Black Tom's Red Army Page 15

  “I’ll not discuss these matters in front of the entire army,” Fairfax snapped.

  “My lords, we have assembled our best translators, lawyers, pamphleteers and printers. We have presses made ready. Our esteemed colleague Henry Parker has agreed to begin work…” Eagleton went on.

  “Did you not hear me Master Eagleton? I’ll not discuss this in front of the entire army. This is the King, the King’s own correspondence.” He slapped his palm down on the table, spilling ink and ale pot alike.

  “Much of it in his own hand,” Cromwell insinuated.

  “And that of her majesty queen Henrietta Maria,” Eagelton put in, rolling the syllables to place special emphasis on her outlandish name. Henrietta Maria.

  “It ill becomes us to intrude upon the King’s correspondence, even brought to the extreme,” Fairfax insisted.

  “We can but admire the dignity and principle your lordship brings to matters of state, but we have been at war these three years and these papers establish beyond…”

  “I’ll not be party to ferreting about in his private letters, even so.”

  Cromwell held up his hand.

  “Gentlemen, we will give this matter further thought. Sir Thomas and I will give this matter our most urgent attention, in private.”

  *************************

  Half an hour later they were called back in. Fairfax was slumped in a chair, absently rubbing his brow. Cromwell gave Eagleton the briefest of nods.

  “We have considered the implications of this course and believe it to be justified. Master Eagelton, you may proceed with your digest of these papers with a view to immediate publication.”

  Fairfax grimaced but said nothing. It was clear the commander was deeply troubled by the decision to proceed, rifling through the King’s cupboards to find some juicy gossip to discredit his cause.

  But Fairfax didn’t see it that way – and he didn’t look much like the victorious commander, sitting glumly with the clerks and commissioners who they had just given permission to take this wretched war to a new level of vindictive recrimination.

  Where on God’s Earth would it end?

  By Market Harborough, June 15, 1645

  Dawn, and the victorious army was picking itself up from the rack and ruin across the field. Thin tendrils of smoke from a thousand cooking fires as the troops breakfasted on whatever came to hand.

  Stolen sheep mostly, with biscuit and cheese from the Royalist train washed down with a couple of pints of small beer.

  Sparrow had eaten his fill of good mutton broth and dozed beside the cart, dead to the world and all his cares. A sharp kick to his boot had brought him back to cruel reality.

  “You’re back then,” Muffet observed. “Gillingfeather’s been around after you.”

  Sparrow levered himself up on his elbows, damp muscles protesting at the unwelcome activity.

  “Balls to him,” Sparrow growled. “I have a pass from Eagleton.” He sat up, throwing off the discarded coat he slept in. Sparrow tapped his doublet.

  “He’s given me leave to find her, aye and that clodhooper of a parson who was hanging round her like a bad smell.”

  Muffet sucked his pipe in reflection.

  “We’ve been ordered out,” he advised. Sparrow accepted the musketeer’s outstretched hand, hauled himself to his feet with a wince.

  “You’ll get the pip, lying out on a morning dew.”

  “It was too late to find you – and I was out on my feet anyway.”

  He ran a hand through his lank curls, straightened his hat.

  “He’s hidden her away somewhere. Can’t have got far.”

  “Hidden her away?” Muffet queried. “And what are you going to do, if you do find her? From what he said he’s more claim to her caring than you. Being her brother-in-law and all.”

  Sparrow studied the avuncular musketeer, blowing an innocent smoke ring into the mutton-fat murk.

  “I’ve known her since she was this high,” Sparrow declared. “And I didn’t like the way he was leering at her either. Especially for a man of God.”

  “Missing you say? You think they’ve eloped?”

  “In the state she was in?” Sparrow snorted. “He would have needed to get her to cover of some sort, or she could have caught her death.”

  Quite likely, Muffet thought.

  “So it’s a question of looking in every outhouse and henhouse five miles round,” he observed helpfully, outlining the wooded horizon with the stem of his pipe.

  Sparrow frowned. Aye, he had that right and all.

  “He couldn’t have gotten far. I’ll check the hospital tents first.”

  “Good luck with that Will. There must be best part of six hundred wounded – from our lot alone.”

  Sparrow dusted himself off, nodding grimly.

  “I’d best get cracking then.”

  *************************

  Three hours trudging around the fields around Harborough had given Sparrow a crash course in battle wounds, but precious little clue as to Bella’s whereabouts.

  Gut shots and head shots. Jaws hanging by strips of bloody gristle.

  Clumsily amputated arms. Lone hands. Fingers.

  Bloody fragments , clumps of hair, teeth.

  Livid innards, shiny blue in the morning sunlight.

  The battlefield was a shambles even for the victors.

  Sparrow, holding back the bile, completed his bloody circuit and found himself back once again in the busy village - which seemed to have been taken over as a hub for the entire army – or those parts of the army that were still standing.

  Sparrow re-traced his steps toward the commissariat tent, black suited clerks busy as always about a thousand errands.

  He ducked under the mouldy canvas, removing his hat and dusting loose grass from his breeches.

  “Don’t worry about that,” one of the clerks aid from the corner of his mouth. “They all stink of horse piss and old sweat. Same as you.”

  Sparrow showed his teeth and strode into the termite hill marquee. There were as many penpushers here as Sparrow had pikemen. Pity they hadn’t drafted a few of the rogues in as replacements for the men they had lost the previous afternoon.

  The senior commissioners were clustered about a large trestle table, loaded down with chests and small closets with more drawers than a musketeer had powder bottles.

  He watched Eagleton distribute more papers and letters for the army of clerks to complete their inventory of the King’s precious cabinets.

  Eagleton noticed Sparrow by the tent door, motioned him closer.

  “I judge your mission has not met with any degree of success?”

  Sparrow shook his head.

  “I am informed Telling returned to his regiment last eve, but was gone by the time my runner reached them this morn.”

  “I have checked all about, the field hospitals and infirmaries,” Sparrow reported.

  “They will turn up again, soon enough,” Eagleton predicted. “In the meantime, perhaps you would assist me with your local knowledge. Of the West country.”

  Sparrow’s eyes slid sideways, wondering what the commissioner was getting at now.

  He wasn’t thinking of returning him to the West? Was his service on the South coast any more noteworthy than here in the Midlands?

  “God’s blessing has delivered us the victory here,” Eagelton observed. “The requirement now is to employ every means at our disposal to bring the King back to his reason, to heed his true counsellors rather than a set of self-serving rogues.”

  “Amen to that sir,” Sparrow volunteered. Eagleton took that for what it was worth.

  “And to that end, we are directed unto the West.”

  Sparrow nodded. Taunton. Any money on it. They couldn’t stand around while the siege went on. And on. And bloody well on.

  “You mentioned Bristol, and north Somerset I believe.”

  “You know my condition sir, and you know my service. If I were given leave to retu
rn home all outstanding matters would be put to right.”

  “Your child, you mean.” Aye. The son he’d not yet seen. By God he’d be toddling by now. He’d scream the house down if Sparrow turned up like a scowling giant from a fairy tale.

  “We were to wed after...”

  “We have been over the outworks of your domestics, master Sparrow. My intention is to secure the best intelligence of the country, not sort out your wayward nuptials,” the commissioner added waspishly.

  “But how am I to put things to rights when I’m marching half way round the Midlands with the army?” Eagleton was about to respond when he paused, head cocked.

  “Indeed.”

  Indeed what?

  Eagleton studied the sergeant down his nose.

  Sparrow could have clocked him one there and then. What was Eagleton planning now? The commissioner looked up, studied him as if he was a steer brought to auction Eagleton had a mind to bid for.

  “There is a war on, master Sparrow. A war we mean to win. There will be time enough for you to amend thy ways when King Charles has been brought back to Whitehall.”

  As what, a prisoner? How could the people imprison their own King?

  This might be a fighting army, but to what end was it fighting for? They weren’t about to hand the King over to the hotheads on the new-fangled soldiers’ committees, surely? But if it meant Sparrow could get himself home it would be a price worth paying. Charles had called the shambles down on them - it had been nothing to do with William Sparrow. Eagleton was still eyeing him. Sparrow fidgeted.

  “However, it may be that we can help one another once again,” Eagleton offered. “Two birds with one stone,” he said under his breath.

  “Two birds with one stone sir?”

  “Indeed Sparrow, indeed,” Eagleton encouraged. Sparrow could have sworn he’d seen him smile.

  By the Phelps Farm, Clipston, near Naseby, June 15, 1645

  Thousands of men had tramped past the farm, dividing about the mean buildings and tumbledown walls. A shrivelled orchard, scratched by chickens and patrolled by ducks and geese. Well, it had been until the battle.

  The soldiers had stripped anything they could from the scattered sties and outbuildings, snatched every apple from the desperately gnarled trees, no matter they were barely half ripe.

  A regiment of Royalist horse marching to the battle the day before had stripped the field of grass – leaving the farmer a harvest of flints and hoofprints. The gate had been swung and wrestled from its hinges, a dozen sheep long gone.

  In place of crops and livestock the narrow yard was crowded with carts and tethered horses.

  The goodwife was still crying and fretting as she went to and from the well for fresh water. Her husband had gone out that night with sack and lantern, but hadn’t come back yet. He was probably hiding out in the coombs and byways – with a bag of loot to replace their losses, please God.

  A thin red tide washed over the worn flagstones, pushed this way then that by her bloodied mop.

  In the narrow garret upstairs a pack of ensigns, captains and even the odd colonel laid out on bed, mattress and settle. In the parlour, common soldiers. The table had been pressed into service as a butcher’s bench. A filthy bucket pushed beneath, sopping rags hanging from the rim. Strips of sacking, torn shirt sleeves. Lengths of gut, knives and needles.

  Surgeons blinking in the fetid half light, squinting between ball, muscle and joint.

  Bella Margueritte Morrison was sitting beside the hearth, perched on a stool while Matilda hovered and dithered. The wounded were regarding them through half-closed eyes, curiously resentful. Too exhausted to wonder at their hideously nervous domesticity.

  The goodwife hadn’t taken kindly to taking camp doxies in off the moor, but the glaring minister who had accompanied them had informed her she would either make room or watch her hovel burned down about her.

  He had gripped her by the wrist – determined to pull her fingers from their joints no doubt - and pressed three shillings into her palm.

  “Have a care for the young lady and her servant,” Telling had instructed, “And there will be another two shillings for you when they are recovered sufficiently to risk the road.”

  She weighed the coins and nodded sourly. It was as much as she had taken from any of the fine bloody gentlemen upstairs, that was for sure.

  “I don’t have skills with broken bones,” she’d complained. “And that gash’ll go manky before too long.”

  “Master Hale the surgeon will attend her presently. The servant will assist you.”

  Servant? Matilda Dawkins glared but said nothing. She’d been called a damn sight worse.

  Bella seemed exhausted, head nodding against the hearth. She wasn’t sure whether she should remove her old friend’s bonnet to examine the clotted blood, dirt and hair beneath.

  Sure the sight of the some of the camp women with hair hanging free seemed to have inflamed the rebel raiders the previous afternoon. Matilda had taken the occasional look beneath Bella’s borrowed headgear and hadn’t liked the ripening colours about the cut.

  “As you wish sir,” the farmer’s wife allowed, peering over her shoulder as a couple of Fairfax’s musketeers hauled another unconscious officer into the overcrowded farmhouse. Telling released his grip.

  “Major Dejong, Rupert’s bloody Bluecoats. Trying to peg it all the way back to Leicester. We were told to bring him in here as there weren’t space on the coach,” the musketeer remarked.

  “He’ll have to go in the scullery. There’s little enough room for them that’s here,” the goodwife said distractedly. She gestured toward the hovel door. At least she wouldn’t have to bow and scrape around the reverend’s scowling whores.

  Matilda tugged at her bonnet strings.

  “What’s up with him?” she inquired. The musketeer/Samaritan studied her for a moment.

  “Friend of yours is he?” he asked archly.

  “My cousin,” Matilda replied briskly. The goodwife frowned.

  “Well you can go and sort him then, out in the scullery.” She shooed them out into the cramped alcove.

  “Do so,” Telling seconded. They moved on, scowling, shooing, muttering. The minister picked up a stray rag, held it to the neck of a small flask he had taken from his pouch.

  Bella watched him, tired eyes wandering over his barely recognised features. She remembered the heavyset eldest son she had met back at the rectory the year before.

  A boorish bully with a wandering eye, wholly at odds with the occupation he claimed to have taken up in tribute to their dithering father. Bitterly jealous of the younger brother he had tormented to distraction in the innocent years before the war. She wondered whether he was equally ill-suited to the cause he claimed to be serving.

  He certainly hadn’t spent any appreciable time administering to his flock, out in the still fields about the farmhouse.

  “Edward. Back so soon,” she said, lips cracked. Telling pursed his lips, placed his fingers beneath her chin to tilt her head away from him. She might have shied away, but for the unreadable look in his watery blue eyes. With so many hurts and bruises, sudden movements were pretty much out of the question.

  How could she have been so stupid? Walking in to all this like a toddling infant.

  “This will sting a little, but the wound needs to be cleaned.”

  “Won’t sting as much as the doing,” she said faintly. He lifted the bloodstained bonnet, wet rag poised over the mad tangle of hair.

  “Have you seen Hugo?” She asked, unsure whether she should even mention the absent cavalier. The minister’s wayward brother.

  Telling made a noise in his throat.

  “There’s hair and dirt in the wound,” he said thickly. “I can’t clean it like this.”

  “Cut the hair away. It’ll grow back,” she said, weakly encouraging.

  “Cut it?”

  The goodwife bustled past, muttering beneath an armful of dirty linen.

&nb
sp; “Have you not called the chiurgeon to her?” she inquired.

  “The surgeons are busy with the seriously hurt. Hale will attend to her later,” he explained, his blue eye suddenly harder than the balls of lead presently being picked and prodded from half a dozen wounded officers.

  “Fetch me your razor. The wound must be cleared and cleaned.”

  The goodwife took a long look at the mooning girl, who seemed uncertain where she was, leave alone what side she was on. She may have lost the bloodied blue coat, but the gown about her shoulders was clearly a cut or two above the plain worsted the goodwife wore. Tiny traceries of gold thread about the collar, cuffs and seam. Her shift was near white, tiny pearl buttons must have cost a small fortune too.

  But for all her finery she didn’t look like the hard-faced whore who had taken herself off to the scullery. A pleasant enough child, set loose in a backwater of resentment and continuing menace.

  “Well?”

  “I will sir. My husband’s razor, though it’ll…”

  “It will do. Fetch it.”

  Bella lifted her hand, dirt and blood dried on her fingers. She picked at her hair, matted with dirt and more blood. He touched the searching fingers, realised his hand was trembling.

  She looked up, found his eye again. Telling withdrew his hand, made a fist and then flexed his fingers as if suffering from a sudden attack of pins and needles.

  The goodwife returned, glanced at the oddly glaring minister, wondering why he doted so over the little honeyblob. Hadn’t he claimed to be her brother-in-law? My arse, she thought.

  “Let me.” Telling stepped aside, raised his chin and studied the packed infirmary.

  Bella sat quietly as the goodwife worked, ducking and diving about the girl’s head.

  “There. Shame to cut it so roughly.” She let bloodied hank fall to the horribly soiled floor.

  “Could you pass the basin sir?” Telling complied, looking at the bloody water with distaste. He poured it onto the floor, pushed his way to the hearth to fetch the kettle.

  The goodwife raised her eyebrows, realised Bella had noticed her curious look and set to work with the razor again. Telling returned with the kettle, replaced the water in the basin.