Marston Moor (15 page)

‘Fast as lightnin’, sir.’

Greer led the bay mare out into the yard, patting her hard on the neck. ‘She’d better be. There’s hard riding to be done, so there is.’

The lad pushed lank hair from his eyes. ‘She’s the best we got, sir.’

‘Good,’ Greer said. He had been riding for two days, the route over the rugged hills virtually impassable in places, and always perilous. There was another day’s travel ahead, and weariness was beginning to creep in. ‘And my gelding?’

‘In good hands, sir. I’ll have him fresh for your return.’

‘See that you do, lad. See that you do.’

The boy met his eye as he clambered up into the saddle. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but—’

Greer raised his brow. ‘But?’

‘I’ve never been out o’ the West Riding, sir.’ His eyes, blue and bright, were lit with excitement. ‘Are you a fighter, sir? Do you go to war?’

Devlin Greer tugged at the reins and the mare paced away. He twisted back once, to call, ‘I go to the very place where this war will be won and lost. I go to York!’

Wigan, Lancashire, 5 June 1644

‘The Northern Horse,’ Stryker said, going to stand beside Faith and briefly checking their dense shield of tangled foliage for prying eyes. ‘They could do nothing for Lord Newcastle inside York. It was wiser to let them roam.’

The vanguard under Sir Richard Crane had been in Wigan since the previous afternoon, Crane leading his thundering section into the town unopposed. Perhaps the prior notice was why, with the arrival of the main field army, bolstered further by the troops they had gathered at Bury, the townsfolk now lined the road, casting flowers and green boughs to the sides of the filthy highway in welcome, cheering the Teutonic prince who had almost entirely wrested Lancashire from Parliamentarian control. Stryker wondered whether the war-weary folk truly meant this display, or whether it was done through fear. Either way, the night had slipped by uneventfully, with Crane placing his troopers in a well-appointed district around a substantial church, the householders promised compensation for their trouble, the horses stabled in the chancel and nave, while Stryker and his group had found quarters in a modest taphouse near the southern gate. Crane had ordered that he and Kendrick stay away from one another, and both had been true to their respective promises, keeping far apart during the march. Moreover, Stryker had heard that the Vulture’s company were lodging on the north side of Wigan, and that suited him fine. He had noticed Faith Helly’s disappearance after a brief visit to the latrine, and had initially panicked, but Barkworth assuaged his worry, explaining that he had escorted her to this hiding place so that she might watch the huge force enter town. Now here they were, in a tangled copse on the crest of a slight ridge, staring down at the tramping units as they turned the road to a quagmire. And Faith Helly, to his amazement, was smiling.

It was a strange sensation, witnessing that smile, as if he were seeing her for the very first time. She had been around him almost constantly since Bolton, looked after by Skellen, who made sure that she could wash, exchange her apprentice’s garb for the clothes of a woman and keep her wounds clean. But now, in this instant, her smile transformed her into a real person, with real hopes and dreams. Skinny, freckled, with a nose that would have been dainty had not a gauntleted fist clubbed it to a swollen mess. Her hair, a mass of copper tresses, had been locked away in a new coif as soon as Skellen could locate one, which made her appear even more vulnerable. Her eyes were green, her mouth wide, and her skin was impossibly pale. Stryker wanted to place his arm round her narrow shoulders, and promise her she would be safe. He knew it would be a lie.

‘Part of me feels lighter, somehow,’ Faith said, looking back through the branches to view the spectacle down on the road.

‘Lighter?’

‘I did not wish James dead, never that, but I am free of a marriage I did not want. Is that wicked?’

Stryker did not know how to answer. ‘Why did you not want it?’

‘James was sweet—’

‘But?’

‘But Master Sydall was not. He did not like me.’

‘Then why wed his son to you?’

She turned, casting Stryker a withering look. ‘An alliance in the name of trade. But when the malignants broke in to Bolton, he cast me from his home, looking only to the preservation of his blood.’

Now it all made sense. Stryker had wondered how she had managed to survive until his timely interruption. ‘That was why you were hidden in the oven?’ he said, remembering the soot stains that had blighted her clothes.

She nodded. ‘I was too frightened to stay on the street, so I crept through a window, crawled inside the oven. I thought I would be safe there.’ She began to weep softly. ‘How wrong I was.’

‘The lad, James,’ Stryker said, recalling the killing in the road that had provoked him to enter the house. ‘He sought you in the street, yes? That was why he was out there alone.’

‘Defied his father and was slain for it,’ Faith said. ‘I carry the burden of his death.’ Stryker made to argue, but she waved him away, anger flashing across the green eyes. ‘A man like you would not understand.’

Stryker retreated a pace. ‘Like me?’

‘A soldier.’

‘You mean a malignant.’ His voice was bitter. ‘You would follow me, girl, be as a limpet on my arm, yet bear me ill-will?’

‘You saved my life, risked your own in the saving, and for that I will ever be grateful.’ The weeping had ceased, and she was older again, wiser and harder. ‘But you are loyal to a tyrant, sir. It was your army destroyed Bolton.’ She looked quickly away. ‘Poor, poor Bolton.’

‘It is war, Mistress.’

She laughed, but there was neither warmth nor mirth in the sound. ‘That was not war. You slaughtered women, children.’ The words were tumbling now. They had avoided the subject, focussing on her recuperation, on keeping her alive while keeping her hidden. Yet the sight of Rupert’s army had released the memories that set her jaw stiff and blazed in her stare. ‘Men too. Not soldiers, Major, but civilians. Unarmed and fearful. Begging for their lives. Pleading for quarter and receiving none.’

‘I, Mistress,’ Stryker protested, ‘slaughtered those found under arms, as was our order.’

‘You follow every order?’ she sneered.

‘Of course.’

‘Even those that would have you massacre a town?’

‘The townsmen were called upon to surrender,’ he retorted. ‘If they had done so, they would certainly have been spared. Indeed, if they had surrendered after our first assault, terms would have been forthcoming. The Prince is not so evil as your news-books would have it.’

‘Then why—’ she blurted, but her voice wavered and cracked.

‘Your halfwit friends strung up one of our officers. No forgiving that. No forgetting. The Prince understands courage. He understands pig-headed bloody Puritans. But he does not take kindly to the public and dishonourable hanging of an honourable prisoner. It was a grave mistake that could not go unpunished.’

Stryker’s response was harsh, and Faith’s bottom lip quivered, but she held his gaze stoically, unwilling to yield. ‘You approve of such punishment?’

‘I neither approve, nor condemn.’

‘The coward’s answer,’ she hissed. ‘You are not wicked, sir, but you consort with wickedness. Excuse it.’

He shrugged and rubbed his eye with a grubby palm. ‘When you see what a man can do to another man,’ he said, more softly now, ‘you understand that we are all of us capable of terrible deeds.’

‘I do not believe that,’ she answered defiantly.

‘Then you are a fool. All men have the seed of wickedness within them. That seed will grow if allowed. The cultivation is pure circumstance.’

‘The seed will grow,’ she said, calmer herself now, ‘but a man may trample its dark shoots.’ She went to the Bible, snatching it up, holding it out to Stryker. ‘With God’s help, Major, and only with His help. You saved me. You did not need to, but you did. King Jesus guides you.’

‘I wish I could believe that, Mistress Helly. Truly.’

She kept her arm extended, offering him the book. ‘God calls to you, sir, I know it. You hold not the hatred for the likes of Master Sydall – for the likes of me – that clouds the eyes of so many of your brethren. With His guidance you may choose the righteous path, Major. There is still time.’

‘Hatred for your kind is often deserved, Mistress Helly,’ Stryker said bitterly, regretting the tone as soon as he had uttered the words. He deliberately softened, adding: ‘Your Puritan tolerates no other. They are a—
difficult
breed.’

She looked hurt. Her arm fell away. ‘The Godly admit our own weaknesses, sir, for we know we are sinners. We have not the arrogance of others. Thus we accept all creeds.’

He laughed sourly. ‘In my experience it is quite the opposite. Your reading of Scripture assures you of the guidance of the Holy Ghost in all that you do. Does it not follow that any man thinking differently could not, therefore, enjoy that same divine guidance? Thus you afford him no toleration, no friendship. You claim you have no arrogance. I say it is your arrogance that renders you so despised by the rest of the world.’

A group of harquebusiers cantered past following a bullet-holed blue cornet; too close for comfort, they both shrank back. Faith saw that Stryker was not about to take the Bible, and so she held it instead to her chest. ‘I do not understand how you can fight on the same side as that man.’

He knew who she meant, and stared out through the foliage as he searched for the right words. He had not told her of the chance encounter in the rain-soaked field outside Standish. What had he seen, exactly? The Vulture drinking smoke as he met with another man? The fleeting moonlight had shown his companion to be a skinny youngster in a Montero cap; hardly a surprising scene in a camp full of soldiers. Yet something had not seemed right. The meeting was clandestine, and it had jarred with Stryker ever since. ‘Kendrick and I fight for the King,’ he said eventually. ‘I do not have to like him.’

‘In your heart,’ she said, ‘you know you follow the wrong banner.’

‘A politicker as well as preacher,’ he chided, secretly impressed by the girl’s conviction. She reminded him of Lisette.

Faith’s stare did not waver. ‘Power, unchecked, can lead only to tyranny.’

‘So say those who would steal power for themselves.’

‘Steal?’ she scoffed. ‘Common men would only be His Majesty’s lawful subjects, rather than his serfs.’

‘And you speak for these serfs, Mistress?’

Drums boomed from the roadside. They were not played in unison, but for practise, each section hammering out a rhythm or one of the complex beats to communicate an order, so that a cacophonous melee reverberated all the way along the road, as though a storm brewed over the hills.

‘Why not?’ Faith asked, when the sound ebbed a touch.

‘Forgive me, but yours are not palms accustomed to work, I’d wager.’

‘How dare you, sir?’ Faith retorted hotly. ‘My father is a wool merchant, an occupation made untenable by a tyrant king. Do not presume to speak of that which you know nothing.’

Stryker held up his palms in placation. ‘My own father was also a wool merchant, Mistress Helly. I speak as I find.’

The drums had ceased now, replaced by the stentorian shouts of sergeants and corporals as they saw their charges safely into Wigan to search for billets. Stryker froze. The trees, away to their left, were rustling. He cursed himself, for his lack of sight had compromised them. Faith had heard it too, and she instinctively moved behind him, shielded by his body. Stryker studied the trees on the shallow bank, hoping to see a deer or stray dog, perhaps even a pig, rooting through the undergrowth. They waited. Nothing emerged. Stryker could hear his own heartbeat pulsing in his ears. ‘Clear,’ he said after a long moment.

‘The King,’ she rasped, careful to keep her voice down, ‘seeks to control God-fearing, honest men who would but put food in the mouths of their babes.’

Stryker felt the puckered skin of his damaged face pull taut as he raised his brow. ‘Honest men? The merchants, the lawyers, the men of commerce? These are not common folk, but the middling sort. It is the middling sort who would paint His Majesty tyrant, for he would curtail their greed.’

‘For his own greed.’

‘For the good of his people, Mistress.’ He was playing with her now, though he could see she was genuinely angry. In truth, he merely regurgitated the argument he had heard so many times since returning from the cruel conflagration that had consumed Europe. These were not his principles, for he had not been in England to witness the divisive parts of the Stuart reign, but it was impossible to resist baiting the girl. In her ire she was becoming whole again. ‘Was it not the King who did force the price of wool to be kept low at home? Were it not for his intervention, the common folk would have frozen while the merchants counted their gold.’