Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) (17 page)

They would have raped me
, she thought, the idea itself as cold as death and like ice in her veins.

‘Wait here,’ Dane said, dismounting and handing his cob’s reins to Bess. She nodded and watched him walk up to the house as though he were calling on a neighbour for some flour.

On the third time of thumping his fist against the door it opened and there stood the clubmen’s leader in his nightshirt, bare-legged and barefoot, his smooth cudgel in his hand and a frown beneath a thatch of dishevelled hair. Bess could not hear what was said but she saw the man peer around Dane at them, his mouth open and his frown plunging deeper. Then he disappeared and Dane leant casually against the doorframe, yawning and rolling his shoulders as though they were stiff. The clubman soon reappeared with the two pistols and Joe’s blunderbuss, handing them to Dane with a shake of his head, then he watched Dane walk back up the short path and hand Joe his firearm before mounting.

‘He looks surprised to be alive,’ Joe said as they turned their horses south and their backs on the clubman. The young man was hunched over, one hand on the reins and the other clamped upon his ribs. They had kicked him. Those savages. ‘You don’t think he knew what the others had planned?’ In the dim light Bess could make out the lumps on Joe’s face, but even in total
darkness his voice – all thick and swollen – would have told its own tale, and she shuddered to think of the pain he was in.

‘I’d like to think those merry-begotten shankers came up with the idea all by themselves,’ Dane said. ‘He’d have been with them otherwise and might have made sure the job was done properly.’

‘The black-hearted devils,’ Joe muttered, glancing behind to make sure they were not being followed.

Dane shrugged. ‘We came here uninvited. They knew we had coin. That was my fault. They saw my pistols and the blades, useful things if you’re trying to protect your village. They could have sold our horses and bribed some recruiting officer to turn a blind eye.’

‘How many came to the barn?’ Bess asked, a shiver running through her right down to her feet.

‘What does it matter? Fools and boys, that’s all.’

Bess felt Joe beside her tense at that.

‘I am sorry, Bess,’ Joe said, looking at her though his eyes would not bind with hers. ‘I did nothing to help you.’

‘Oh, Joe, what could you?’ She shook her head, aching with pity for him. For his shame. ‘There were so many of them and we were asleep.’

‘Next time try sleeping in front of the door so the wretches can’t open it,’ Dane suggested unhelpfully, earning a scalding look from Bess in the ensuing heavy silence. ‘Ah, you did well, lad,’ Dane went on, and for a heartbeat Bess was surprised. ‘I think some of the turds hurt their feet on your head.’ He grinned at Bess and though the night had been drenched in blood and a knot of terror still gripped her heart, she laughed. And Joe laughed too.

THE CLOTHES DID
not fit well. The breeches were too big and even the stockings were on the baggy side. The shirt and slashed doublet were too tight, despite Tom’s having lost much of the muscle that had filled him out before the war, before wounds of the body and of the mind had taken their toll leaving only taut flesh on strong bones. But the high bucket-top boots were a good fit and the other accoutrements of a gentleman – the falling band, the silk cuffs pinned to the ends of the doublet sleeves, the cape of purple felt that matched the breeches, and the expensive broad-brimmed beaver – did enough, Tom hoped, to throw the eye off the ill-fitting parts.

‘Well, Matt, what do you think?’ Tom was buckling up the wide leather baldrick from which a fine rapier hung, its hilt decorated with chiselled heads of King Charles and his queen Henrietta Maria against a fire-gilt ground. A nice touch, Tom thought.

‘You’d fool me and I’m no fool,’ Penn said. ‘As much as it turns my stomach, you could pass for one of the King’s fart-catchers dressed like that. Might even get a blush out of Her Majesty.’

‘I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ Tom said, ‘but I think it’ll do.’ What he really thought was that he felt more like a Rivers
than he had for two years, though he resolved to snuff out that notion before it could catch and burn him. And yet to better pass as a gentleman perhaps it was as well that he feel like one again.

He and Penn had found the farrier on Grope Lane and the dim-witted fellow had grinned and handed Tom a sack and inside had been the clothes, all arranged by The Scot. The cape and the hat had been on the trestle beside the bag, so that Tom guessed the farrier had tried those on for size. He could imagine the overgrown fool prancing around his workshop in them, and now they were imbued with the acrid stink of burnt hooves.

‘The smell will wear off,’ Penn said now, ‘once the breeze gets into you. I’m more afeared the farrier will wonder what’s in those casks and prise the lid off one. Strange idea of The Scot’s to put black powder in a farrier’s workshop with red-hot coals all about.’

‘The powder was well covered,’ Tom said, recalling the oiled canvas that someone had draped over the four barrels. ‘Whoever finds they’re short of black powder is not going to think to look there. The Scot knew what he was doing.’

‘You think he’ll be in there?’ Penn asked, looking at the Fox and Hound tavern, nestled as it was at the western end of Holywell Street amongst a great upspring of tall, crowded houses: three- and four-storey buildings topped with attics and cock-lofts, on narrow plots.

‘He’ll be there,’ Tom said, looking west across the city that was falling into darkness. Here and there candle lamps were being lit as folk left their places of work and thronged the thoroughfares. The south side of the street was dominated by New College, but beyond that, less than two hundred yards away, was All Souls, so that if John Birkenhead, editor of
Mercurius Aulicus
, did indeed take his ale in The Fox and Hound, he was a man who did not stray far from his desk. And Tom had no reason to doubt the young student who
had furnished him with the information. Leaving his scruffy companion to linger in the shadows of Mousecatchers’ Lane, Tom had strolled into All Souls and there regarded a group of young, studious-looking men loitering in the cloister to the north of the chapel. Introducing himself as an old friend of Birkenhead’s, Tom had asked one of them, a pustule-afflicted youth with long curly hair, where the man could be found.

‘Mr Birkenhead possesses a thirsty wit, which must be served or nought is writ,’ the young man had replied pretentiously and loud enough to get a laugh from his friends. He had grinned, evidently pleased with his own wit, and gone on to say that Birkenhead and Peter Heylin, one of the other writers of the newsbook, could be found most nights in The Fox and Hound, quills in hand and stooped over papers stained with the tears of the beaker. ‘They are assiduous fellows, ever inventing new ways to mock the rebels and exalt our cause.’
Our cause
. That had sounded strange to Tom, coming from a pus-faced stripling who had never gripped a hilt or ridden into the blood-fray.

‘Fetch the others and I’ll go in and look for Mr Birkenhead,’ Tom said now, tilting his beaver so that its rim partially obscured his right eye and a small portion of his face, for it was not impossible that he might be recognized amongst followers of the King. ‘Leave the powder where it is until I bring word. The ale too,’ he added, ‘if Dobson and Weasel haven’t rinsed their guts with it.’

Penn nodded and headed off with the leisurely, rolling gait of a stonemason tavern-bound after an honest day’s work, and Tom glanced up at the hanging sign upon which was painted a white hound in full flight after a leaping red fox. And then he pushed open the tavern door, releasing the roar of revellers into the dusk, and stepped inside to find his prey.

It did not take long. The student’s information was good and a casual question to a serving girl confirmed that the short, dignified-looking man with a neat tuft of beard and a well-groomed moustache sitting against the back wall of the
tavern was in fact John Birkenhead. He was alone, too, no sign of his fellow editor, which would make things easier, Tom thought, as he shouldered his way through the drinkers and the thick haze of tobacco smoke towards the thorn in Parliament’s side.

‘John Birkenhead, I presume,’ Tom said, smiling, feeling the smile in his eyes too, for the game was on and his blood was up.

The neat little man, yet to turn thirty by Tom’s reckoning, looked up, deftly turning over the paper he had been writing on, and half smiled half frowned in the way of someone at a social disadvantage.

‘You know me, sir?’ he asked, standing.

‘Admire you, sir, but do not know you,’ Tom replied, sweeping his beaver from his head and half bowing before gesturing for permission to sit on the empty stool. Birkenhead nodded, his palm directing Tom to take his ease. An empty cup on the table suggested that Peter Heylin or someone else had occupied the stool only recently and might return, so Tom knew he must be quick.

‘Though through your work I feel as though we are old friends,’ he said, ‘and hope I’m not too presumptuous.’

Birkenhead’s smile slipped its bridle now. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I am honoured to know that you appreciate our endeavours, Mister—’

‘Rivers,’ Tom said, his heart hammering in his chest because he knew that he had lit the fuse with that one word and must now stay to see whether the charge exploded or began a more complex ignition.

‘Rivers?’ Birkenhead sat back, tugging his short beard with his ink-stained thumb and forefinger. ‘I only know … knew of one Rivers: Sir Francis Rivers who died a hero at Kineton Fight. And then there’re his sons of course. Edmund is one. I believe the young hero won his spurs that very day and was knighted on the field. And the other boy … well—’

‘Tom Rivers at your service,’ Tom said, extending his hand for the other to shake, the smile on his own face feeling like a stranger.

‘But you are known, Tom,’ Birkenhead said, wide-eyed, his natural curiosity pulling him in towards Tom like a fish to the fly. ‘You fought for the rebels at Edgehill. They say you lay with the dead. Spent the night on the field with the ghouls and ghosts as the souls of the dying left their tortured bodies.’

‘Everything you have said is true, sir,’ Tom said, giving the smile some shade now. ‘But there is much more to say.’

‘Indeed?’ Birkenhead’s top teeth worried his bottom lip, his eyes devouring the young man before him, taking in the delicate lace trim of his falling band, the fine fabric revealed by the slash in the doublet, the scars on the face and the long sand-coloured hair. ‘And you have now come over to us?’ he asked, gesturing to a serving girl to bring two cups of beer.

Now Tom affected a solemn expression, giving a slight shake of his head as though hinting at the deep shame that tortured his soul just as mercilessly as any pain that had tormented the wounded and dying left on the field at Edgehill. ‘I have seen loathsome things. Seen soldiers commit ungodly horrors on their fellow man.’ He looked down and realized that the fingers of his right hand were cradling the stub of his missing ring finger. ‘I lay with the corpses at Edgehill, plenty of them dead at my hands, and such horrors will prey on a man’s mind. I have walked a dark path, Mr Birkenhead, but I have emerged into light.’ Tom shuddered then and could not have said if it was part of his act or genuine.

‘The rebel son of a slaughtered hero,’ Birkenhead mused, leaning back once more, his whole hand cupping his bearded chin, pulling the bristles to a neat point over and over, as he eyed Tom. His mind, though, was clearly elsewhere. ‘And now drawn back to the standard his father died trying to protect,’ he muttered.

Tom let Birkenhead absorb his own words and leant back to allow the girl to put two cups of beer down on their table.

‘I thought you might print my confession,’ Tom suggested eventually, ‘allow me the privilege of declaring my penitence, that His Majesty’s loyal subjects may, with God’s help, deign to forgive me my sins and accept me into the ranks of the righteous.’

Tom had the sudden fear he had overplayed it, for the words had tasted so dry on his tongue. But the editor of
Mercurius Aulicus
was lapping it up like a cat in a dairy.

‘It need not be much, just a few words, a concise piece so as to not infringe on your other texts, for we must not dull the blade’s edge,’ Tom said with a curl of his lips. ‘I will gladly pay. Furthermore, my brother Sir Edmund Rivers is a great admirer of your newsbook. I’m sure he can be persuaded to contribute to its continued production. Running a printing press must be a costly business.’

‘Indeed it is,’ Birkenhead said, eyebrows arching, ‘and yet it is worth every penny for my press hurts the rebels more than any cannon or regiment in the King’s army. But … but …’ he said, placing his elbows on the table and pressing his palms together as though about to pray, ‘we can do better than a few words. Bless your heart, boy, but this is the tale of The Prodigal Son, wrought again in fire and glory for our age. This tale of loss and redemption is just what my readers need. It will ignite in their breasts, Tom, it will leap from tongue to tongue and spread through London like a great fire.’