Traitor's Field (53 page)
Authors: Robert Wilton
‘But you’re still fighting an old battle!’
‘I’m trying to escape it.’ There was real frustration in his voice. ‘I’m stuck in. . . in the battles and schemes of old men. The deceits, the vindictiveness. . . the loyalties of men whose time has passed.’
She walked on. She was. . . more subdued, somehow. Or perhaps just more thoughtful: age and life starting to hang on her. She pulled at the shawl, and it rode up revealing a patch of skin at the back of her neck.
They were walking along a path between two elaborate fences of trees. The trunks – Thurloe didn’t recognize the breed of tree – were slender and precisely spaced, and only at waist height and head height had branches been allowed to sprout to right and left, the single limbs reaching out to the next tree. Something confused him, and he looked more closely: where the limbs met, they had somehow been grafted into each other. It made him uncomfortable.
Rachel Astbury had walked on a few paces, and now she turned into a path between two yew hedges. Thurloe followed.
She had disappeared. In front of him, the path stretched dead straight towards a distant opening, between the dark green walls, empty. He took two uneasy steps forward.
‘Your new world is the upsetting of everything.’ She said it dully. ‘Destruction merely.’
There were openings to left and right in the hedges, dark in the darkness, further alleys leading to other junctions. She was a short distance down one of the alleys, waiting for him.
‘It is the restoration of laws and liberties that governed this country fairly. Traditions that made places like this – the little society of Astbury – possible. Traditions that were twisted and destroyed as the old King got more desperate. It is the protection of those laws and liberties in a system of government that properly represents the real interests and quality of the country.’
She watched him, unblinking, then turned again and crunched away down the path.
Tarrant the torturer. The trivial oppressions of justice in Liverpool.
I wish I believed in what I said
.
The yew alley opened out onto a raised area of ground, paths to left and right and a section of the garden laid out in front below: neat blocks of shrubs and flowers, symmetries of shape and colour arranged by a scholar rather than a God; further out, beyond a low brick wall, lines of vegetable plants and frames. From somewhere far off, a faint heartbeat of metal on metal.
‘We have our own forge here,’ Rachel said to the garden. ‘We grow our own food. We bake our own bread. We churn butter, and milk, gather honey, slaughter and salt meat, brew beer.’
‘And still you’ve never offered me a drink.’
She moved off again, alongside a willow hedge that led to an arbour, a sheltering trelliswork of leaves and flowers. Buried among the leaves, part of the remains of a wall, was a worn stone: crudely carved figures, letters or numbers beside them; something pagan, older than all of the world’s antipathies; something ancient being marked or worshipped here.
Thurloe murmured, ‘Society is all but rude, to this delicious solitude’; he looked up in time to see her expression, and grunted. ‘An acquaintance. The lines have stayed with me. Can you truly isolate yourself here? Cut yourself off, live on your bread and your beer? Pretend that the world does not exist?’
‘What else is there? What is that world to me? It’s death and division and questions and soldiers in the trees. It’s men like you, strange creatures who are so damned sure of everything, going to rule the world with your Cromwell and your Greek. It’s an alien world, it’s far away, and I can’t reach it even if I wanted to.’
The dress blended into the greenery of the arbour, and the hair was willow fronds. Rachel Astbury was a sunlit face and bust, and two vast eyes searching him.
‘I believe in the same God as you, Rachel, in the same way. I believe in the same country as you, for the same benefit of the same people. I believe in my own ability to shape my own life, and on that basis I will accept God’s judgement on me for good or ill. I believe in the beauty of Greek grammar as well as Greek poetry. I believe in the marshes at Maldon when the sun rises out of the mist and all I can hear is the invisible sea. I believe—’
She leaned forward and up and kissed him, her lips and breath warm on his. Thurloe’s hand had come up instinctively as she moved, had touched her side, and now held her. When she pulled away, eyes somehow alarmed at what she’d done, his hand stayed on her a moment longer.
‘You’d better—’
‘Yes. I should—’
Thurloe trotted away down the beech alley, the sunlight flashing at him between the trunks, head flushed with the memory of Rachel Astbury’s breath on his mouth. Foolishness, of course: an aberration, an impossibility, a misconjugation. But something warm, and live, and natural.
Something was nagging at him, knocking at his brain with each bump of the horse beneath him.
Rachel Astbury: truly lovely, and something real in the world of deceits.
Blackburn.
Cornet Michael Blackburn under torture, pressed to tell who had helped him.
A syllable he could not suppress, a syllable his tormentors could not catch.
Shay?
Sir,
Montrose was routed not far from this place, before he could even emerge from the northern forests, and those of his meagre force who did not perish in the field are prisoners, or prey to the wild clansmen of these parts. The Marquess himself escaped the slaughter but was shortly betrayed, and is now in the hands of the Church party in Edinburgh. The swift efficacy of their victory has left these men the unchallenged masters of Scotland – and the unavoidable partners of any cause that desires success here. For the great Montrose himself there will be no more miraculous scapes and triumphs: his enemies have him at last and, whatever their future policy, they will see him swing a traitor first.
U. J.
[SS C/S/50/61]
A
N OPEN
L
ETTER
:
F
ROM THE
PRECINCTS OF
S
T
P
AUL’S
A
N
E
PISTLE
T
O
T
HE
S
COTTISH
Gentlemen,
good neighbourlinefs does lie in a proper concern for the interefts of the neighbour as much as a difcreet indifference to his privy bufinefs, and fo too does it lie in an honeft fincere advifing as much as a prudent filence. For furely it is only Chriftian charity to help a man to his beft interefts, to fhow him to the right road. To correct a man before he err in policy or prayer, fuch as to fave him from peril to his perfon and morefo to his foul, is no more than to cry ‘beware’ fhould his foot be about to tread on a fnake. The Samaritan would have done no lefs a fervice, and deferved no lefs a renown, by croffing the way to help a man ftricken by falfe doctrine as one ftricken bodily.
Not lefs is it the right bufinefs of a neighbour to warn, when fome accident or mif-dealing in the houfe befide his does threaten him directly, fuch that if we fee our neighbour’s fire rage unchecked in the grate we muft fear left it do bring deftruction on our houfe as well as his, no lefs than if he let fome diftemper to fpread among the pigs that graze next ours, or fuffer fomeone afflicted of a plague to move among us.
In this honeft fpirit are we bold, in fraternity and humanity and Godly fellowfhip, to fay to our neighbours that there is fuch an outcaft among them, fent from other lands by a pretender to fpread evil, we fay that there is fuch a diftemper among them, compofed mongrel-wife of parts royalift and parts crypto-catholick howfoever it may difguife itfelf with other names, and we fay that a fire does rage in their houfe, of pride and vainglorious bombaft againft their neighbour, and we fay that there lies peril in their path fhould they take another ftep.
And the peril of our Scottifh brethren is this, that if they fuffer thefe errors to fpread among them, and do perfift in thefe mif-deeds, then it may be confidered that, not only in Chriftian duty but alfo in the mere fpirit of felf-preservation common to all confcious beings, England would be full-juftified in intervening precipitately, with a ftrength that has become too-well known in thefe iflands, to correct the wrongs of Scotland, for the good of all of us.
To Edinburgh from London we fend hope that wifer counfels fhall prevail, that the men of Scotland fhall fhow that prudence of mind and greatnefs of fpirit that has ever been their quality, and love.
[SS C/T/50/13]
‘Master Scot!’ and there was a thumping of boots and some military clatter from the entrance passage, and as Oliver Cromwell appeared in the doorway of the great hall of Government scribes every head lifted in concern – a strange reverse bow to greet the most powerful man in the country. Cromwell hesitated only a moment, a shadow among the wooden panels, and then strode towards his man.
Thomas Scot had taken an instinctive step back, but contrived one forwards again as Cromwell closed fast. Still the boots thumped, and now there was a crumpled paper in the outstretched fist.
‘Master Scot.’ It had become a growl. The heads had all dropped as quickly as they had surfaced. ‘What devil’s foolishness is this?’
Scot had breathed himself to defiant height, and returned the glare while his mind raced for comprehension; then he took the paper, uncrumpled and scanned it. He frowned.
Three steps away, John Thurloe watched discreetly.
Cromwell’s voice was lower still. ‘I give you latitude enough, the Lord knows it, and every credit. But this is nigh treason.’ Scot’s eyes flicked up and as hastily away. The worst of curses might be endured, but that word brought a unique peril. ‘There are no prouder more stubborn men on this earth than those that preside in Edinburgh, and those who preach. This. . . toy will touch them at their tenderest. Are you and your. . . coven of clerks quite deaf to political sense? Epistle – St Paul’s: it’s blasphemy even.’
Scot had managed to raise one hand; it quavered between them.
‘This is not our work, Master Cromwell.’ There was something of relief in the words. Disbelief began to bubble on Cromwell’s face. ‘Sincerely. You know me for a proud and honest man, whatever other failings you may ascribe.’
Cromwell blinked. ‘Then who?’
‘Perhaps some over-passionate partisan, of our interest but not of our controlling.’ Thurloe was only a step away now, and silently took the page, and stepped away again. ‘It may be impolitic’ – there was a renewed edge of defiance in the old voice – ‘but the reactionary precepts of the Scottish are mistrusted by many of your dearest supporters.’
Cromwell swallowed his irritation, but the words were growled again. ‘Is there not licensing of papers in this country?’
‘Of course. But the over-enthusiastic might somehow circumvent it. Or the unscrupulous. This may have been a ruse intended to bring us difficulty.’
‘It will succeed, very like.’
Thurloe was still working instinctively at the creases of the paper, as he read and reread the text.