Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) (37 page)

‘Fuck off, lad!’ O’Brien roared at Jonathan who was trying to manoeuvre his horse round to strike at the giant, whose buff-coat looked to be made from two different coats sewn roughly together. Then Mun heard thunder and everything was a frenzy of hooves and horses’ legs and flying turf as the two forces split and galloped away, and though he saw it coming, in a flash of rider and steel, he was too late to warn O’Brien. A
rebel hacked into the Irishman’s shoulder as he galloped past, a parting blow as he raced for his lines that by rights should have taken O’Brien’s arm off. As it was, the impact twisted him horribly and must have stunned him like a fish struck between the eyes but he cleaved to the rebel even as he fell, dragging the bigger man down with him so that they thumped to the ground. Mun felt the impact beneath him as he scrambled backwards to avoid being mauled by hooves as their horses stepped back from the flailing mass.

‘Devil! I’ll kill you, you Hell-born bastard!’ the blond giant bellowed.

Their swords dropped in the fall, the giant was on top of O’Brien, hands clasped around the Irishman’s thick neck trying to choke the life from him and growling like a monster. Dazed but moving, Mun stumbled across, fingers working at his helmet strap, then yanked the pot from his head and swung it, cracking it across the giant’s head, but the man was berserk and turned, yelling ferociously, and launched himself at Mun, grabbing him and yanking him forward to smash his head into Mun’s face. Mun felt the ground strike him but saw only flashing lights in a shifting black sea. Then the pain exploded in his nose and he was coughing, choking on the blood pouring down his throat. His vision returning, though blurred as though he were underwater, he dragged an arm across his eyes, trying to wipe away the tears, and saw Jonathan, dismounted now, swing his sword at the giant. The rebel took the blow on his leather-protected forearm and hammered a fist into Jonathan’s face, dropping him.

‘In Ireland we’ve got farm girls who are stronger than you, you ballock-faced gollumpus.’ O’Brien was on his feet, unsteady as they were, beckoning the rebel to him with a flap of his own big hand.

The blond giant grinned, spat, and went in for the kill.

A salvo of hoof-beats filled Mun’s ears and a trooper reined in beside him, his horse neighing spiritedly. The rider lifted
his pistol, pointed it at the rebel’s head and fired. Some of the giant’s brains slapped into Mun’s breastplate and he looked up to see Richard Downes grinning like a fiend.

‘Have you lads finished making friends?’ Downes asked.

Smearing hot blood across his face Mun saw that, having reloaded, the Prince’s men were cantering back towards them to re-engage the enemy. The fight was not over yet and he grasped for Hector’s reins though he could barely focus on them.

‘I was just about to give the overgrown son of a whore the hiding of his life,’ O’Brien growled at all of them. He looked barely able to stand.

Downes shook his head slowly, glancing up towards the enemy lines as he took his powder flask and poured a charge down his wheellock’s muzzle. ‘I don’t know how you gentlemen survived without me,’ he said.

It had been a relief to walk across the Magdalen Bridge into Oxford, the King’s new capital. Bess had felt pride blossom in her chest when the guards at the east gate had questioned them and she had introduced herself as Elizabeth Rivers, daughter of the late Sir Francis Rivers.

‘My father gave his life in service to His Majesty at Kineton Fight,’ she had said. ‘Sir Francis was killed with Sir Edmund Verney trying to save the Royal Standard.’ She had not mentioned Emmanuel. That pain was private to her. But the dragoons had seemed humbled, all but falling over themselves to offer their condolences whilst advising Dane and Joseph where they might find the warmest hospitality Oxford had to offer. That had been three days ago and they were still lodging at The Glove and The Cross, recommended by a young dragoon not so much for its ale as for its nutmeg and cinnamon pancakes and its Banbury cake. It had surprised Bess to discover that Dane had a weakness for sweet treats that almost matched his weakness for drink. ‘I had a cousin from Astley near Salford who died for his sweet tooth,’ he
had said on the first night when, after four days on the road, they had sat down with grumbling bellies to put the young dragoon’s endorsement of The Glove and The Cross to the test.

‘He died from a surfeit of pancakes?’ Bess had asked, sharing a silent look with Joseph, who showed no sign of curbing his own appetite as he tucked into his third pancake.

Dane shook his head. ‘His wife made him an apple pie full to the crust with atropine.’

‘Atropine?’ Joseph had mumbled through a mouth full.

‘Belladonna, Joe,’ Bess had said, and the young man had grimaced then carried on eating.

‘She poisoned poor old Gilbert for his snoring. At least that’s what folk said.’ Dane had dabbed his lips with a napkin and smiled. ‘It’s safer not to get married if you ask me.’

‘Nobody asked you,’ Bess had said, looking to Joseph for support but finding only a boy’s grin.

Now, she and Dane sat in the tavern’s smoky snug, driven out of the bar by the din of soldiers singing bawdy tales of women and ale. Oxford was alive with music and merry-making. It thronged with soldiers and whores, merchants and the myriad lickspittles, dandies and catch-farts that attended the King’s court
like flies attend a turd
was how Dane had put it, so that unlike London, Oxford was a bubbling, intoxicating cauldron of dash and debauchery.

‘You would have thought the war is of no concern. Or else that it is as good as won,’ Bess said, sipping her weak beer and half watching two men trying to talk a brace of painted wenches into visiting their rooms upstairs.

‘I hear His Majesty spends coin from his war chest on masques and plays,’ Dane said, ‘money that I suspect would be better spent on powder and shot and horses and a thousand other things which they tell me are of use when one is fighting a war.’ He was cradling a cup of claret wine and a jug of the stuff sat on the upturned barrel which served as a table.
‘More worrying still is that there is talk of forbidding the sale of strong drink in the city after nine in the evening on account of the brawling. There’s lots of brawling apparently.’

‘Poor man. Whatever will you do?’ Bess leant forward and patted his forearm. ‘Perhaps you should petition the King. I am sure he will turn a blind eye in your case. Perhaps he’ll share his wine with you, after all you have done for our cause.’

Dane drank and dragged a hand across his lips. ‘I may not have killed for His Majesty but I have killed for you, Elizabeth Rivers,’ he said, holding her eye.

That was true enough and Bess felt a twinge of guilt for how she treated Dane. The man had saved her life. Joseph’s too. Perhaps she could try to be a bit more civil to him. At the least, there was nothing to be gained by goading him.

‘I never thanked you properly,’ she said. ‘I am grateful.’ The horror of that night was like a cold sweat on her skin.

Dane shrugged, then drank again. ‘I wouldn’t have got paid if I’d let those men rape and kill you,’ he said, and with that Bess gritted her teeth and held her tongue. For a moment at least.

‘You are the most ill-mannered miscreant I have ever met,’ she said and he shrugged. Then they both sat back, Dane watching a pretty serving girl wiping down a table and she watching the two eager men boasting to the painted women of their heroics at Kineton Fight when it was clear that coin would impress them more. And she wondered how Joseph was getting on.

It had been Joseph’s idea to come to Oxford. Well, he had been the one to put the idea in Bess’s mind. Still reeling after the disappointment of finding no sign of Tom amongst Parliament’s army at Richmond, Bess had not known what their next course of action should be. They had returned to Southwark and visited the Tabard Inn which stood on the east side of Borough High Street, for Bess had remembered her father talking of the place and wondered if perhaps Tom had recalled the same
stories and thus chosen to lodge there. He had not. But the Tabard was only one among a dingy clutter of inns lining the thoroughfare leading south from London Bridge towards Canterbury and Dover. They tried the Spur, the Christopher, the Bull, the Queen’s Head, the George, the Hart, the King’s Head and many more, taking bed and board at some so that they could ask regular patrons if they knew Tom or had seen a young man matching his description. With no luck they had crossed back into the city’s heart and searched innumerable hostelries and weeks passed and they came no closer to finding Tom.

‘We all have a motive, Bess,’ Joseph had said eventually, finally having got used to using her familiar name. ‘We all have a wind that fills our sail.’ The young man’s cheeks had flushed at that, which in turn put heat in Bess’s own because she knew that he loved her. ‘Yours is to find your brother,’ Joseph went on, ‘mine is to help you and do my duty in this war. Mr Dane here seeks to fatten his purse.’ Joseph had glanced at Dane but the man had not taken offence. ‘You must ask yourself what wind fills Tom’s sail, Bess, for you will know that better than anyone.’

The answer to that had not taken a heartbeat to come to.

‘Tom wants revenge,’ Bess had said. ‘Revenge against Lord Denton and his son for their odious offences. For their part in Martha Green’s death and for the humiliations they heaped upon Tom that I will not talk of.’

‘And is your brother a man of action?’ Dane had asked, one eyebrow cocked. ‘Turning his back on his family and joining the rebels is one thing, but is he fool enough to go after a man like Lord Denton in the cold light of day?’

‘Where will we find Lord Denton?’ Bess had asked, knowing it to be answer enough.

‘I don’t know,’ Dane had said. ‘But it will be easier to find him than your brother.’

And so it had been, for it turned out that the King had issued
a proclamation that a new Royal Mint was to be established and that Lord Denton would be the man to see it done. And this mint would be at His Majesty’s new capital. Oxford.

They had arrived not knowing exactly what they would do when they got there, but the theory was better than any other they could come up with. By being close to Denton they might catch word, or possibly even sight, of Tom. Bess had daydreamed the scenario. She would glimpse her brother strolling through the city’s streets and even though he would likely be somehow disguised, heavily bearded perhaps or wearing the red scarf of the King’s men, she would recognize him. They would embrace and she would talk him out of his rash plan, dissipate his murderous intention like a fresh breeze blowing through a noisome tavern, and Tom would agree to go back north with her, home to Shear House. Or perhaps they would set off together, there and then, to find Mun so that the boys could make their peace.

They had spent the days watching New Inn Hall, the site of the mint and Denton’s quarters, and Joseph was there even now for Bess guessed that he preferred that to being in Dane’s company. Besides which, Dane had refused to take the evening watch, saying that his job was to keep Bess safe and he could not do that from a mile away.

‘You know Tom, Dane does not,’ Bess had said to Joseph, ‘so it makes more sense that you should be there, anyway.’

‘And the last time I left you to protect Bess the only thing you managed was to bleed,’ Dane had added unhelpfully, at which Joseph had stared down at his own hands in shame. That conversation had been the previous day around noon and they had not seen Joseph since. He had not returned to his room that night and Bess was worried.

‘He’s young,’ Dane said now in answer to the concern that Bess was clearly doing a bad job of hiding. ‘He’s young and he’s in Oxford. You really think he’s likely to tell you that he’s found some crusty wench who pities him enough to let him
share her bed for a night or two? Christ, but the lad might be enjoying himself for once, rather than tending you like some mopsey wet-nurse.’

‘Or perhaps it’s your company that he finds intolerable,’ Bess said.

‘Perhaps,’ Dane said, reaching inside his doublet and producing a pipe into whose bowl he stuck his little finger to clean out the dregs of his last smoke. His mention of a wet-nurse turned Bess’s thoughts to little Francis, her stomach souring with the wrench of their separation.

‘You know, it’s not much of a plan,’ Dane said after a while, breaking the silence between them and reaching for the wine jug. ‘It could be weeks or months before your brother turns up here, if he comes at all.’

But Bess did not have the chance to answer that, because two men had walked into the snug. And one of them was holding Joseph’s threadbare broad-brimmed hat.

‘We have young Joseph,’ the narrow-faced, heavy-browed man said, tossing the tattered hat onto the table before them. His companion was broad, toothless and ugly.

Bess’s limbs tensed. She felt the blood drain from her face. ‘Have you hurt him?’ she asked. Beside her Dane placed his pipe next to Joseph’s hat and slowly stood, though Bess knew his firelocks would be in his room upstairs. The heavy-browed man hitched his cloak back over the hilt of the sword at his left hip and his companion took a step back, his hand reaching down to clasp the grip of the wheellock thrust into the red sash round his waist. Two men and three women at the next table got up, gathered their drinks and pipes and hurried out of the snug.

‘Lord Denton requests the pleasure of your company, Mistress Rivers.’ The man glanced at Dane. ‘Your friend here is welcome, too, though we insist he hands over his weapons.’ With that he moved towards Dane.

‘Another step and I’ll gut you both,’ Dane said, and Bess believed him.

The man stopped, dipped his head and raised his hand, the palm of which was callused from sword use. ‘My lord Denton means you no harm, my lady. He knows you are no traitor like your brother. Indeed he assumes you wish to speak with him, for why else would your young friend be sniffing around New Inn Hall?’

‘And if we decline your master’s offer?’ Dane asked.

The man shrugged and looked back to Bess. ‘Then young Joe will not be needing his hat back.’