Treason's Daughter (29 page)

At last, it's over.

The baggage train is taken and guarded; the prisoners are rounded up. A couple of hundred papist drabble-tails, found begging for quarter with whorish mouths, are heaped by some wagons, where his men eye them hungrily.

Too soon to take off his armour. It is hot, this June day, Ned realizes. He feels the sadness that comes after battle, the weariness. But he is used to it now, and knows it will pass. He takes off his helmet, and what breeze there is catches on his sweaty forehead, congealing with pleasing coolness.

He will take his time to thank the Lord later, when the work is done and he can concentrate on his God's pure voice. For now, he mumbles his thanks in a continuous, distracted stream. He searches the prisoners' blooded, distraught faces. He does not know what he will do or say if he finds him alive. He thinks of Edgehill and the towers of corpses shimmering in the cool dawn light. He wonders if he should walk back down to the killing fields, once the men are billeted and sated with the king's stores. He pictures the horror of picking over the bodies of dead boys, one by one, looking for traces of his brother's shining face in the grey skin and glassy eyes. Nevertheless, it is his duty to look, his duty to Hen and his father – and, he supposes, to Sam.

It is early in the reckoning, but this victory seems to be the most complete Ned has known. It is true then, that we are God's army, God's beloved. How can it not be, if He gives us this victory in our first battle, when all despised us?

And they, the Amalekites, the cursed ones – did the Lord not smite them? Aye, and the women too. He mouths the words Hugh Peter spoke at last Sunday's sermon, from the book of Samuel. ‘“And the Lord sent thee on a journey, and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be consumed.”'

Until they be consumed. He looks over to where the women cower, and beckons the sergeant over.

‘All secured, sir,' says the sergeant, red-faced and perspiring.

Screams punch the still air. Ned looks over to the whores' huddle, where a group of New Model foot is walking though the middle, swinging swords like scythes. The women are surrounded; there is nowhere to go. Those that fling themselves
at the implacable ring of soldiers round them are bundled up and handed out. A second group of soldiers, with calm precision, is slitting their noses – the mark of the whore – inured to the screams and pleadings.

Ned walks over and thinks about intervening. He turns a questioning eye to his sergeant, who shrugs and says: ‘Papists, sir.'

A group of royalist prisoners stands nearby and shoves back, bristling at their captors. But they are unarmed and beaten back.

Undecided, Ned turns away to think, closing his eyes to concentrate without the ravaged faces and punctured bodies of the women clouding his thoughts. And then he hears it, tugging at the corner of his mind. A high, urgent shout.

‘Ned. Ned!'

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

16 June 1645

A
FIST THUNDERS ON THE DOOR
.

Hen sits up, her heart jumping violently. The window is open, and the city's warm, ripe air fills the room. The sky outside is dark. It is late, then, this June night. Was it a dream that woke her? Beside her, Lucy breathes deeply, still asleep, the blanket pushed down and curled round her legs. It is clammy and silent.

And then the noise again. A thunderous knocking. Lucy wakes this time, lurching straight from sleep into a frightened wakefulness.

‘Who is here?' she whispers.

‘I don't know.' Hen slides her legs out from under the blanket. She does not want to open the door. Only bad news travels this late. The word came into the city yesterday of a huge battle in the Midlands and the destruction of the king's army.

Oh Sam, would my heart know if you were dead?

She lights a taper from the embers of the fire and crosses to the door, willing herself to open it. Behind her, Grandmother
peers out from her cupboard. Hen has tried to coax her out into a bed in the big room, but she likes the small space. She likes being able to touch the walls and the ceilings. She burrows in, watching from where she feels safe. Sometimes she is lucid. But mostly she mutters to herself, obsessed by her approaching damnation. She has started talking to Satan now, begging him to be kind.

Hen does what she can, but knows it is not enough. She is embarrassed that Grandmother is turning beast-like, but she is rebuffed every time she tries to help. The old lady crouches there now, disturbed by the knocking. Hen can see the whites of her eyes beneath the tangled locks of hair.

She mutters: ‘See, He comes! He knows I'm here. He knows what I am. Sees through me. Wants to burn me. Wants me. Eat me. He's at the door. He's coming for me, with fire. Where's His fire? Not yet, my Lord. Not yet. Please don't take me yet.'

The knocking comes again, and the old lady's fear grows with it. Hen shushes her, trying not to let the panic grip her.

‘Hen, Lucy. It's me, Ned. Open up.'

Ned!

‘Grandmother, it's just Ned, just our Ned.'

Relieved, she opens the door to see Ned's grim, unsmiling face. There is someone behind him, an outline in the dark whose shape tugs at her memory.

‘Hen. Is it you?' A familiar voice. It can't be. She is in Oxford. Surely.

Ned walks through the door and the pathetic light from her taper falls on a dirty face framed by a bedraggled nest of hair.

‘Anne!'

‘Hello, Hen.' She walks into the room, nervousness making her step bouncy, her tone ebullient. ‘My turn to arrive dramatically at midnight, I thought, cuz.'

Lucy, now tucked into Ned's arm, looks towards Anne with horror. She is spattered with mud and a rust colour that Hen realizes must be blood. Her hair is wild. And yet Anne, irrepressible Anne, smiles at her and bobs into a curtsy.

‘Mrs Challoner, I assume,' she says into the silence. She carries herself like a lady, chin high and shoulders straight, but looks like a beggar, and Lucy is clearly awed by her.

‘This is Anne Challoner,' says Ned to Lucy. ‘Our cousin.' His voice is odd, and strangely accented on the surname. Hen stores the detail to worry at later.

She kisses her cousin's dirty face. ‘Welcome, Anne. Have you come far?'

‘Just sauntered in from St James, don't you know,' she says, and struts the width of the room. ‘What a hole this is, Hen.'

‘Suits you, then,' Hen retorts. They smile at each other.

‘What are you doing here?'

‘I found her,' says Ned. ‘In with the whores by the king's baggage.'

Anne looks at him, a straight and level stare. His eyes slide off to the side, and he hides his confusion by crossing to the jug on the shelf and pouring himself some ale.

‘Is that it, Ned? Is that all you are going to say? Tell them what your friends did,' Anne says to his back. ‘Tell them how you watched.'

‘They were papist whores.' His fist crashes down on the table in emphasis. Still he will not look at her.

Lucy looks between them, her face unreadable.

‘Am I a papist whore?'

He is silent, and Anne demands again: ‘Ned, am I a papist whore?'

He turns to face her, visibly discomfited. ‘Not a papist, no.'

‘You want to cut my nose? Go on then, cut it, you snivelling turd. Or cut my ear. Not so fucking brave now, are you, with your wife and sister watching?'

‘Ned, what is this woman talking about?' Lucy crosses to him.

‘Never mind, poppet.'

‘Ned,' Hen says. ‘Ned.'

He turns to her. ‘You don't understand. And anyway, they were papists.'

They stand there, immobile, looking at each other.

Anne breaks the silence. ‘Oh, we've had a fine old time hotfooting it down from the Midlands, haven't we, Ned? Riding for hours in silence on borrowed hacks, Ned here purple with the shame of being seen with me.'

‘Am I to be blamed for that?' Ned looks at Lucy, his natural ally.

‘Aye, for that, and for what your friends did.'

‘I did nothing.'

‘You stood by.'

Hen walks to Anne and takes her hand. ‘Enough, both of you. Come, honey, let us clean you and feed you. All is well now.'

Close to, she sees Anne crumble a little under her kindness, and fight to hold herself upright. ‘All is well now? Is it so?' Anne says as she finds her smile again.

Hen turns back to Ned. ‘The battle?'

‘A glorious victory. God was with us, Hen. The king is destroyed.'

‘Sam?'

‘No sign. I searched, Hen, but if he was with the dead or the injured, I didn't find him.'

She sags with relief. No news is better than bad. Ignorance frays the nerves, but it is better than grief.

She turns back to Anne. ‘We'll get you clean,' she says. ‘Ned, you go next door,' she says over her shoulder, and hears Ned and Lucy walk into the bedroom and shut the door.

Anne shivers as Hen strips her clothes off. There are finger-shaped bruises on both her upper arms, and a thick tide mark of dirt at the neck and wrists. She is a gypsy. Her clothes smell high, and are crinkled with a crust of dirt and mud.

Hen takes a cloth and dips it in the bowl sitting in a tripod in the corner.

‘We'll go to the bathhouse tomorrow,' she says. ‘But we can make you comfortable.' Even by the sallow light of the taper, Hen can see the telltale pockmarks of the fleas that feast on Anne's skin. The dirt has built up, layer on layer, and the water turns grey as Hen rinses the linen cloth out. Even in the warm summer air, it can be cool in these rooms that run to damp, and the cold water draws goose pimples from Anne's skin.

At first they are silent, as if intent on hearing the rustle of linen in water.

A small voice, behind a curtain of matted hair, breaks the silence. ‘Thank you.'

‘It is nothing. My poor Annie.'

Hen takes up her comb and starts on Anne's hair, which hangs
in clumps and tatters down her back. She holds it close to the roots as she tugs, and Anne sits uncomplaining.

‘So the king was put to flight? How did it run?'

‘Lord, Hen, don't ask me. There's little enough chance to work out what's happening when you're in the thick of it. I tried asking Ned, but when he would talk, he just blethered about Providence.'

‘But what were you doing there, honey?'

‘There was a boy.'

Hen notices, for the first time, the outward curve of Anne's belly and the fullness of her breasts.

‘Oh Lord,' she says.

Later, in a thin trestle bed pulled out of Lucy's bedroom into the big room, they talk.

‘He was – is – the son of an earl, you see. He promised me marriage. He promised me parks and fountains and curtsies. He promised me horses and servants and a place at the masque. Ice in summer and a dozen fires in winter. Pineapples, even!'

Hen smiles, and reaches across for her cousin's hand.

‘Oh, Hen. I followed him. Left Oxford one night when his regiment marched out. He promised me the world.'

‘And he gave you that.' Hen nods at Anne's belly, straining the fabric of her shift.

Anne's fingers flutter protectively on her stomach, and she laughs. ‘Yes. He gave me this. I forgot to thank him.'

Anne's spirit is infectious, and the two of them giggle
together. Hen says gently: ‘But, Anne. What now? Where is he?'

‘Dead, I think. But anyway, no matter. Before the battle, he was cross. It was the fear, I think, talking, but he made it clear that the promises were as solid as farts. So, here I am.'

‘Here you are.' Hen squeezes her cousin's hand.

‘I will try to get rid of it. There must be a wise woman hereabout. Don't look at me that way. What would you have me do? I have no money. My mother and father would see me in the gutter. You must help me.'

Hen nods, muttering a silent prayer of forgiveness. These were dark times – perhaps dark measures were allowed. Ned would not think so, but then Ned was not a woman, and not schooled in compromise from birth.

‘Hattie,' says Hen. ‘Hattie is the butcher's wife. She is skilled in herbs, and if she does not know herself what to take, she will know where to ask.'

The two of them fall quiet, Hen thinking of how it would be done. She knows the properties of the potions designed to keep a woman's blood flowing; Hattie brews her own concoction of laurel, madder, pepper and sage. Was it enough to increase the dose, to dislodge a life? A life. Was it a life?

As if reading her thoughts, Anne says: ‘The minister at home told my mother it is not until the quickening that the child inherits sin. I have not quickened yet. This is not yet a life.'

Her fingers, tapping gently on her belly as if to send a message, tell a different story, but Hen pretends not to notice.

They lie together under a blanket, warming each other. The closeness brings an intimacy. Anne talks of love, of her noble boy's soft lips and lying tongue. She tells of the relief of leaving home,
the excitement and the sense of adventure, the night she crept out of the house and into his arms.

Some small part of Hen is jealous, and she thinks of Will as she saw him last: abashed and uncertain, with his mother hovering at his shoulder. The Cavalier of Anne's tale is a hero, a dashing figure. And yet he is gone, and here is Anne. With child and alone.

She tries to tell Anne some small part of this, and her cousin turns towards her and flings an arm over her. They lie close and warm under the blanket.

‘Did you meet Sam?'

‘I saw him, a few times. He didn't know me. I vowed to wait until I was married before I made myself known to him. He's quite the dashing cavalry lieutenant. I thought it better to leave him be until I was respectable. But each place of safety seemed to withdraw the longer I was with my lover. Richard.

‘I did not see Sam at the Naseby fight, though, Hen. He was with Rupert, and they charged off. Richard was with the Northern Horse, and they were cut down or fled. They could both be alive, or dead, or somewhere in between.'

Oh Sam. Where are you? My other half; my brother. God keep you. God guard you.

Anne breaks into her thoughts. ‘And you, Hen? This is poverty.'

‘Perhaps.'

‘Come, tell me.'

‘Oh Anne. I like this life. I have purpose. I like working. I remember those days back in Fetter Lane, those endless, stretching days. You know how it is, how it was. Waking up and not knowing why, exactly, you are bothering to rise. Expected to fill a whole
day with admiring a new bonnet. I was without the worry I have now. How to feed us all; how to keep us warm. But the boredom! Oh Anne, the boredom!'

‘God grant me some of that boredom. You want to try following an army, cuz. God's wounds.'

‘Really? You'd prefer to have stayed at home?'

‘Home? No. Surely there's some middle ground between boredom and terror?'

‘Misery?'

Anne's laughter is loud after their whispering. ‘Aye, misery,' she says.

‘There's guilt, though, Anne. The price of my freedom, if you like, was my father's hanging. Each time I let the joy of it all fill me, I remember his face.'

‘Poor cuz. My father wept when he heard. I never saw him cry before.'

‘Not just my father, either. All the boys dead and maimed in the war. They bought me this . . .' She pauses, unable to find the word. ‘This rebirth.'

Anne pulls the blanket up under her chin and gazes out of the open window to the black sky.

‘It was fun, sometimes, on the baggage train. The women, all in it together, you know. I was frightened at first. They were coarse and salty. But kind under it all. And those that weren't kind were funny, which is, as it turns out, a better cure for blisters than kindness or praying.'

‘What happened, Anne? At Naseby.' She wants to ask more directly, but somehow she cannot articulate the words properly: What did Ned do?