“Tell me,” Jane begged. She sat beside him on the bench next to the big kitchen table. Across from her, Nurse was sponging blood from the ragged scrap of flesh that was all that remained of the right ear of a redheaded boy who was doing his best not to cry.
“I was just to the north of Fort Royal, up on the hill,” the young soldier said, “and when the rebels captured the fort, we were cut off from the rest of the king’s forces. Outflanked, and trapped outside the city walls. We tried to get to St Martin’s Gate, but Cromwell’s men—the Essex militia it was—came after us.”
He shook his head, as if trying to puzzle something out, and his voice was hollow as he continued.
“There was no question of capture. They just wanted to slaughter all of us they could. Of course, once they overran the fort, they had our cannons. Men were falling all about me and the dead were huddled in piles against the city walls. By some miracle I reached the gate and got through.”
A heavy rumble of thunder sounded, rattling the windows, and the rain seemed to renew its fury.
“And then?” Jane prompted gently.
“All was confusion. The enemy must have broached the other gates of the city, for they seemed to be coming from all directions. They were riding men down, cutting them down as they fled. I saw the king almost trampled by our own horse, running in so great disorder that he could not stop them, though he used all the means he could.”
“Alas,” Jane said. “Would they not stand and fight?”
“I’m sure most did as well as they were able, Mistress. But by that time even those who still had muskets had no shot, and were trying to hold off the enemy horse with fire pikes—burning tar in leather jacks fixed to the ends of their pikes. Dusk was falling and with it the end of any hope. I fled out the gate, my only thought to head northward.”
He drained the last of the water and stood, slinging his canvas sack on his shoulders.
“I thank you for your kindness, Mistress. And I hope your brother is safe and on his way home.”
Jane heard similar stories throughout the day. The king’s army had known to begin with that they were outnumbered, but fought with the desperation born of the knowledge that today was their only hope. At the fort, at the city walls and gates, in the streets, it had been brutal, exhausting, confusing mayhem, ending in defeat and despair.
“We were beat,” a grizzled sergeant said. “It was not for want of spirit, nor for want of effort by the king. Certainly a braver prince never lived.”
“What does he look like, the king?” Jane asked.
The sergeant blew out his cheeks. “Like a king ought to, you might say. I was proud to look on him, and to be sure, I could tell that all around me felt the same.”
Jane thought of Kent in King Lear. You have that in your countenance which I would fain call master … Authority.
“What else?” she asked.
“He’s a big man, over six feet, and well formed.” He noted the look in her eyes and smiled. “Yes, and handsome, too, lass.” Jane blushed. “Of a dark complexion, darker than the king his father. He was wearing a buff coat, with an armour breastplate and back over it, like any officer, but finer, you know. And some jewel on a great red ribbon that sparkled like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
Although the fight must have been terrible, Jane wished desperately that she could have seen the king.
“He was right there among the men in the battle?” she asked.
“Oh, to be sure, Mistress. He hazarded his person much more than any officer, riding from regiment to regiment and calling the officers by name, and when all seemed lost urging the men to stand and fight once more.”
Exactly like King Henry V, Jane thought.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead …
“He had two horses shot from under him, he did.”
Jane could imagine the young king so clearly, and she choked back a sob as she remembered that he might well be dead.
“I was there to near the end, I think,” the old sergeant went on. “When there remained just a few of us by the town hall.”
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers …
“All that kept us going was the word that the king had not been killed or captured, so far as any could tell. It was full dark by then, and I was able to slip away by St Martin’s Gate, which our horse still held.”
MANY OF THE FLEEING SOLDIERS WERE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDERS, the upper part of their great kilts drawn up over their heads against the rain, and Jane fancied she saw in their faces bleak despair that went beyond their hunger, discomfort, and defeat in battle. By midday Parliamentary cavalry patrols thundered by on the now-deserted road, and in the afternoon Jane watched a detachment pass with a string of captured Royalist soldiers, their wrists bound, soaked to the knees in mud.
“What will happen to them?” she asked John.
“The Scots will likely be transported to Barbados, or maybe the American colonies. As slaves, more or less, to work on plantations.”
“Inhuman,” Jane whispered in horror. “And the English?”
“Prison. Likely execution for the officers. The men may be spared their lives.”
“Richard,” Jane said. “It breaks my heart to think where he may be. Wounded, perhaps, lying in some field, wet and hungry and in pain.”
Or worse, she thought, but did not speak the words, as if giving them voice had the power to make them real. John put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her closer to him.
“Let’s not think that yet. It may well be that he escaped in safety and is on his way to us even now.”
He kissed the top of her head, and the familiar scent of him, the pungent smell of tobacco smoke, mingled with his own sweat and a slight layering of horse, made Jane feel calm and safe.
THROUGHOUT THE DAY AND EVENING, NEIGHBOURS CAME TO CALL at Bentley to exchange news.
“A Scottish soldier that passed this morning said he had heard the king had been taken prisoner near sunset,” said John’s friend Matt Haggard from Lichfield. “But another swore he had seen the king with his own eyes well after dark.”
“A Parliamentary patrol stopped at the house just at dawn,” said old Mr Smithton. “The captain said he’d seen the king dead, wounded through the breast by a sword. But he looked like a lying whoreson to me.”
Jane chose to believe what the grey-haired sergeant had heard late in the evening, that the king was still free and unharmed. For to let herself think anything else overwhelmed her with grief and terror.
After supper Jane and her father sat side by side reading before the fire in his little study. His companionship, and the persisting in everyday activities, comforted her, helped her believe that all was well or yet might be. The rain beat down outside, and she tried not to think of where Richard might be. John came to the door, and smiled to see his father and sister look up with identical expectant expressions.
“Mother’s gone to bed,” he said. “And Athalia and the girls.”
“Good,” Thomas said. “Better to take comfort in sleep than worry needlessly.”
Jane was surprised to hear the whinny of a horse outside. She ran to the window and peered out, and in a flash of lightning could make out a rider on the drive, leading a second horse behind him.
“It’s not Richard,” she said.
“Who can that be, now?” her father