The Bleeding Land (26 page)

‘Look after my gear, Matthew,’ he said, swallowing the lump that was rising up his throat. Penn stirred and grunted something which Tom took to be his assurance, then he crossed the south aisle towards another door, through which more men were leading their mounts.

‘You lot had a good night then?’ one young trooper said to him, smiling mischievously.

Tom ignored him and stepped out into the new day, turning his face from the harsh light and holding his eyes closed for a few moments. To his right a hundred or more horses were picketed in the southside cloisters and more weary-looking troopers were coming in, which was why they needed to use the vast space inside the cathedral, too. Somewhere amongst those horses was Achilles and he would be hungry, but several boys were moving amongst them with sacks of hay and Tom knew that the stallion would be sure to demand his portion. Around the cloister’s edges men were huddled around cookfires, talking in low voices whilst their fellows yet slept in the tents set against the wall behind them. Bacon, onions and garlic sizzled on skillets, the sweet aroma drifting on the breeze and making Tom’s mouth water. Spitted joints of mutton turned beside fires, glistening and dripping fat and promising a much better start to the day than the usual stale bread and cheese.

‘Compliments of the good folk of Worcester!’ a soldier announced to his fellows, brandishing a knife on the end of which was skewered a chunk of roasted meat.

Essex’s men had looted the city and were now enjoying the spoils. Tom supposed the earl could have done more to stop the abuses, but perhaps he was not wholly averse to his men showing the people of Worcester the error of their judgement in siding with the King.

He left the cloisters through the west gate and began down the gentle grassy slope towards the river.

‘Want some breakfast, Tom?’ He looked to his left where Will Trencher and a group of soldiers lay around a pile of embers, some tending iron pots half buried in the coals. The big man beckoned Tom over, smiling to reveal the few teeth he still had.

‘Have you got ale?’ Tom asked, squinting against the light and walking, half stumbling, over to join them.

‘The best in Worcester for Black Tom!’ Trencher exclaimed, grabbing a pitcher by the handle and lifting it as proof. Some of the liquid sploshed over the side and one of the men swore at Trencher for wasting it, but the big man took no notice.

A trooper named Hewson, whom the men called Weasel on account of his narrow face and close-set eyes, handed Tom a mug into which Trencher poured a generous measure of ale. Then they all watched as Tom raised the mug in mock salute and drank, draining it before dragging a hand across his mouth and stifling a great belch.

‘It tastes like piss, Will,’ he growled, shuddering and wondering again if he would vomit.

The men round the fire were laughing and Will Trencher shrugged his broad shoulders and winked at Weasel. ‘I didn’t say it was any good,’ he said through a grin, ‘just that it was the best in Worcester.’

At which Tom grimaced but anyway offered his cup to be refilled. Trencher happily obliged and when Tom raised the cup to his lips again he saw something in the grass behind the men that he had not noticed before. But then, he was half blinded by that vengeful sun that was driving nails into his brain. Doubtless there were lots of things he had not noticed this morning.

‘It’s that bloody papist from last night,’ a short, red-faced man named Nayler said, thumbing over his shoulder.

‘Penn said you’d hang him,’ Tom replied. The little dead man lay on his back, those outraged eyes still staring but cloudy now. His limbs had stiffened overnight and one arm was bent
at
the elbow so that the pale hand pointed accusingly at the sky.

‘We didn’t hang him,’ Nayler said.

‘It wasn’t worth the bloody effort,’ another man added. ‘Bastard pope-lover was slippery as an eel. Gave me this.’ He tilted his head and yanked his bloodied collar down to reveal a livid gouge on his neck. ‘Nails sharp as bloody cats, papists.’

‘So we made him swallow those beads of his, cross and all,’ Weasel announced, grinning at his friends. ‘He choked for a good hour but it did for him in the end.’

‘Aye, he won’t bother you with baubles and spells again, Tom, you needn’t worry about that,’ Trencher said, leaning over to stir the steaming contents of his pot with a long knife.

Tom let his eyes linger on the stiff corpse for a few moments and some part of his mind asked another part what he felt, looking at that little man whose death was on his hands as much as on those of the men before him. The answer came and Tom put the cup of ale to his lips and drank. Then he continued down to the riverbank to relieve himself.

Because he felt nothing.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘THE MORE I
see you ride, will,’ Matthew Penn said, buckling the girth strap of his dun mare’s saddle, ‘the more convinced I am that you should have joined that lot.’ He nodded towards the great lumbering mass of the Parliamentary artillery train now passing them. ‘If ever there was a man born to heave terrible encumbrances from here to there and back again it is you.’

‘You’ll be glad I didn’t when Prince Rupert charges and you wet yourself,’ Will replied, feeding his own horse a lump of old cheese. ‘You’ll just be glad Uncle Will’s there to look after you.’

‘If that devil Rupert charges at us, the only reason you’ll linger, Will, is because you’ll have fallen from that fat mare of yours in the panic to flee,’ Nayler said, a half grin on his red face. There were some murmurs of agreement and some curses at this, for they had all heard about the Royalist assault at Powick Bridge. How the Prince had charged with devastating effect, fighting at the front like a demon, and how their own troopers had fled and kept going until they met the Earl of Essex’s Lifeguard regiment near Pershore some ten miles away. It had been a rout and, worse, an embarrassment.

‘I’d still rather fight that devil than be with those poor sods,’ Trencher said, gesturing at a gun team of about thirty men and
eight
horses that was struggling with a brass demi-culverin in the cloying mud.

Tom did not have saddle holsters for his firelocks, so shoved them into his tall boots, then watched the gunners flounder in the mud, the horse team neighing in protest at the corpulent conductor who was endeavouring to enliven them with a stinging hazel switch.

‘It’s an expensive bucket that can never be filled, is what it is,’ Captain Preston said, adjusting his mount’s bridle. ‘A bloody quern stone hanging round our necks. On this ground at least,’ he added, gesturing at the earth that had been churned to a mire by so many men, horses and beasts of burden. ‘How we are meant to outmanoeuvre the enemy with those guns holding us back I do not know.’

Despite the captain’s boyish features, his clear complexion, snub nose and short tufty fair hair, Tom put him at about twenty-five. He suspected the man knew his business, too; must do or else Essex’s generals would not have raised him from a lieutenant in the London Trained Bands to a Captain of Horse in Lord Feilding’s Regiment. But whether or not Preston was up for the fight only time would tell.

They had struck camp an hour before sunrise and now Parliament’s army was marching out of Worcester in the drizzling rain because Essex had received word that the King was making for London. No one knew precisely where the Royalists were, but they had to be stopped from reaching the capital. Tom’s nerves had begun to thrum with anticipation of a fight and a big fight too. Everyone knew they were winding up to a confrontation which both sides hoped would finish this war before it really got started. But Tom thought Captain Preston was right about the cannon. How could they overtake the enemy and force the issue with that forty-six-piece artillery train plodding through the mire, holding them back?

And yet it was not just for their cannon that they needed this shambling convoy. The artillery train supplied small arms
ammunition
to the whole army, cavalry included, as well as muskets, pikes, lances and swine-feathers, which made cavalrymen shudder because they knew what those metal-tipped stakes could do to a charging horse. The column also brought pistols, armour, swords and sword belts and the tools that an army on the move required to function, such as spades, mattocks, duckboards, axes, horseshoes, nails, rope, hides, tar and countless other necessities. As for itself the artillery train needed hundreds of horses and oxen that all had to be fed. It needed carpenters, wheelwrights and blacksmiths just to keep it moving at all.

‘Still, not our problem today, boys!’ Captain Preston announced, mounting with fluid ease.

‘Why’s that, Captain?’ Matthew Penn asked, fastening the short buff-coat that had been a gift from his father, a lawyer in a Southwark firm. The coat was poorly made and could not have cost more than five pounds but it was better than nothing and Tom had it in his mind to kill a wealthy Royalist officer and get such a coat for himself.

‘Because, Penn, today we get the chance to stretch our legs. Give the horses a good run.’

‘Bloody hell. Sorry, old girl,’ Trencher muttered under his breath, patting his big mare in consolation.

‘We are to ride south-east ahead of the army to find billets near Warwick. The King’s target is London. It must be. And so we shall overhaul His Majesty and all his Cavalier devils, but first we must accompany the quartermasters and find billets.’

‘Sounds like dragoons’ work,’ Trencher moaned, sweeping rain from his bald head and putting on a rusty pot.

‘Chin up, Trencher,’ Captain Preston said, ‘it cannot be more than fifty miles and it’s barely raining. Besides, it is an honour, that we might ride ahead of the rest. If anyone’s going to run into the King’s men it’ll be us. Think of us as the vanguard, boys.’

The other fifty-two men in the troop mounted up behind
their
captain and prepared to ride east, their horses well fed, courtesy of Worcester, firelocks cleaned and oiled and blades wickedly sharp.
If anyone’s going to run into the King’s men it’ll be us
. That’s what Captain Preston had said. Which to Tom meant two things: that Preston was not afraid of a fight, and that Tom might soon taste battle. Which was what he wanted more than anything in the world.

They rode fast for the first ten miles, the three-beat gait of the canter thumping its rhythm on the soft ground as the men and their horses revelled in the chase. After a week of being cooped up in Worcester the horses needed a good run and Captain Preston was happy to give them one. But after their initial ebullience was spent, they slowed to a brisk trot, passing the villages of Rous Lench, Abbot’s Salford and Bidford and asking of folk if they had news of the King’s army.

‘If you seek the King’s army then what army are you?’ one ruddy-faced farmer had asked, scratching his cheek in perturbed confusion.

‘We, sir, are Parliament’s army!’ Captain Preston had announced to a chorus of oinks and snorts from the man’s pigs.

‘Parliament’s army?’ the man said, his face screwed up in utter perplexity. ‘What on this earth would Parliament be doing with an army?’

‘We are at war, sirrah!’ Captain Preston had said, his own cheeks flushing red. ‘Your king has declared war against his people. You did not know this?’

The farmer seemed to consider this for a moment, then hawked and spat a gobbet of phlegm into the mud and proceeded to scour his bristled chin with his filthy nails.

‘So long as His Majesty is not at war with my pigs,’ he said, ‘for they do not like their habits disturbed.’ He shook his head. ‘They can be obstinate buggers if their habits are disturbed.’

With that Captain Preston had cursed, apologized to God for cursing, flicked his reins and led the column off, leaving the farmer and his beloved pigs staring beady-eyed after them.

They followed the Avon upriver towards Stratford, crossing there and continuing east, crossing the spear-straight Fosse Way and riding on north of Kineton, then across the rolling, rugged ironstone hills of Burton Dassett amongst which countless sheep grazed, happily unaware that war was coming.

By late afternoon they had crossed a squat stone bridge over the River Itchen and arrived damp and hungry at the outskirts of the village of Wormleighton some fifteen miles south-east of Warwick.

‘What is your appreciation of this place, Captain?’ one of the two quartermasters asked, swaying lazily in his saddle and removing his hat to run plump fingers through his lank white hair. His name was Tromp and Tom had heard that the man had gone to Lord Feilding himself and asked to be allowed to conduct this undertaking of searching for billets from the relative comfort of a horse-drawn cart. Tom had understood the request that morning when he had laid eyes on Tromp, for the quartermaster was enormously fat. Too fat to sit a horse, one would have thought, and yet surprisingly he rode fairly well. It was Captain Preston who had thwarted Tromp’s request, claiming that they might as well haul a cannon as keep pace with a cart, and Tromp had steeped in his own juices ever since. Now he had emerged from his gloomy silence and was testing the captain in front of his men.