Traitor's Field (41 page)

[NALSON COLLECTION 24, BODLEIAN LIBRARY]

The 2nd of August opened slow over Dublin, turgid with summer. The Royalist soldiers grew more lethargic with each hour of its heat. Dublin Castle, Parliament-held, was only a mile away, but through the bright haze it seemed distant and insubstantial.

The world was a heavy light, and buzzing insects, and the thick head that follows a disrupted night.

They’d been sent on a march through the darkness, fully one thousand of them, to secure an outpost near the city. But the guides had been half-asleep, or incompetent, or more likely treacherous, and the swift operation had collapsed into a weary weird dream of confused comings and goings in the lanes, stoppings and startings, cursing and drowsing and the stamp and the clank of uniforms and weapons. Only an hour before dawn they’d reached their objective, the little castle that would form another anchor point for their implacable march on Dublin, last but one of Parliament’s strongholds in Ireland.

But the little castle that had seemed so solid, on the map and on the horizon at dusk, was found in the first dusty glow of morning to be a crumbling ruin. The Marquess himself had ridden up – after a good night’s sleep, no doubt, and a like breakfast – to sneer and frown at their progress in fortifying the ruin. His horse had pranced him around it, as if trying to find an angle from which it might look impressive, and instead only finding fault. They’d stood sweating in their shirts, passing rocks man to man, indifferent and slow under their commander’s scrutiny. Eventually, cross and impotent, he’d cantered away with curses and promises, back to camp. A comfortable camp, the Marquis of Ormonde’s; comfortable and lively.

Apparently the Parliamentarians were moving near Dublin Castle. Someone had heard someone discussing it with the Marquis. Parliamentarians must be wondering how to hold out, with the whole country against them. The Marquis was going to bring up some reinforcements, and put some guns on the high ground just over there. That sounded like warm work, too – pushing cannon up a slope. Just to scare off some people who if they’d any sense would be staying inside their own walls.

The soldiers continued to swing the heavy stones man to man, a loping sweating rhythm and gasps of breath in the heat. They were fortifying the little ruined castle, that was the theory. But all they were really doing was moving stones from one pile to another.

Then, from some strange, half-grasped place in the back of their hearing, a foggy place in their heads that might be behind them in space or behind them in time, a drumming.

The drumming was a collective frowning of uncertainty, stones swinging to a stop in tired arms. The drumming was shouts of concern, and then alarm. At last the drumming was hooves, exploding from behind the little hill and thundering over the ground at them, first nothing, then dust, then a shadow of horses that grew and loomed and rushed towards the futile ruin, death coming unstoppable with swords outstretched, and the soldiers tired and slow and armed with heavy stones. The stones thumped dull to the ground, and there was a scrambling for coats and muskets, stumbling and snatching and swearing at each other, and the treacly lethargic dream became a frenzy of violence and flight, scrabbling and screaming across the suddenly sharp day.

VERITAS BRITANNICA

Liberty under God in a Kingdom under God

[SS C/S/49/131]

Sir Mortimer Shay in the shade of a tree, at a roadside somewhere in England, chewing on an apple and the words in front of him.
Thank you, Teach
. He saw the map of Ireland in his head.
Parliament shall have it easier than we might have hoped.
He placed the main fortified towns on the map.
But Oliver Cromwell is in the snare now, and the more he wriggles the bloodier he shall be
.