Plague Child (33 page)

There was a strange, stupefied lull in which the yelling and the thunder of the horses were replaced by the cries of the wounded. I could not see Jed. I was stumbling about like a drunk, as were many others. At the sight of a blackened, bloody face lurching towards me, I brought up my pike only to discover it was Will. Wordlessly, he shoved me forward. I thought it was over, but we were lining up again. Unbelievably, their infantry were coming our way. Unlike the horses, which tore through us in a crashing wave, they were a slow-moving sea, inching inexorably forward. There were many more of them, and if they had been properly armed that, too, would have been the end of it. But many had only cudgels, picking up swords or muskets from the dead and wounded as they walked over them.

It was what the manuals called ‘push of pike’ in planned regular movements which bore no relationship to the chaos and carnage as each side gained a yard then lost it, stumbling over bodies, ducking, weaving, slipping over grass that had vanished in mud pooled with blood.

Luke was running low on match cord and went down the line with it, struggling to keep some kind of order, but that soon vanished. We were like ants which, when a nest is disturbed, scurry around performing tasks endlessly, repetitively, trampling over fallers to take their places. They were demons before us, with blackened, bloodied faces. My particular demon had an open mouth with broken teeth and a large wart at the side of his nose. When my pike went through him there was a bloodthirsty howl of satisfaction. It was a moment before I realised the howl came from my own throat.

Slowly, imperceptibly, the sun went down. Through the gloom I saw a group of Royalist cavalry on the Kineton road and thought, almost with indifference, that they would finish us. But they were surprised by a unit of Roundhead cavalry, led by a tousle-headed man who had lost his helmet, which charged ferociously to scatter them.

When it was almost too dark to see, both sides, as if by mutual consent, retreated a number of paces. They were like two wounded beasts, reluctant to give ground but too exhausted to fight or even to move one limb after another. There were a few scattered musket shots. One or two men stumbled away. Most did nothing but stand there, clutching their weapons, swaying in a daze, staring across at the fading, ghost-like shapes opposite.

Finally we dragged ourselves back to where we had started from. So did they, each side doggedly clinging to the tradition that to leave the field of battle would be an admission of defeat.

The moon rose. I scarcely noticed at first it was Ben bandaging a wound in my leg. I could not remember when it had happened, but it was throbbing painfully. Ben had been with the baggage train, but had managed to rescue his medical supplies before the Cavaliers looted it. I had not spoken since I got back, but now I found my voice.

‘Jed is out there . . . He was wounded.’

‘He got back. I’ve seen to him.’ Ben went to Luke, who had a head wound. ‘He may lose his arm. Get some water.’

Near the abandoned farm buildings was a small stream. I took a bucket and limped across to it. It was a clear night and there was already a nip of frost in the air which carried sharply the cries from the battlefield – men calling out for God or their mothers. There was nothing I could do, and I wished I could shut it out, for it was returning me to a painful humanity I did not want. Not yet. I wanted to remain in this numb, unfeeling state. Then my mind picked out from that dreadful chorus a sound of sanity – the snicker of a horse.

‘Patch!’ I cried.

I ran round the buildings as fast as my leg would allow me and found the stables. In the dim light I was sure it was Patch until I was a few paces away. Then I saw the horse was black, and several hands higher than mine. Still, it was a horse and, at that moment, I felt closer to it than to any human being. I put down the bucket and clicked softly to the horse.

‘Are you a horse stealer as well?’

Richard’s relaxed, mocking tone sent a chill running through me. I spun round but before I could reach my knife the point of his sword was at my throat. His face was in darkness, the tattered folds of his cloak hanging over his sword arm.

‘I have no quarrel with you, Father,’ I said, as steadily as my voice would allow.

He smiled, moving into the weak shaft of moonlight that spilled through the door. ‘You’re an ingenious child. First you pretend to be Father’s child, then Edward’s, and now it’s my turn. I told you: you are John Lloyd’s child.’

‘He came back from the grave to make love to her then. John Lloyd went to Ireland the previous summer and was killed there.’

‘There is still no proof you are my child!’

‘I have the letters you sent to my mother. From the first lines of undying love to “here is a crown for some whore’s physic”. I showed them to your father this morning.’

He was quite still. The point came down to my heart. I was aware all the time of his feet, his balance. If his balance shifted to his right foot, I had a split second before he killed me. The bucket had dropped on a bale of straw. I stretched my hand towards it but could only agonisingly brush it with my fingertips.

The blade lowered fractionally – then came back sharply. ‘You’re lying. My brother said you were looking for Father. You never found him, did you? I was watching. You would never have ended up with the pikemen if you’d found him.’

I began to move towards him; not away from the blade but into it. I stopped watching his feet and looked directly into his eyes. I tried to become that human being I was before the battlefield. It was one thing for him to get someone else to kill me, another for a father to kill his own son. I struggled to say as much.

‘That’s because you’re part of the rabble. Nobles do it all the time,’ he said with contempt. But he kept evading my gaze, then being drawn back to it with an awful fascination. I could almost see the thought slipping in and out of his eyes:
My child. My child . . .
I must not plead. I must not beg. That was what the rabble did. I must somehow stop being the plague child in his eyes. I must become the child he might have wanted. All the while, as I moved forward he was backing towards the wall of the stable. The point penetrated my jerkin, pricking my flesh, but he was too close to me to make a fatal thrust.

‘I don’t want the inheritance, Father. I just want –’

‘Don’t call me that!’ he shouted. ‘Tom –’ Luke called.

Richard flung me across the stable to crash into the opposite wall. The sword blade leapt forward like the tongue of a snake. I fought with every instinct to keep my eyes open, staring into his.

The sword blade stopped at the last moment and steadied. ‘Shout back.’

I swallowed, panting, and for a moment could get no word out.

He was swallowing too, breathing heavily. ‘Shout back!’

I managed one word: ‘Coming!’

From where he had thrown me, near the door, I could just see the edge of the encampment. Luke, his head now bandaged, walked across the light of the fire, glancing in the direction of the stables. Keep him talking, I urged myself, keep him talking . . . But my mind was jammed. All I could utter was an inane mumble.

‘Did you love her?’

‘Love her?’ He gave an incredulous laugh. ‘I saw what she was after right from the start.’

His father, his dear father, he said, and there was both a longing and a hatred in his voice, never gave him credit for anything. But he saw through Margaret Pearce when she was in deepest black at her father’s funeral. Attracted to her? Of course he was attracted to her. Everybody was. But he knew women. He had had enough of them.

‘Like Jane,’ I could not help interjecting, remembering the story she had told me at Turville’s.

‘Jane?’ he said.

He had forgotten her. I cursed myself for distracting him, but it made no difference. He went on compulsively, driven to talk about something he had never talked about to a living soul before. Fathers and sons, fathers and sons! Almost every word he said rang with pride for and hatred of his father. His father was the cleverest, shrewdest of men – but he was a total fool with women! His wife had twisted him round her little finger. When she died, he never stopped mourning her – until he saw Margaret Pearce in deepest black.

Oh, there was not a man at the funeral who did not feel for her, Richard said. Both up there – he struck his head – and down there – he slapped his groin. Oh, he wanted her! He wanted her all right!

Luke was saying something to Ben, their shadows dipping and swaying in the firelight. He left Ben and slowly, casually, looking as if he was enjoying the cold sharpness of the air after the heat of the fire, began to stroll towards the stables. I prayed he was wearing his sword.

The day after the funeral, Richard said, he was called into his father’s study. When Lord Stonehouse had been through his mis doings, and he was on the point of leaving, his father said: Margaret Pearce – respect her grief. That was all. Respect her grief, with a penetrating look from those black eyes.

‘I was – how old are you?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘I was nineteen! Nineteen! I believe he only ever knew my mother. I had had whores, servants, even a lady-in-waiting old enough to be my mother who showed me more of the deceits in women’s hearts than my dear father ever dreamed existed. Respect her grief! In other words, keep away from her, she’s mine. He was blind to what he was walking into, what she was doing. I knew what she was using her grief for! Seduction, the subtlest form of seduction.’

There was a grudging admiration in his voice now, and I suddenly saw that my mother and he were two of a kind. His eyes shone and the sword trembled. Perhaps, in his own way, he had been in love with her and, in her own way, she with him. Then his voice took on a sharp, bitter edge.

‘I knew exactly what she was doing.’

‘Plotting to take over the estate,’ I said.

His sword dropped. ‘How do you know?’

I thought of what Kate had told me, and shook my head.
Origo mali
, the source of the evil. The estate. Wildly, for the first time I had the barest glimmer of hope that we might reach out to one another, perhaps even one day understand one another. I took a tentative step towards him. The sword came up. Luke strolled towards the stables, but I noticed him only when he stopped. He must have seen the glint of Richard’s sword in the doorway, for his hand went towards his belt.

‘Why didn’t you tell him?’

‘Tell him? There was no point in telling him. I was nineteen. What did
I
know about grief, love? What did
I
know about
anything?
’

There was such a deep well of bitterness inside him that had been dammed up for so long he was shaking, the sword a trembling glint of silver. I moved a fraction closer. Perhaps some of my own rebelliousness came from him – and perhaps he read that thought, for the sword drifted lower. Another step and I could duck under the sword and seize his arm.

‘The estate was entailed to me, but I knew women like that. If she could not unwrap the entail, she would persuade him to leave everything outside it – whole streets of London properties – to her.’

‘Then why did she not just pursue him?’

‘Oh, she did! Of course she did. But my dear father, so clever, but so naive with women, respected her grief too long. He is as tight with his feelings as a miser with his money and she thought she would get nowhere. So she turned to me. I played the innocent. I was easier. And young . . . and we both, for a time, were attracted to one another and – you are too young to know anything about love.’

‘As your father said about you.’

He gave me an angry stare, the sword jerking up again. Then laughed shortly. His arm relaxed, the sword drifting downwards again. That was the moment. One step. Half a step and I could have taken him, twisted the sword out of his hand. I could have done it. I know it. But in that moment I was as compulsively drawn into the story as he was in the telling of it.

‘What happened?’

‘I got her pregnant. She thought I would marry her. I told her I knew what her game was and to get rid of it . . . I never, not in a million years, thought she would turn her eyes on my fool of a brother . . .’

He dropped his guard completely. I could have taken him then or perhaps even kept him talking. Perhaps, perhaps . . . I shall never know. There was a deep frost that night, beginning to sparkle on the blades of grass where the moon touched them. I heard Luke’s boot crunching on it. Caught the glint of his sword.

‘No, Luke, no!’ I shouted.

He was halfway through his thrust. My shout both caused him to partly check his thrust and alerted my father. He was too late to parry the sword but twisted away so Luke caught him in the side. My father lunged forward at him with such force he could not withdraw the sword as Luke fell. I caught him as he struggled to pull out the sword. There was a look of surprise, of complete disbelief on his face, and then a shadow of his disarming smile.

‘I thought I’d . . . got . . . away with it . . . old fr—’

Blood abruptly poured from his mouth. I screamed for Ben and held Luke to me as he struggled to speak again. ‘Tell Charity I love her, I will see her in heav—’

Ben pulled me to one side and knelt by Luke. He could not get the jerkin open because of the sword, and slit it with a knife. He peeled away the bloodsoaked letter Charity had sent. He made a vain attempt to stop the blood, then shook his head.

I heard the horse and glimpsed my father riding away. Howling like an inmate of Bedlam, I went after him in a limping run, dragging the knife from my belt.

Some time later Ben found me on the battlefield, where, as the frost deepened, the dead and wounded still lay. I was repeatedly stabbing a man who was already dead. Near me was Richard’s tattered cloak. The man I was stabbing was not Richard. My mind was blank. I could not tell Ben why I was stabbing the man. I had never seen him before, nor had Ben. Nor was it possible to say which side he had been on, for, like many of the corpses around him, he had been stripped naked by men who took rings, boots, belts – anything they could use or sell. As Ben led me back to the camp we could still hear them, moving about the field, like wolves in the night.