Читать книгу As Meat Loves Salt - Maria McCann, Maria McCann - Страница 14

Some days later I emerged from the wood on the northern side, having torn every garment and twisted my shoes almost off my feet, but that weighed little against the inner torment that rent me. I would almost have been glad to be taken by Biggin and be done with it, yet the miserable cowardice of the flesh made me still listen for the sound of men and shrink down in the bushes if I heard any. On coming out of the trees and seeing the highway fair and open before me, I felt a deliverance of body if not of soul. The morning was soft and my road lay between fair green hills, so evenly balanced that I seemed walking in a picture.

Behold, said the Voice, earthly beauty. It is nothing but seeming, for to the uninstructed eye the world appears fruitful and sweet, yet in it is nothing but a pile of skulls, showing where others were lost as they went before.

‘I am lost,’ I answered, ‘and can never be found again.’

Not one of us merits salvation. We are too feeble and corrupt to attain to it or form the most childish conception thereof. Yet God shows His mercy in saving some, and His justice in condemning others. Father told this to Izzy and me, and spoke to us of the Elect: he tried to explain these things to Zeb also, more than once, but the boy was too young and foolish, and began to cry. The Elect are chosen from before the beginning of time, and are known by their inner light and godly conversation. Within me all was darkness, and neither my conversation nor my conduct godly. I must look, then, to have Hell as my portion. God cuts out our path, makes a groove in the clay with His finger, and we poor blind ants slide down into it.

I was not long out from the trees when I fell prey to savage thirst. Like a fool, I had not thought to drink deep from the stream before quitting it, I was come across no other water in the wood, and now I sweated much in the sun. Men are wont to think of our England as a soft green land, nourished at the breast of many rivers; yet I can prove by bitter experience that it is possible to walk for miles along the King’s highway and find no more than a puddle. On coming to the first village I dared not stop, lest word of our flight had reached there, and methought the wedding garments were like to become the mark by which all might know me and put me to death. There was a well, however, by the church, and winding up the bucket I put my head in it like a horse. Pulling out I saw a woman draw back from a high window as if she thought I would leap up to her.

Just after the last house in the village I found a sign which told me I could turn left onto the Devizes road. I had some crazed idea of walking to Bristol, now that the city was fallen. Any kind of work requiring strength was mine for the asking; in such a large place I might surely earn my bread in safety.

It came to me that if Caro and Zeb were not gone home they might also fix on Bristol as being a place where they could offload the rings and necklaces. Should I find her there, I would throw myself on my knees and beg pardon. I trudged along rehearsing a vow that all the rest of her life I should never lift a hand save in her defence. At other times I blamed her for leaving me so utterly destitute of the means to live: her loud honesty, I reflected bitterly, had not stopped her taking all the gold. Then I recalled their plight, a beautiful young woman in a low-cut gown, the only man who might protect her broken and feverish. Some kite would have the jewels away from them as easily as I had possessed myself of Walshe’s knife, and perhaps do evil on them as I had upon him. But if they scaped – and here the Devil put it in my mind that they lay together at an inn. The bed was soft; she dressed his wounds and passed her hands over the rest of him. Again I saw the shirt slide up over his chest; she gazed, and gazed – she fastened the gold chains round his neck – at that I shook my head like a baited bull, to clear it, and felt her put the betrothal ring in my hand. I had searched for it on discovering their flight, but it was lost in the leaves. The memory of her flinging it away was a knife to me. I prayed that I might learn of their safety, might be delivered from my misery, might be revenged – I knew not what to pray for, and all for nothing anyway. God is not moved from His great designs by the prayers of the righteous, how much less does He care for the whinings of the damned!

The Devizes road was straight enough, but I made slow progress as my feet pained me sadly by now. After an hour of walking I took off my shoes and found a fat blister on the back of each toe, and my right heel split like a plum. Yet it was better than going barefoot and even limping along I could surely manage fourteen miles before dark. As I went along my conscience wrangled within me, and my sense, also turbulent, worked me to such a pitch that I passed along the road without seeing it, thus saying to myself:

She is my wife. Espoused de praesenti, and the – act – in the wood does consummate.

Aye, but spiritually it is clean different. Tears do not argue consent—

I AM HER HUSBAND.

Zeb will lie with her. She will be as Patience – she put her hands on him that way in the wood, they have made their game of me I perceive—

CHRIST let me think no more of this.

My thirst returned upon me most cruelly.

Once, when I was a growing boy, the three of us were allowed back to Mother’s cottage for a saint’s day, and while in the village I stole some walnuts from a neighbour’s tree. This neighbour was a bandy, red-haired old man, whom I think now had a liking to my mother but at the time I saw it not. I took the nuts for their green shiny coats and was scratching at these the better to smell them when he called out, ‘Jacob,’ and the name leapt in my breast. I was already a big lad and very strong from the field work. When he came up to me he was no taller than myself, but I was sore afraid of him. He took the nuts from me and cast them on the ground along with the little knife I was carrying.

‘Now get down,’ said he. I had been raised to bear punishment meekly, and I knelt thinking he would beat me.

‘No, lie down. On your back.’ And I did indeed lie down, hoping he would not kick me. Instead of which he placed a foot on either side of my body and then hunkered down until he was sitting astride me. He took up the walnuts and the knife.

‘See this boy?’ He peeled one of the things before my face. ‘Here, eat it.’ And he pushed the unripe nut into my mouth and pressed my teeth into it. The burning made me scream and some of the nut got down my throat. In my agony I threw him off and ran home, spitting and wailing.

‘Green fruit, boy!’ he shouted after me.

My tongue was black weeks after.

I cannot say why this suddenly came to memory except the thirst, now growing outrageous. Still I went on up the Devizes road, having no idea how far I might be from Beaurepair. Soon I made up my mind for it that I would beg at the next door for water if Cornish himself lodged there, but it was another hour at least before I came upon a group of straggly dwellings, not even an alehouse, and the whole place strangely quiet. An elderly man stood in one of the cottage gardens and stared at me as I staggered up to him.

‘Save you, Friend,’ I wheezed, ‘and where might I find some water?’

He looked me over and did not answer.

‘I faint from the road.’

The man spoke almost without moving his lips. ‘You’ll be a quartermaster.’

‘What?’

He gestured at my dirty wedding gear. ‘With the King’s forces.’

‘All I seek is water, for myself. Give it me and you’ll see me no more.’

He dawdled still. I observed that his body was bent over on one side by injury and the hands had twisted black nails: the hardness of long oppression.

‘I wear another’s clothing for all my own was stolen,’ I cried. ‘Don’t you hear my voice crack with the thirst? Be a Christian, Friend.’

The Christian moved away from the wall and pointed silently over his shoulder. I saw, and ran to, a well. The water tasted like sucking an iron spoon but I drank enough to split my sides, far beyond the prompting of need, for I had learnt what it was to thirst on the road.

‘Now get you gone,’ he said. ‘Those are your garments right enough; you’re big like all the rich. Tell them we’ve nothing to eat but the scurf off our heads.’

He must be crazed with want, I thought, to fancy that a quartermaster would come with neither horse nor weapon. I started along the street and looked about me for saner company, and a house where I might beg a little bread. But my surly friend was right: wherever I looked I saw folk draw back from the windows. There were no cows, nor no grain neither, in the fields, the fruit trees in the gardens were all picked bare or even lopped and not a single hen picked a living from the clay and stones of the road. I walked on, and on, and on.

We had suffered nothing of this at home: by some stroke of luck or stupidity they had never asked us for free quarter. I had heard of it, how the soldiers ate everything they could and stole or broke up the rest, nay, debauched the women too if the commander turned a blind eye. The King’s forces were the most dreaded for that their officers had precious little control over their men, but no army was welcome. Now I was seeing it for myself. At every house where I tried to beg I had the same answer in words angry or civil, and many seemed persuaded I was a spy, sent to ascertain what remained to be devoured. In the end I took to stealing by night, mostly the odd apple in a garden or griping crabs from the hedges. Breaking into the dairy at one place I found a cheese, and wept with joy. In this fashion I passed perhaps a week, and was lucky not to be put in the stocks.

But at last there were no more houses, and the torment began in earnest. The Devil lashed me onwards with ugly pictures of Caro and Zeb; he rode me hard, driving in the spurs. I had pain all along my breastbone and I thought of the words broken heart. My pace had slowed; I knew that beggars could walk for days without food, but I could not do as they did, being used to good feeding. What victuals I had picked up no longer sustained me. My path began to zigzag, and from time to time a knee buckled or the heel of my shoe turned aside. I was like one that has had a beating, my body tender, swerving, weakening as I went, and my throat parched. There was none on the road, and I sat for a moment to ease my blisters. When I made to get up I could not, and sprawled on the grass. It was sweet to dissolve into blackness and the earth. When daylight came back, I was talking to someone who asked me, Is Isaiah in gaol? I answered, Patience and Cornish might name him. They are most hardened against Zeb and me. If they take him it will be with Caro and they must hang him in gold. On my asking how Patience could leave Zeb for Cornish, he answered me singing, that Zebedee was cruel to her and this makes maids devils, maids devils, maids devils.

Aye, I said. And devils themselves grow crueller by the continual action of pain upon them. I opened my eyes and there was nobody with me.

The sun grew stronger on my face. Noon. My head ached as from strong drink and I wished only to remain lying and speak to none. A woman passed me with a little child, walking by on the other side. Afterwards I tried to rise, but getting upon my feet my body pitched forwards and I was again stretched in the dust. I rolled onto my back. The walnut was in my throat, burning the flesh black, but I could lose it by falling asleep. The old man stood over me, dropping something onto my face. I said to him, They are in bed at the inn together, but he is dead of the fever; I made to sit upright but my head was nailed to the ground. He forced another nut between my teeth, a hard one. It let something cold into my mouth.

‘Keep your feet on him,’ a man said. I could feel no feet on my body; was someone standing on me? There was a smell of smoke and I heard our horses run into the wood.

The sky was wet. I lay on my back and saw men move at the sides of my head before darkness closed over me again.

‘His eyes opened,’ said a gentle voice near me, and then, ‘drink.’ The hard thing was once more put between my lips and I turned my head away.

‘Leave him, Ferris.’

‘We cannot leave him like this.’ Warm fingers wiped my mouth and chin. I looked up to see a young man gazing perplexed into the distance, his profile lean and pensive, but full-lipped and long-nosed. He knelt at my side as if watching for someone, his hand still absently stroking my lips so that I breathed its scent of sweat and gunmetal.

I coughed against his palm, and he turned on me a pair of eyes as grey as my own. Pale hair hung thick on his collar; I saw he had shaved some days before. As I met his eyes they darkened, the pupils opening out like drops of black ink fallen into the grey, then he looked away, and his fingers slid from my face.

‘Let me drink,’ I creaked out.

‘Get on your side.’ He tugged at my arm, gritting his teeth as he tried to roll me over. ‘Up. Up on your elbow.’ When he had pulled me into position, I reached out my hand for the water, and caught a wry look from him.

‘You could have saved me a job. Here, and don’t spill, this is precious.’

There was mould on the sleeve of his jacket. I took the flask, swallowed about half, and handed it back.

He waved his hand. ‘Drink more,’ and he stayed close as if to say, I don’t go until you do.

I sat up and looked about me for the other man I had heard, but he was gone. On both sides of the road, pressed around small fires, were soldiers wrapped in garments that had once been bright red but now were faded to yellow or filthied to brown, except where patches had escaped the mud and smoke of battle. At one fire nearby a boy sat watching us. He smiled and waved to my new-found friend.

‘We got some water down you earlier. Drink anyway. I’ll fetch you some victual.’ Ferris sprang up and walked off, stopping to speak with the lad I had noticed and clap him on the shoulder before passing behind a group of men and out of my sight. Pale blue smoke blew across me, smelling of home, and a thin rain, like spit between the teeth, chilled my neck. I could see now the cropped hair of the young boys round the fires. Some of them, and most of the older men, still wore theirs long. I put my hand up to my head; someone had cut my hair close to the scalp. There it lay on the grass, a knot of wet black vipers.

‘Feel better?’ He was back, squatting easily by my side.

‘Did you do this?’

Ferris glanced at the dead man’s locks on the grass. ‘No.’ He held something out to me, but I could not take my eyes away from what had once been myself, and was also Izzy and Zeb.

‘Here,’ he pulled my hand away from my shorn skull, ‘best eat without looking.’ It was bread and cheese, the bread hard as your heels and the cheese popping with mites, but I grabbed at it.

‘Not too fast if you haven’t eaten lately, you’ll hurt yourself,’ said Ferris. ‘Easy, easy!’ He snatched the cheese from me.

‘Why are you feeding me?’

‘Call it your ration. You’re in the New Model Army.’

‘You mistake. I am—’

‘We lack men. What, going to lie down and die are you?’ He laughed.

‘But I’m weak, unwell. I’ve been starving.’

‘Starving!’ The grey eyes mocked me. ‘Granted you’re somewhat hungry. We see it all the time. And that suit of clothes! We thought we’d found us a deserter, a Cavalier officer. Until you spoke.’

‘I said nothing to them.’

‘O yes. While I was bringing you round. And struggled. We stood on your coat to keep you down.’ He offered me the bread and cheese again. ‘Some of the lads thought we’d caught up with Rupert of the Rhine.’

‘He’s a devil,’ I mumbled into the tough crust.

‘So they said, and they were about to take a short way with you, but I told them, Prince Rupert’s not a man you’d find lying in the road. What is your name?’

‘I – well, I have a mind now to be Rupert.’

‘Aye, who wouldn’t be! Roast goose for him, no bread and cheese.’

‘Were you told to enlist me?’

‘No. I am squeamish – would not leave a man to die of thirst on the highway – so I came to see if you were well enough to enlist. You’re well enough now,’ and as I made to protest, ‘now.’ He jerked his hand towards one of the fires. ‘Yonder’s your corporal – he’ll teach you your drill.’

I considered. ‘Is it all bread and cheese?’

‘Not always that good! But there’s beef sometimes, and eight pence a day – when they pay it.’

He got up and put out his hand to me, but my hipbones, dry as the ones in Ezekiel, grated as I struggled upright, so that my weight pulled him down; laughing, he was forced to leave go.

While I was lying in the road the day had passed into evening, and I was glad Ferris walked before me as it was hard to discern either form or order in the groups of soldiers lying round the fires. He stopped in front of a man whose hair was so dirty it might have been of any colour, and was soiled with more than mud: as I looked closer I saw brownish blood all down the right side of his face, cracked where the sweat had oozed up under it.

‘Prince Rupert come to serve under you, Sir,’ said Ferris. I bowed awkwardly. The men around laughed.

‘And what might be his real name?’ asked this gentleman, whose voice was pinched with pain.

‘If I may, Sir,’ I put in before Ferris could spoil my game, ‘I will take the name Rupert, since it seems I am known by it already.’

He waved his hand as if to say, what was that to him?

I was put down in the Officer’s book as Rupert Cane – the first name that came to mind – and ten shillings given into my hand.

‘That’s your entertainment money,’ said Ferris, who was come with me.

‘Entertainment?’

‘Money on your first coming in. Keep tight hold, you won’t see that much again.’

I was handed a red coat, two shirts, breeches, and hose; also a leather snapsack and a cap with dried blood on it, as if peeled from the head of a corpse.

‘I can’t get this coat on,’ I said, holding it up.

The man shrugged. ‘Nothing I can do there. One yard of cloth, that’s the regulation.’

‘Suppose you gave him two, and we got a tailor to run them together,’ suggested Ferris.

The fellow was willing enough. I thanked him from my heart and Ferris took up the coats, saying he knew a man would undertake the work for a shilling.

As we walked across the camp I felt the food warming me and longed for more. To take my mind off it, I asked Ferris what would happen the next day.

‘We will see to your coat…and you’ll be drilled in the pike,’ he added.

‘You are surely not a pikeman!’ I said, without thinking.

He stopped and gave me a hard look. ‘I have outlived many pikemen.’

‘I did not mean—’ but my voice faltered, for I had meant it. There was a pike over the fireplace of the great hall at Beaurepair, and all the men had lifted it at one time or another. Ferris was of too slender a make to carry such a weapon. It might be, I thought, that he had some little thing to do, far from the van of the fighting. But carrying a pike was better than lying a corpse by the roadside, and for this I owed him thanks. I smiled on him and he at once returned the smile.

‘If you would know,’ he said, ‘I was a musketeer. But a man that knew me in London thought I might be more use elsewhere.’

‘Where – why?’

‘I am not bad at the mathematics, and some of his best were just then dead. So now I help with artillery,’ he said as we seated ourselves at a fire. ‘Really it is for the cavalry to do, but what with fever and shot – well, they need men who can count without their fingers,’ his mouth twisted at his own grim jest, ‘fire straight, and dodge whatever comes back. When the enemy are in range, so are we.’ He held my eyes and I felt myself rebuked.

‘I know nothing of war,’ I said.

‘Would that I could say the same. It is a bestial occupation.’

‘Yet it is said the men of this army are rather godly than beastly. Is it not the other side that plunders? Do they not call Rupert, Duke of Plunderland?’

Ferris grinned. ‘Is that why you took his name? Aye, there are those who sing psalms in battle, and our commanders take pains to hold in the plunderers, but not for love of the vanquished. They see rather that armies need friends, and that soldiers once run wild are insensible of authority. Especially if they chance on Popish wine.’ He threw a stick into the flames. ‘A man may sing psalms, you know, yet cut the defeated in shreds with as little mercy as—’ he paused for a comparison, and ended by shrugging.

Warmed by the fire, I stripped myself and tried the new shirt and breeches, Ferris watching me in silence. The shirt was coarse but almost clean; both it and the breeches were big enough. These last had pockets, a new thing for me. My old garments I put in the snapsack, but when I took off my shoes, the fine hose that Peter and my brothers had given me were worn to rags. Not without regret, I put them on the fire.

‘Ferris, you said, “especially Popish wine.” Is it so strong?’

He grinned. ‘Any wine a soldier finds is Popish. That salves conscience.’

I gazed at him. ‘Do you say there are no goodly soldiers? That all are wolves?’

‘Soldiers are but men. There are many both brave and merciful—’ Ferris paused to wave in greeting as a figure skirted the fire. ‘As for the other side, they are more than even with us—’

He broke off and called eagerly to the new arrival. ‘Welcome my lad, and did you get any?’

I looked up and saw a boy almost as tall as myself, all legs and arms. His face shone with pleasure and even in the poor light I was struck by the gem-like brilliance of his blue eyes, the kind which often go with yellow hair. This boy’s hair, however, was so dark a brown as to be almost black, and I thought I recognised the lad who had waved earlier from the fireside.

‘This is Nathan,’ said Ferris. ‘A good comrade and not beastly.’

‘Who called me beastly?’ asked the boy. ‘See, Ferris,’ and without awaiting a reply he pulled a cloth from under his coat and proceeded to unwrap two chunks of roast meat, the fat gleaming in the reddish light. ‘There’s bread too.’

‘You are a marvel,’ Ferris told him. Turning to me he added, ‘The meat’s mostly boiled.’

‘I guess this was picked up at Devizes,’ the boy said.

Ferris grinned at him. ‘Plunder, eh? Is there enough for Prince Rupert here?’

‘Prince—?’ He giggled, regarding me curiously, then said, ‘I think we have not met before?’

‘I joined up today.’

Nathan seated himself on the other side of Ferris and began slicing the beef with a dagger, trying to make three portions out of two. To my surprise he showed no sullenness at this unexpected reduction in rations. ‘Is your name really Rupert?’

I nodded.

‘You’re from these parts?’

‘Right again.’

‘I wager you’ll be pikes. They always put big fellows on pikes,’ and he commenced telling me the weight of a pikeman’s armour. He had altogether too much to say, and his voice grated on me.

Ferris, watching my face, said to Nathan, ‘He’d bear the armour well enough, if there were any.’

‘Surely,’ the boy agreed. He passed the meat to Ferris and began cutting bread.

‘Even I could carry what they issue now,’ Ferris continued with a glance at me. ‘But most men don’t want it. A buffcoat – that’s the thing.’

‘Would you wish to be a pikeman?’ Nathan asked him.

‘I wager Rupert thinks me unfit for any kind of soldier.’

‘O, no,’ I said, ‘I only—’

‘And he is right,’ Ferris went on. ‘The recruiting officers are told to find the tallest, strongest men, and what do they turn up? Seven years older than Nat, and not as tall.’

He passed me some beef and Nathan held out a piece of bread. I tasted my share and relished its very toughness as making it last longer. Ferris crammed roast flesh into his own mouth and closed his eyes, sighing as he bit into it. I watched Nathan layer his bread and meat, holding them delicately in long hands that hardly seemed fitted for soldiering.

Looking back at Ferris I found him staring at me. He said, ‘For all that you think, I can put down any man my own size—’

‘Nay, taller,’ said Nathan.

‘—and I wager that’s as much as you can do.’

Nathan coughed. A morsel of bread shot out of his mouth, brilliant in the firelight, and I saw that he was laughing.

‘Nat, you’ll choke one of these days,’ Ferris warned.

This made the boy worse. I heard great snorts as he fought to swallow his food.

‘What ails him?’ I asked, vexed at his silliness for I felt I was somehow being made a mock of.

‘Me and my bravado. He knows I am no brawler, eh Nat?’ Ferris handed me more beef. Nathan continuing to giggle, I rose, sensing myself in a false position. The two of them turned laughing faces up to me.

‘Where did you get the meat?’ I asked. ‘I will try for some more,’ and indeed I could have eaten the whole lot twice over.

‘That fire over there.’ Nathan pointed. ‘But they won’t give you any. It was a favour to me.’

‘We shall see.’ I made my way to the fire he had indicated and found some beef still in it, roasting on a stick. This I seized. The two whose food it was crying out in protest, I offered to fight first one then the other for it, and appealed to the others sitting around to judge if that was fair. They, being bored and ready for any diversion, said that it was. I then held myself upright and let the beef-cooks get a good look at me. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘which of you shall be first?’ and made to take off my coat. Neither budged, so I took up the meat and left them to the contemplation of their cowardice and the jeers of their companions.

Ferris and the boy were pushing one another, still laughing, when I returned with my trophy. They stopped at once upon seeing it, and Nathan gasped, ‘How did you persuade them to that?’

Ferris leapt up. ‘I can guess how,’ he said, and he had the stick away from me before I knew it. ‘I will tell them it was nothing but jest. Nat, give me this,’ and picking up the cloth he strolled off towards the other fire while I stood amazed, considering whether I should bloody his mouth for him if he returned.

Return he did, cloth in hand, and after grinning at me straightway sat down at my feet.

‘What do you mean,’ I said, ‘by – hey, you, what do you mean?’ It was awkward standing thus over a man on the ground and talking to him. Nathan glanced anxiously up at me.

‘Sit here and I’ll tell you.’ Ferris patted the grass. I squatted next to him, my anger ready to flame out at a very little thing.

‘That’s the second time today I’ve saved your life,’ he said.

‘Saved my life! They were near beshitten for fear of me.’

‘Can you catch musket balls in your teeth? Those men are musketeers.’

I recalled Mervyn’s syllabub.

‘I have told them you were in drink, meant the thing as a jest and would have brought it back, only you forgot the place,’ Ferris went on. ‘I suppose you are not really the Duke of Plunderland? They do say he goes about in disguise.’

Had someone at home – Zeb, or Peter – said such things, he would have smarted for it. I glared at Ferris.

He looked steadily back. ‘Ah, yes. You are full as big as he. Able to put me in the ground without a weapon, eh?’ He began untying the cloth. ‘Are you still hungry? Are you, Nat?’

A flush spread over my cheeks.

‘Here.’ Ferris opened up the last folds and pushed the bundle of meat towards me. ‘No bread this time.’

Nathan was full of admiration. ‘Brave Ferris! Where did you get it?’

‘From them, of course. I begged another share as reward for bringing it back.’

‘Many thanks,’ I muttered.

Humbled, I finished the meat in silence and endured Nathan’s prattle with as much patience as I could muster. After a while the boy said, ‘Ferris, we are to see Russ before turning in for the night.’

‘I forgot. Where is he?’

‘Methinks on the far side of the camp.’ The boy stood up. ‘We should go now.’

‘Agreed.’ Ferris rose. ‘You will be snug enough here,’ he said to me. ‘Warm, and plenty of comrades round you. Sleep well.’

They picked their way across the grass. The boy was indeed the taller of the two, and I observed with a pang that he put his arm across Ferris’s shoulders as I used to lay mine over Izzy’s. Where, I wondered, was my own dear brother? Was he suffering for my crimes? To walk with my arm round him, to seek his advice, these were things which most likely I should never do more. I looked around me. The men were sprinkled about in groups and I could see none so utterly alone as myself. I have been loved, I wanted to call out to them, for it felt like leprosy.

I slept that night with the others, as near the fire as I could get, and tried to ease my aching hips. The entertainment money was laid next my breast, where a thief could not lift it without waking me. Yet it was impossible to rest easy, and after a while I gave up trying. As the fire sank low, and more men drifted into sleep, I heard mutterings, sobs and rustlings all around me. Many unknowingly gave tongue to their pain: ‘Mary, Mary, no such thing,’ mumbled one nearby, and another screamed out in the night, ‘Save him, it falls.’ Later, from some distance off, I heard shrieks as if a man were having a fit. It seemed that all suffered, the good along with the bad. But then, lying dismal and quiet, I felt the surge in my head which announced the Voice, and straightway there came unlooked-for comfort:

Our affairs are all of them ordered, and shall we, with our puny efforts, direct them ourselves? You are sheltered within the Lord’s own army. Rest you there.

Daybreak was deathly cold. Swathed and huddled bodies flinched as the drum beat out reveille; I watched the man nearest me open his eyes on God’s sky and fall to silent cursing. He lay awhile propped on one arm, coughing up phlegm, before crawling off to the fire and laying the wood together. He then moved away, came back with a water bottle and seemed to pour it into the flames, for steam rose. After a time I understood that he was boiling a pannikin of water, something I had done countless times. The strangeness of the place had made me stupid.

A cry of ‘Rise, rise’ was heard nearer to us and the men commenced groaning. When we were all upright I thought I had never seen such wild-looking folks as some of the young ones. They were purple-grey with cold and their cropped hair stuck up at all angles. I passed my hand over my own head: tufts and angles too.

‘Where’s your lovely locks, Rupert?’ one called to me.

‘Sent them to his honey,’ said another.

I turned away.

‘Eh Rupert, want some bread?’

I limped on stiff legs to the fire. The one who had first called pointed to something like boiling slops on it. ‘Bread’s so old you can’t eat it without.’

‘Maybe he can,’ another replied. To me he said, ‘Big lad, aren’t you? Are they all big in your family?’

‘I’m the biggest.’

‘Do they all talk like you?’ Much laughter. Their voices came hard and unfamiliar to me but not unfriendly. They sounded something like Ferris, and something like Daskin; I could not always catch their meaning when they spoke fast together.

‘We’re from London,’ said the last one to speak, seeing my difficulty. ‘My name is Hugh, this’s Philip and that’s Bart.’

Bart took out a little pot and spooned some of the mess into it. I watched him blow on the brownish curds. It was the coarse bread called cheat; at home we had eaten the good white manchet, like the gentry. ‘You can have this after me,’ he said. ‘There should be beans, but we ate them all last night.’

‘And cheese?’

‘Cheese, lads! No, there’s been no cheese of late.’

‘A man gave me some yesterday.’

‘He’s a friend worth having,’ said Bart. He handed me the pot of boiled bread. ‘Must have picked it up somewhere. Is he here?’

I looked about and saw Ferris seated some yards off, examining the inside of a shoe. Turning to the rest I was about to point him out when I noticed their intense stare, like the eyes of dogs on a rabbit.

‘I don’t see him,’ I said.

That day I entered upon my training. First we learnt how to position ourselves by rank and by file, and the distances to be observed, such as touching with outstretched hands, with elbows and so on; then the various motions: facings, doublings, countermarches and wheelings.

The business started well enough. To The Right Hand was simple, for we all swung to face the right and were brought back again, or reduced, by the command As You Were. This the veriest fool could have performed without difficulty, and I began to feel hopeful; but when we passed through To The Right Hand About (which was still sweet and easy) into Ranks To The Right Double, there was some stumbling, as when young children learn a dance, and when we came to Middle-Men, To The Right Hand Double The Front, a sigh passed through the lines of men. The corporal was obliged to take us through this last five times at least before the move could be seen for what it was, and even then the soldiers were by no means sure of it, as was plain from their glancing about to see what their fellows did. One near to me, a thin man with yellow skin tight and shiny over his face, had been lost since we abandoned To The Right Hand, and could never make it up after. I saw him, baffled, whirling and stamping about. There were others equally out of tune with the rest, too slow or turning the wrong way entirely. Many seemed as raw as myself, and some few were evidently so stupid as to be hopeless of instruction.

A short rest followed, and as soon as we broke rank there came a steady rain. The men wandered about, complaining, or squatted on their heels until it should be time to begin again. I thought I had not done too badly, and that once accustomed to it I should perform my part as well as any.

Next was weapons drill, and we were now given to understand that we were already divided into groups according to the arms we would carry. Ferris and Nathan had been right, for I was handed a pike. Weighed in my hand it seemed bigger than the one at Beaurepair, some six yards long and so heavy it was hard to carry except on the shoulder. We stood in the rain trying not to jab each other as the corporal took us through our postures.

Handle Your Pike was no more than raising it from the ground, and as to Recover, and Order, those were just as a man might say, Plant It Thus By Your Side. Yet all around me I saw confusion, and men in the wrong without knowing it.

The corporal shouted again, ‘Order your pike!’

I stood still, my right arm extended, slightly bent, to hold the pike with its base just before my right foot.

A voice not the corporal’s said, ‘Bring the hand as high as your eyes.’

I turned. The man behind me was a greybeard, but hale and strong, with the look of a practised soldier. He indicated his weapon. ‘Thumb cocked, and your pike against it.’

‘Thanks, friend.’ I copied him, finding that the correct position held the pike firmly, but also (since we were made to wait a long time in this posture) made my arm ache.

At last we got on to Advance Your Pike, which was done in three motions. I was cack-handed here, and the movement would not come smooth. The pike, which was to be locked between my right shoulder and arm, slipped away and I had to catch it in the left hand before it brained one of my fellow scholars. We then Ordered the pike again, very like the first time, and went on to the next part.

‘Shoulder your pike!’

As I took the thing on my shoulder the top of my shoe came away from the sole. The pike dropped backwards and the others cried out to me to mind what I did. Our corporal came up to see what was the matter.

‘I can’t stand level on one shoe,’ said I. He told me to take off both, so I stood watching the mud squeeze up between my toes while he walked again to the front of the file.

‘Shoulder your pike!’

Had I known how many postures were to be gone through that day, I would have drilled with less enthusiasm. My feet cold unto numbness, I learnt how to Port, Advance, Charge For Horse, and other moves, with their endless palming, griping, raising and forsaking. Nothing could ever be done with a pike, it seemed, unless it were done in three motions, and there was already some considerable doubt in my mind as to whether men could do thus in the heat of the fight.

When the full drill had been gone through, by which time the new soldiers were reduced not to any former posture but to perplexed misery, those who could read were given a paper with the main points set down in the form of a doggerel rhyme. This I folded up and afterwards forgot.

The corporal told me to go again to the baggage train for shoes and wrote out the order. Taking it there, I was given a pair of boots, finer than anything I would have worn at home. They were even big enough, though I felt the last man’s feet moulded within them.

‘Why boots?’ I asked.

‘The latchets we have here are too small. Give me those, soldier,’ for I was still carrying my own shoes.

‘The sole is torn away from this one.’

‘No matter, we can make up a pair from two odds if we have to.’

So my shoes were put in the pile with the others and that was the last I saw of them. Once I was Jacob. I washed in sweet water for my bridegroom’s bed. Now I was Rupert, and I took my boots for battle.

We broke camp in the afternoon, and I was glad of the even road for walking. While marching along I considered what I had learnt. At Beaurepair there had been an old drill manual in Sir John’s study, designed to promote the use of Dutch tactics. All of us young men had studied it on the sly, sometimes snatching up a broom and posturing as musketeer or pikeman. We had pored over the engravings of classical battles wherein the troops advanced in orderly fashion, the files of pikes showing like square hedgehogs, and every kind of soldier keeping with his fellows. I had marvelled at this thing called an army. Yet our army marched in small knots and gaggles, the men seeking out their friends to pass the time. Sometimes these were comrades who carried the same arms, sometimes not, and I concluded that such books were like books of manners, written for that things were not done as they ought to be.

As we trudged on some of the men, especially the London lads, began to tell me of the fighting they had seen and of their dear hopes. I said they were most admirable at their drill, as indeed I thought.

‘You would be amazed to see how they drill in London,’ said Bart. ‘They’re trained to defend the city against attack, for the liberty of the people.’

‘From what you say, there are none so good in these parts,’ I admitted.

‘Another thing, most trained bands won’t go from home,’ Bart went on, warming to his subject. ‘But the London ones, well! Fifteen thousand lads, prentices mainly, regularly exercised. And they do their stuff.’

‘I wager they frighten the other side,’ I offered.

‘The Cavaliers – to speak truth, they’ve some good men but they run wild. No discipline, rag tag and bobtail.’

‘What are their men?’

‘Great lords, poor country fools…’ here he hesitated but I smiled, ‘Papists, folks from up north where they think the King pisses perfume, Irish and Welsh rabble…’

‘And men from the rich cathedral towns. Where you find a cathedral and a pack of fat priests, you find Royalists,’ put in Hugh.

‘They bring their doxies with them,’ Philip said.

Another man, walking behind us, here shouted, ‘He’s got doxies on the brain.’

‘Are there not women here also?’ I asked, for I thought to have seen some near the baggage train. ‘What are they?’

Hugh laughed. ‘Many are wives to some man here. Others are wives to all.’

‘There are women feign their sex,’ put in Bart. ‘To pass among the men without insult.’

Philip guffawed. ‘Or to whore the more freely.’

I enquired of him what happened to these soldieresses if their men were defeated. None answered me, so I asked where we were headed.

‘Now Devizes is fallen we’re off to Winchester,’ said Hugh.

‘Fallen?’

‘Aye, where have you been? And Bristol two weeks back! Your namesake was there.’

‘Mine?’

‘Prince Rupert. It was he defended the town.’

‘I knew Bristol was gone. Is Rupert dead, then?’

‘Not he. Black Tom let him go to Oxford to the King. We should have put him to the sword, but that’s Fairfax for you, honourable to a fault.’

‘He’s honour itself,’ said Bart.

‘Will you show him me?’ Though I felt Fairfax had done wrong, showing so gentlemanly to a necromancer, I was more eager to see him than ever.

Philip explained, ‘He’s gone on to Exeter. He’s black like yourself; wears his hair a bit longer, mind.’ Here they all laughed and I knew that one of them must have cropped me.

‘You’ll know him on sight,’ added Bart.

‘Was that why Rupert yielded? Because Fairfax was Fairfax?’

‘Well. Long walls they had at Bristol, hard to man properly. And water running short. Once that happens…’ Hugh waved his hands expressively. ‘We got the garrison supplies, but he saved his men and the citizens.’

‘Were the citizens all Royalists, then?’

‘Not when Rupert left, they weren’t! His men flay the people, see, and he turns a blind eye. When he came out the townspeople were shouting, “Give him no quarter!” They’d have torn him to pieces if it hadn’t been for Black Tom.’

I returned to the question I had asked before. ‘What happens to the women on the losing side?’

‘That depends,’ said Philip. ‘On your commander, on the luck of the day, the class of person you’re dealing with…I’ve seen everything. Seen them run through. There were Irish whores drowned back to back at Nantwich – that was Fairfax.’

‘Not so,’ Bart said. ‘A false report. He let them go.’

‘No?’ Philip jeered. ‘Naseby, then.’ He turned to me. ‘You’ve heard of Naseby?’

I nodded. I knew what was coming, the slit faces, but was curious to hear his story.

‘Well, you know God gave us victory outright?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Cromwell said it was cutting down stubble! And after, we found their women fleeing the field, some of them English gentry and some of them Irish. Not a word of English could they speak, what did they want over here, filthy Papist whores? We ran them through.’

‘What, all of them?’ I could not hide my shock.

‘Only the sluts and the Irish. About a hundred. They kept jabbering, calling on Satan to save them.’

I could think of nothing to say.

‘They were Welsh, not Irish,’ put in Hugh. ‘They were speaking Welsh.’

‘Irish or Welsh, they were walking bow-legged.’ Philip winked at me.

I asked, ‘And the English ones?’

‘I told you, the sluts we paid off. For the rest, some paid us off, and some – well, we carved their faces for them.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘They were seemingly gentlewomen, but no decent woman would have followed that army. So we ploughed up their cheeks – put an end to their trade.’

‘Basely done,’ said Hugh, shaking his head.

‘Suppose those bitches had found us wounded on the battlefield? You know what they’d have done to us?’

Roundhead. The wildest, the crop-headed prentices out for a savage holiday. They had told me that calling another man Roundhead in the presence of an officer meant a fine, it was such an insult. I remembered that Zeb could scarcely ride or walk and that Caro was tricked out in My Lady’s blue gown. The jewels. Heavenly Father, let them not be overtaken by such men as this. For their sakes and mine, let me not be guilty of their deaths.

‘Are you well, man?’ They were staring at me. ‘You were chewing your lips.’

I nodded, thinking, This is curiosity not pity. Izzy, how he did pity everybody. The men in front began singing psalms:

‘O sing unto the LORD a new song; For He hath done marvellous things; His right hand, and His holy arm, Hath gotten Him the victory…’

As long as I could fix my mind on the psalms all was well, but I could not long forbear thinking of Philip’s words. I had heard before that there were plunderers and would-be ravishers in the Parliamentary ranks as well as among the King’s men, but kept under a much stricter discipline. That restraint had seemed well enough, and as Ferris had said, soldiers are but men; yet I had not thought how it would be to live side by side with such. God’s army! I could not go on walking next to Philip. I moved away from him and quickened my pace; it was not until I saw Ferris, walking alongside one of the great guns, that I realised I had been looking for him. He smiled at me but said nothing as we fell into step together.

‘Were you at Naseby-Fight?’ I asked him.

Ferris looked surprised.

I went on, ‘What happened to the Royalist women who were left on the field?’

He frowned. ‘They were barbarously treated,’ and raised his face sharply to mine. ‘Do you want to know how?’

I felt my cheeks flush.

‘You already know,’ he said, turning his profile to me.

‘I hoped you could tell me it was not true,’ I said.

‘It is true. You get no more from me.’

I thought him unjust. ‘Was it my sin? I was not there.’

He again lifted his face to mine. ‘There are men who warm themselves at others’ sins. Someone has infected you, heated you with his boastings, so you come to me for more.’

‘No, indeed!’

‘I can smell it on you. But you will be disappointed in me. My way has always been to show mercy where I could, to man, woman or child.’

We walked on. From time to time I glanced at my companion, but he kept staring ahead.

‘Forgive me, Ferris,’ I pleaded. It was the way I would sue for pardon to Izzy when I was too rough with him during our childhood games. This man had something of Izzy’s way, and I should keep by him and away from the prentices – though Hugh was perhaps not a bad young fellow.

‘You’ll get your chance to hurt people,’ he said, looking full at me.

This was mighty strange talk, coming from a soldier. I wondered if, like me, he was fallen away from some better life.

‘Ferris, how did you come into the army?’

He was silent.

I tried, ‘So what trade were you put to before the war?’

‘A draper in Cheapside.’

‘Are you married?’

His face twisted.

It seemed I could say nothing right. I battled on, ‘What will you do when the peace comes?’

‘I should like to leave trade and farm for myself,’ came the surprising answer.

‘What, like a peasant!’

‘No, like a freeborn man with no master over me. London is one great Babylon, a very Sodom of cheating – O yes, the citizens’ houses too! You’d be surprised what goes on there. Between prayers they find out new ways to water the servants’ milk.’

‘You’re bitter, Ferris.’

‘And you’re not?’

A second time he had laid his finger on something I thought hidden. Was I then so easily sounded? No one at home had thought so, but London folk were different. We walked on a few steps, fear coiling my belly into loops.

‘This bitterness of mine, can you tell—’

‘I am not a soothsayer!’

‘No, no. A jest,’ I said. Not a good man to lie to; last year his friendship would have been a delight to me. Now, how could I tell him about the boy, or about my doings in the wood?

But even as I argued with myself, my spirit was opening to him. Again I felt how much I missed Isaiah, how I ached for a good and trustworthy friend. In the company of such a one I might mend, and live better.

‘You wish to stay with me,’ he said.

‘Ferris! How do you know?’

‘How can I not know! You are saying it to me, in your walk.’

‘Is that a thing a man may interpret? To what end?’

‘Well, it’s of great help in training dogs.’ He grinned and I saw that he had forgiven me. Was that because he thought of me as his dog?

‘Take no offence,’ he added.