The Bleeding Land (51 page)

‘If you had you would be dead too,’ their mother said. Still, Bess could not look at her, could not bear that weight as well as her own burden.

‘Bess, there was no braver man in England than Emmanuel,’ Mun said, the muscle in his jaw bouncing, his eyes tear-brimmed. ‘And I know he would have been so proud of you. He would have been proud of his son.’

Bess swallowed hard, fighting back her own tears, fearing that if she let them come she might never stop them. Somewhere within, her soul shuddered, like a great door straining
to
hold against the onslaught of an inexorable foe. She clung to the bundle in her arms and looked upon the sleeping child’s face, so perfect and innocent and unknowing.

And inside, she wept like a river in spate for all that would now never be.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

TOM WAS COLD.
before he had set off from Kineton, margaret had given him a pair of breeches and two shirts that had belonged to her son David.

‘David is broad like you,’ she had said, holding up a shirt against his chest and giving a satisfied nod. ‘Strong as an ox is our David.’ Then she had given him an old moth-holed doublet of her husband’s and a pair of worn shoes that Edward had taken from a corpse before throwing their owner into the dead-crammed pit. Edward had given him flint and steel and tried to make Tom take his everyday cloak too, but Tom would not hear of it.

‘You have already given too much,’ he had said and they had known he was not simply talking about the clothes. For the King’s soldiers had ransacked the Dunnes’ house in their search for Parliament soldiers. They had taken their food too, accusing the folk of Kineton of being sympathetic to the rebels’ cause and claiming that the requisition of provender was the least they could expect if they did not mend their treacherous ways. They had even molested Anne, plucking at her hair and skirts and suggesting what she might do to put her family in His Majesty’s good graces, and in his dark hiding place Tom had listened helplessly. He had burned with fury and shame
but
he had not come down, had barely breathed, for his being caught there would have made things even worse for the Dunnes. Eventually, the soldiers had left and he had thanked the family for all their kindnesses and been on his way.

But now he wished he’d taken the cloak. He was shivering uncontrollably and feared his teeth would rattle themselves out of his jaw. ‘I will repay you,’ he had promised them, and Edward had nodded as though he expected as much. Now, as he sat in the freezing dark beneath a shelter he had made from the boughs of a fir, Tom realized that his promise meant more to him than almost anything. Somehow, he would repay the Dunnes for bringing him back from the dead, for making him strong again and for the clothes on his back. And in doing so he would see Anne again, too. If he did not freeze to death.

He poked the small fire he had made and it crackled and flared, promising more warmth than it yet gave, but without it Tom knew the raw night would tear into his flesh like a bear’s claws.

Somewhere above him rooks haggled boisterously. A savage gust blew down from Parbold Hill, foraging through the trees, rattling bare branches and stirring creaks of complaint from larger boughs. Tom huffed hot breath into cold hands, rubbing them together then tucking them under his arms and squeezing his elbows into his sides, trying to make himself smaller, trying to hide from the callous dusk. The sweet smell of decay, of damp wood and rotting leaves, was the same as it ever was in the beech woods behind Shear House. It was a powerful, bewitching scent that sought to trick Tom into thinking he was a child again, squandering the short days away amongst the trees. And yet this place no longer felt safe as it had done when he was a child. It was the same, but different. It is I who have changed, he thought.

Another bleak draught brought water to his eyes and carried the faint murmur of folk making merry, but the sound was as fleeting as a bat through the branches, so that Tom could not
be
certain he had heard it at all. This was his third night in the beech woods and he was freezing and starving and no longer trusted his own senses. He had walked north more than one hundred miles in a dead man’s shoes, sleeping under hedges and in hay barns, lighting fires when he thought it was safe, shivering through the night when it was not.

‘You are not strong enough yet,’ Anne had said when he had told her he was leaving. It had been a crisp, cold day and they had been walking along the north bank of the Dene. Tom had been fascinated by the way those errant strands of golden hair that escaped her linen coif seemed to turn to flame with the low winter sun behind her. Light to Martha’s shade. ‘Stay with us until your wounds are healed. The King’s soldiers have gone now. You will be safe here, Thomas.’

‘I am grateful for your kindness,’ he had said, ‘and indebted to you and your family. But I must go.’ He had told her that his conscience demanded he return to his regiment and take up the fight once more, and whilst this was true, what he did not say was that he would go north first. Ever since he had lain amongst the stiffening corpses, almost one of the dead himself on the plain below Edgehill, he had felt the pull of an invisible tide, an undertow drawing him home if not in body then in spirit.

And yet now, with Shear House, his home, lying before him, Tom found himself lacking the courage to take the final step, to walk through the lion-guarded gates and face his family.

That first morning, shocked to see the evidence of a siege and soldiers manning the boundary wall, he had skirted west, following his and Mun’s old trails up towards the higher ground, keeping the house in sight where he could. At midday he had seen a troop of horse ride out of the gates and it had struck him that perhaps they were Parliament soldiers and that Shear House had fallen. But there was no way of knowing and so he had crossed Old Gore meadow and taken refuge in the beech wood north of the house and now he wondered if he
would
freeze to death before he could summon the mettle to go down there.

At last the fire began to throw off some heat and so he moved the nearby pile of damp sticks closer to the flames to dry them. Somewhere an owl hooted and he looked up through the skeletal, wind-stirred branches at the darkening sky. It was a sombre, starless evening. But at least it was not raining.

He climbed to his feet, stamping them, feeling the vibration through the thin leather soles of the dead man’s shoes but not feeling the feet themselves. Then he left the spitting fire and set off towards the bluff at the edge of the woods that overlooked the house in which he was born.

Mun had been glad to see Osmyn Hooker and his men ride away. They had done their job, done it well, too, annihilating the besieging rebel force, all but smiting them from the face of the earth, like God’s avenging hand, as Hooker himself had put it. But Mun could rest easier knowing that the mercenaries were gone.

‘There is little to like about a man whose only allegiance is to silver,’ he had said to Bess as the two of them had watched Hooker’s column funnel out of the gate.

‘He did not have the look of a trustworthy man,’ she had said and suddenly Mun was struck by the notion that he had been duped. He had given Hooker silver plate amounting to some fifty pounds, which Lady Mary had brought out from what she called the last reserves – though Mun knew his mother well enough to suppose there were last reserves and
last reserves
. Hooker had cursed, growling that a parson’s salary was poor reward for giving a knight his estate back.

‘It is all we have,’ Mun had said with a shrug and been surprised when Hooker had nodded and ordered his men to distribute the silver amongst the column. Now, though, Mun was almost certain that the Prince had already agreed to pay
Hooker
for his services before they had even left Oxford, which was why Hooker had taken the fifty pounds with but little fuss. After all, the destruction of a rebel force was as conducive to furthering the King’s cause as it was to furthering the Rivers family’s own. But no matter now. Hooker had been right. Fifty pounds
was
a small price to pay to see the traitorous devils dead and in the ground and since then Mun had thrown himself into the task of repairing and improving Shear House’s defences, for they could not be sure there weren’t other Parliamentary forces in Lancashire that might move against the estate. His estate. Furthermore, at the news of Sir Francis’s death, Major Radcliffe had volunteered to stay on with a permanent garrison and hold Shear House in the name of Sir Edmund Rivers, His Majesty the King, and the demi-cannon that sat in its emplacement like a beast waiting to spew wrathful fire on any foolish enough to come with ill-intent. Mun would have to ride back to rejoin his regiment but he would not leave until he was satisfied that Shear House could be defended.

Now, after an exhausting day and a welcome dinner of roasted capons, parsnips and beetroot, they had withdrawn to the parlour with a jug of Madeira which MacColla had fetched up from the cellar, the wine as dark as the night outside. The parlour was dusky too, the gloom relieved by a few globes of candlelight and the spreading fire in the hearth.

‘I don’t understand how they were not found. Father and Emmanuel,’ Bess said, the words arriving with a potency that suggested they had long brewed on the tongue. Mun recognized the question in the statement, too, had suspected Bess’s reticence over dinner was down to her having things to say: raw, tender words that prefer darker places than dinner tables. ‘I cannot imagine how it is possible that no one discovered them where they had fallen,’ she pushed on, clutching the swaddled babe to her bosom.

Mun glanced at O’Brien, whose lip curled within his red beard at the grisly memory of it. ‘There were so many bodies,
Bess
,’ Mun said, knowing that only the truth would do. ‘You cannot imagine what it was like.’ And I am pleased for that, he thought, looking at her. ‘I scoured the field, walked amongst them all, but by then it was getting dark. Folk from nearby villages came, joined the crows and dogs to pick at the dead. Stripped them. Took everything they could get their filthy hands on. You would have mistaken it for Hell, sister.’ His stomach soured at the pictures his mind conjured. ‘At dawn they started to cart the dead away.’

He looked from his sister to his mother who was sitting by the window, staring out at the snow that had begun to fall in goosedown clumps against the black. She had said barely a word since she had heard about her husband and by the fire’s glow she looked ashen and drawn, as though she had not slept for days. Likely she had not.

‘It must have been terrible,’ Bess said, shaking her head. Her eyes glistened. ‘You must have been very afraid.’ She kissed her baby’s forehead, holding her nose there, inhaling his scent. Remembering his father. And her own.

‘The only time I have been more afraid was when I read that you were besieged,’ Mun said truthfully, turning away to stare into the flames that roared in the hearth. The large parlour had become their retreat, a rare place of privacy in the busy house, and now it filled with silence. Mun felt it growing, spreading, but did nothing to dispel it.

‘What are you going to name the little man?’ O’Brien asked, his bold, lilting voice turning the mood three shades lighter.

Mun turned back round and watched his sister present her swaddled babe for the big Irishman’s inspection. Mun would not have thought his friend, so savage in battle, would be comfortable around gentlewomen and newborns, but O’Brien grinned wildly and bent to look into the child’s face, scratching his beard thoughtfully.

‘He’s a handsome cub so he is. Looks like a Clancy to me,’ he said, and Mun laughed in spite of himself as O’Brien turned
his
palms up as though to ask what was so funny. ‘It’s a fine name, you ask my ma.’

‘I’m going to call him Francis,’ Bess said, and Lady Mary’s head came round slowly, her gaze settling on the baby. ‘Aye, well that’s a grand name, too,’ O’Brien admitted, a thick finger tickling little Francis under his chin. ‘Well, young Francis, may you have the health of a salmon. A strong heart and a wet mouth.’ And with that he raised his Madeira in the baby’s honour and Mun did the same, ferocious pride blooming in his chest, for his sister had given the boy life in the heat of battle and possessed courage that could put any soldier to shame. Bess’s heart was broken. Yet it beat still and would grow strong again with the new life in her arms.

‘He is out there, you know.’ They all looked at Lady Mary who had turned back to the window, her breath fogging the glass. ‘He is out there in the freezing dark. All alone. Watching.’

‘Who is out there?’ O’Brien asked, frowning and glancing Mun’s way.

‘My son. Thomas.’

Mun bristled at the mention of his brother. He had said nothing of their meeting, had not seen what good it would do. His brother was a rebel. A traitor. Better for them all to forget about him. ‘Tom will be in London by now with the rest of the damned rebels,’ he said. ‘If he still lives,’ he added, regretting that cruelness as soon as it was out.