Marston Moor (5 page)

‘You are right,’ Stryker admitted. ‘It’s as you said. This is different than before.’ He glanced back at the dead girl. ‘Greed does not drive them, but hatred.’ Skellen’s face tightened, and Stryker placed a hand on the taller man’s elbow. ‘But you will be the one to regret the day, should you meddle.’

Skellen’s cheek quivered. ‘Meddle?’ He pointed at the girl and her weeping mother. ‘This is slaughter, sir, plain and simple.’

‘Search the dead,’ Stryker said. ‘Take what you will, and do not be foolish.’

‘And you, sir?’

‘I will find our billets.’ Stryker moved away. ‘Do not be foolish, Sergeant, or you will answer to me.’

Skellen nodded. ‘Aye, Major.’

Stryker spent the next hour seeking the quartermaster to James Stanley, the Earl of Derby. The earl was the leading Royalist in the county, and, as host to Prince Rupert’s army, it was his dubious honour to arrange quarters for the victorious troops. Of course, most would not require a place to sleep for hours, even days, so distracted would they be with the search for plunder, but Stryker had no yearning to immerse himself in the indiscriminate savagery. Both he and Skellen would be better off away from it.

When finally he discovered the quartermaster, he was directed to The Swan, a tavern on the corner of Churchgate and Bradshawgate, near the market cross, where most of the prince’s staff were being placed. It was a strange thing indeed, to be classed as a staff officer after so long as a leader of men, but fate and a storm-carved sea had conspired to twist his fortunes during the bitter winter months. He had survived hardship and danger, impressed the grandees of the Royalist cause, gained the rank of sergeant-major, but lost his command. Now he and his group of mercenaries, the last of his company, were little more than Prince Rupert’s hired swash-and-buckler men, fighters who drew steel on the whim of their Bohemian lord. Stryker had never felt more incongruous in a world to which he was otherwise so well suited.

He paced westwards along Churchgate, loosening his grip on neither pistol nor sword. There were fewer horsemen now, and he guessed they had left the town to their counterparts on foot, carrying the hunt for Bolton’s fugitives into the surrounding fields and forests. The dead would be discovered in streams, under bridges and on the moors for weeks to come. There were bodies strewn here and there. Some were barely recognizable, mangled by hooves; the blood from their slash wounds seemed to have dyed every single cobble. There were women wandering listlessly in the street, stripped to their smocks and prodded at sword point by braying men who demanded plate and coin. The screams of children were smothered only by the sharp cracks of firearms. Stryker stepped round a party of grinning greencoats, presumably men from Tillier’s regiment, as they dragged a hapless individual out through a doorway. He was a stick-thin, bookish-looking fellow, with red-tipped nose and thinning pate, who yowled as he was kicked to the ground. The greencoats stood around him like baying wolves as he hurriedly blurted out where valuables might be found. Whatever he said did not save his life.

Stryker was relieved when eventually his gaze fell upon The Swan; a large, slate-roofed affair of black timber and grubby whitewash. It had survived the fighting, and now enjoyed a heavy guard at its double-doored entrance. He was just about to make himself known to the sentries when his eye was drawn to a band of soldiers crowded around a young lad slumped in a pile of horse shit that still steamed. The boy, probably in his late teens, clutched his midriff, and Stryker, moving closer, realized that he was fighting a losing battle to keep his guts within his body. The boy was weeping as he groaned, calling for his mother, each cry eliciting a gust of laughter from the watching mob. One of the soldiers, a tall, thin-faced man with a prominent brow, a hunched back and severely hooked nose, stepped into the circle. From within the folds of a heavy, black-pelted cloak, he produced a pistol, which he discharged directly into the wounded boy’s heart. The gut-sliced lad fell back, sighing up at the rain, but still his chest rose and fell in shallow pulses.

The shooter – an officer to judge by his fur cloak – turned like an actor playing to his adoring audience. ‘Bless me, comrades! Yonder lies one of the strongest Roundheads that ever I did meet, for my pistol hath discharged at his heart and would not enter!’ He paused, relishing the cat-calls of his men, before producing a second pistol. Spinning back with an acrobatic whirl that belied his crooked shoulders, he shot his victim again, bowing as the men cheered. ‘But I think I sent him to the devil, with a vengeance, with the other.’

The boy was indeed dead. Stryker looked on as the fur-trimmed hunchback led a dozen of his crowing adherents into the home from which the disembowelled boy had been hauled.

The acid tang of vomit was ripe on Faith Helly’s tongue. She swallowed it, stifling the urge to retch as it burned her throat. She feared she was suffocating. It was cool inside the clay dome, for the oven had lain dormant for the better part of two days, but the ash dust upon which she was curled had stirred into furious life when first Faith crawled inside, elbows and head disturbing more black plumes from the walls, and now it seemed there was no air left to breathe, her lungs becoming ever more clogged with each shallow gulp. She clamped her mouth as tightly shut as she could, leaving only the tiniest fissure between her lips through which she drew the foul vapour, feeling it rasp between gritted teeth. Her back ached and the joints in her hands were stretched to breaking point as she pulled her knees hard to her chest. She squinted in the darkness as her sight grew accustomed to the gloom, and angled her head so that she could see out through the mouth of the oven to the kitchen beyond. The larder on the far side of the room was firmly shut, and she stared hard at its doors, praying Master Sydall could sense her presence and feel shame in it.

She held her breath as laughter rang out from somewhere in the house. A man’s voice chimed, recounting a ribald jest that had others guffawing and Faith aghast. She knew the words, but had never been in the company of men who used them with such flagrant contempt for decency. Soldiers. Her stomach churned, and she squeezed her thighs tight lest she soil herself for fear.

The men entered the chamber casually, as if their day’s work was done, and even from Faith’s poor vantage she could see their stained clothes and darkly spattered faces. It was all she could do to bury the scream that formed like a knot behind her ribs. They were laughing still, the soldiers. Perching on tables and ransacking cupboards, upending pots and rummaging through shelves, a flock of blood-drenched magpies seeking baubles for their greed. One man, a thick, russet moustache draping his upper lip and a horrific-looking three-bladed pole propped on his shoulder, found the cheese cratch and began stuffing tough scraps into his mouth. The others harangued him, wanting their share, but he snarled like a dog and the pack shrank gingerly away. In turn, the man with the pole-arm offered a deferential bow as another sidled in.

This newcomer, evidently the leader, was tall but strangely formed. His small head sat atop shoulders that seemed to be excessively round and slung in an unnaturally low position, as if his neck were too long. It put her in mind of a gigantic bird, his cloak – black as night and thickened at the collar by a luxurious black pelt – forming a strange plumage, the sharp features of his face and tiny jet pebbles of his eyes only adding to the avian appearance. Her father had often warned her of the dangers of witchcraft, that though its creeping, insidious talons dug unnoticed into every facet of society, every so often the minions of Lucifer became too strong to conceal their true nature and would crawl into the light for righteous men to see. It took the wisdom and guile of witch-hunters to weed out such men, drawing them to the light as a physic draws poison from an adder’s bite, but her father had maintained that, on occasion, a creature of wickedness would walk in plain sight, too cruel and perverted to disguise. She shuddered as she watched him enter the room, dark eyes never resting, as if he weighed and measured the contents of each and every cupboard, somehow able to penetrate even the stoutest door. When eventually his gaze rested upon the shadowed corner where she knew Master Sydall and his family were huddled, it felt as though her heart would burst through her chest like a cannon shot.

‘Valuables,’ the bird-man said softly. He waited for a reply, but none came. ‘Come hither, kind sir, and be Christ-like in your generosity.’

That provoked a response, as Faith knew it would. Master Sydall, tall and broad like a great oak, rose from the dingy corner. ‘You blaspheme, sir.’

The bird-man grinned. His teeth were huge, too large for his narrow mouth, and sharp, like fangs. ‘There you are.’ He whistled as he looked up at the man dressed in the simple breeches and doublet favoured by Bolton’s strong Puritan community. ‘Geneva of the North, they call this place. Cannot fathom why.’

Sydall was the larger of the two, and he stepped half a pace forwards as his wife, three daughters and one son edged out behind him. Faith did not like the man, but she could not help but admire his bravery. ‘There are no riches here, sir. We are reformers. We detest wealth.’

The bird-man tutted, as if admonishing a child. ‘Banbury-men detest greed, my friend, not wealth.’ He tapped his boot heel on the floor. ‘Glazed tiles. Very nice. Dutch? Flemish? It is not piety that pays for such things.’

‘Never see a poor Puritan,’ one of the other soldiers growled.

‘Amen to that,’ the bird-man chimed, his voice unsettlingly pleasant, made musical with the burr of the West Country. ‘Where do you keep your plate, your coin?’

Sydall bristled. ‘I command you to leave!’ The old steel had returned to his tone. Faith hated that steel, that judgemental rhetoric that so often accompanied meals in this soulless home, and yet now she took solace in it, prayed the three girls clustered about their mother like a trio of chicks would feel the same. Young John, the family’s beloved second son, moved to stand by his father. He was fifteen, the same age as Faith, and she felt a swell of pride.

Master Sydall’s eyes drifted past the soldiers to the open doorway. ‘Leave, you villains! My older son will soon be home, and—’

The bird-man’s dark brow jerked upwards at that. ‘Son? I killed a man outside, only moments ago. You must have heard the shots. A tough fellow, granted.’ He glanced at the moustachioed subordinate. ‘Did I not say so, Sergeant Janik?’

The sergeant grunted something in a foreign tongue.

The bird-man nodded happily. ‘There, you see? Tough indeed. Took two bullets. Impressive, given his preoccupation with keeping his entrails off the road. Was it not?’

The sergeant nodded again.

Master Sydall buckled. He did not fall, but the great oak swayed as though hit by a hurricane. Behind him Mistress Sydall went to her knees and the girls, those poor girls, wailed for their brother. They were only young, eleven and thirteen and fourteen. Faith felt the tears dash down her own cheeks.

‘King Jesus, I beseech you!’ Sydall brayed. ‘Smite these invaders, in the name of—’

‘A final chance, sirrah,’ the bird-man interjected calmly. ‘Your goods. Your silver plate, and your golden flagon.’

That stopped Sydall in his tracks. The big man’s eyes widened, cleared, as if observing the intruders for the first time. ‘I understand,’ he whispered. ‘You will not succeed, Devil.’

The bird-man shrugged.

It seemed to Faith as if the massacre took a long time, though it can only have taken minutes. Master Sydall – the dour, grey-bearded ranter with the stentorian tone and accusatory stare – wailed like a lost boy as the heavy-set sergeant with the wickedly bladed staff took a surprisingly nimble stride forwards and swept his grim weapon in a scything arc just above the ground, slicing right through one of Sydall’s ankles and cleaving a ragged chunk in the other. The women screamed. Young John flushed white, deposited the contents of his last meal on his boots, and seemed almost not to notice the short-hafted axe as it dashed the side of his stooped head to smithereens. At least, Faith thought, he died quickly, for the fate to which the women would be subjected was as horrifying as it was inevitable. The men laughed as they were thrown to the ground. They used small knives to shred the outer garments, tossing them away like rags. Faith clamped her eyes shut after that. But she could not move her arms to cover her ears. The sound was atrocious. The screams and the grunts. It went on for so long, each man taking his turn, each taking his time. Master Sydall, the granite-hearted reformer who kept his emotion so utterly in check, writhed like a hamstrung calf and sobbed like a babe. And all the while the bird-man, the black-pelted hunchback with the tiny, restless eyes, watched the spectacle with blank disinterest. He could have stopped it, but he chose simply to sit on a table and gnaw at a hunk of seed-speckled bread.