
so. And so we have what I believe to be a perfect solution to this whole matter. There is something I would like to show you.’

He rose without a further word and strode for the door. Warbeck, still glowering, was quick to follow. I rose more sedately, my stomach bloated and unsettled by this unaccustomed feast. Purkiss and Baxter showed every sign of staying exactly as they sat. I understood, then, that whatever was to come, all here had known of it before I ever set foot through the door. They’d been waiting for me. Perhaps even this feast had been set to soften my mind.

Outside, Fairfax led us along a path going round to the back of the farm. You could not tell if you approached from the town, but the farmhouse masked a sprawl of outbuildings in its yards. There was a stable where a white stallion was kept, a house for chickens that had long been picked clean and a feed house where cavalrymen were bedding down. Beyond these was a small stone building, no bigger than the room in which we’d dined, with no windows and only a single narrow door. Three guardsmen stood beside it. One of them tended a fire but it didn’t seem to be warming them much. As we approached – Fairfax, Warbeck and I – I could hear their teeth chattering from a furlong away. They gathered themselves when they saw us and stood up straight. Warbeck took a lantern from one of the men and led us to the door and opened it. The stench inside was terrible, a mixture of slurry and rot I’d not known since my brief time as warden of the condemned in Yorkshire. The lantern threw our shadows against the stone. There was a deep squelching underfoot and I took it that we were treading in frost-crusted manure.

The lantern swept around and I saw, in the corner, a man scrabbling like a rat. He’d been asleep but he dragged himself up when we loomed above him, shielding his eyes from the light with an arm drenched in muck. In the crook of his elbow I saw his face, all bunched up and beaten.

‘Give me that,’ I said and took the lantern from Warbeck. I crouched down and held the light near. The man thought I was coming to deliver more blows and shrank as closely as he could to the wall. He tried to say something but his lips were swollen and I couldn’t make out the words. ‘What did you do to him?’ I demanded, looking back over my shoulder.

‘It was nothing he didn’t deserve,’ said Fairfax. ‘Nothing Cromwell would not have done himself had he known what this wretch did.’

‘Who is he?’

‘A deserter,’ hissed Warbeck. He was flushed with pride, his simpering baritone voice even more sickly sweet, and I wondered if he’d been the man to administer this justice. More likely he had been a spectator. He didn’t have the fists for fighting.

‘Worse, I’m afraid,’ said Fairfax coolly. ‘He was part of the camp guard. When the wintering began, men were appointed to set patrols, keep discipline. The godliest men we could find.’

If this was what came of being godly then I would rather be a devil’s whoreson.

‘He betrayed his post,’ Fairfax went on. ‘He was one of those who ravished a local merchant’s daughter. It was after Cromwell returned to London when we rooted him out or else he might already be hanging in the chestnut square. You remember the man hanging there?’

I stood. A part of me still ached for this man – I supposed I would always now have a tender spot for men locked in chains – but another part thought of my own daughter, Charlotte. Wherever she was now, I hoped she was far away from any man, any soldier, any politician. I’d rather lock her in a tower for her whole life than subject her to this. No, if Fairfax spoke the truth then any pity I had for this man was scant, chains or no.

‘He has entered into an agreement,’ Fairfax said. ‘In return for a swift end he will swear an oath to the fact that he goaded those boys to suicide. He will make his confession –’ Fairfax smiled – ‘but not to that loitering priest. He will make his confession to you, Falkland, and you may deliver a report to your master and be gone. You are, after all, a man with a reputation for an irredeemable conscience. I would not have you lie.’

‘This man is innocent?’

‘Innocent?’ Warbeck gasped. ‘Cromwell would have had him drawn and quartered already.’

Fairfax was shaking his head. ‘Falkland, now is not the time to be noble. Nobility is dying. And I say that as a man of noble birth myself. You were sent to this camp to stop the rumours of those boys’ deaths spiralling into something that could not be controlled. I am asking you to control it. You say they died because they were Catholic. Very well. But do you now mean to question every Puritan lad who joined Parliament to guard our souls against the sins of popery?’

The man in front of me was dead anyway. It was better that he died quickly rather than agonise in this place the whole winter long, no matter what he’d done.

‘You will have a report to make to Cromwell. You must make it knowing it’s God’s truth as you have heard it. You’ll be free to leave the encampment and I will be free of an intelligencer rummaging around, conjuring consternation out of a simple unfortunate occurrence.’

He paused. On the ground, the man scrabbled. But this time he dropped his arm and I could see his face. His eyes, though black and half sealed shut, seemed to speak to me. It did not matter to him, he was saying. Either way, it was not going to be his problem.

‘What do you say, Falkland?’

I stepped back. I wanted nothing more than to nod, to press my hands together and leave this place. If I rode swiftly, if luck was on my side, I could be at my old home in Launcells within two days. I could begin my search for what was left of my family. My Caro, my son, my little girl . . . But as I looked at Fairfax something bit me deep inside. It was the same thing that had bitten me all those years ago in Yorkshire when the King had told me to leave it alone, that the rapist might go ignored. I did not like the way Fairfax tossed the deaths of those boys aside as though they were nothing. He reminded me, then and there, a little of the King in that regard.

‘There is a boy in the surgeon’s quarters,’ I said. ‘Name of Hotham. The third boy to hang. I’m going to need to speak to him without the presence of his surgeon and without the presence of his friends.’ I turned on my heel and flinched as I stepped back into the biting cold of the camp. ‘Sirs, I don’t know what you have created here. I’m not sure I
want
to know. But I do know this: those boys didn’t have to die. Not here. Kill them on a battlefield if you must, but not like this.’

I turned my back and marched alone down the incline to the bridge across the frozen brook, between the fields of horses, past the lonely watchman at the edge of the town and back towards the market square. All the way I thought I felt Black Tom’s eyes following me; and when outside the church I heard footsteps moving quickly behind me, catching up, I turned, my fists clenched and raised and my heart pounding as if ready for battle. I didn’t fancy Fairfax had taken well to my refusal and there were much simpler ways to rid himself of Cromwell’s unwanted intelligencer.