Traitor

Chapter 30

PANTING FOR BREATH, thirst raging in the early afternoon heat, Andrew and Ursula threw themselves down to rest, high up on a broad slope in the curve of the folded hills. They lay on their backs in the tough downland grass. Laid out before them, England seemed to stretch for ever. Above them, a solitary cloud drifted by.

As his breathing subsided, Andrew turned to his companion. ‘We’re first here.’

‘You were right. You are pigging fast.’

‘Is there any water left?’

‘We’ll get some.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know. Watch and learn. Think I’ve survived seventeen years on the road not knowing how to get pigging water!’

He laughed and saw her bristling. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t laughing at you.’

‘You better pigging not be.’

‘Do you think everyone got away?’

‘Don’t know. Annis Jolly is eight months gone. Not easy for her to run, nor one or two of the old ones. But they’re all good at hiding and probably found a hole in the woods somewhere. Tell you this, though. Reaphook won’t be happy. He wanted to stand and fight. Too stupid to see we’d all have got killed or rounded up and hanged.’

‘If he hates Staffy so much, why doesn’t he just leave and go somewhere else?’

‘Go where? This band is his home. You still don’t understand. It’s home to all of us. You don’t just run off because you’ve got a brabble with someone. You have it out with them.’

Andrew listened and tried to make sense of it. It seemed to him the trouble between Reaphook and Staffy was a little more serious than that.

‘Why did Staffy tell you to look out for me?’

‘He does that when new ones come in. Same way as he has always looked out for me. That’s why I stay with the band. And that’s why you should, too. You don’t stand a hope without the band. Whatever else you’ve done, the burgesses and justices will take you and whip you at the post until you bleed – just for being a sturdy vagrant beggar. And then they’ll put a halter around your neck for thieving – even if you haven’t been caught stealing nothing. That’s why you need friends. Stand together, you got some strength. Go on your own, you’re nothing, lower than pig slurry.’

‘But I can’t stay.’

She raised herself on her elbows. ‘You going to cross England like that? In your black gown? You look like a big bear cub dressed for its own funeral. We’ll buy you a jerkin,’ she said with undisguised disdain. ‘I’ve got money.’

‘So we won’t steal it – just use stolen money? That will make it legal and moral, will it?’

‘It will, yes. You’re learning fast, Andrew Woode. Now let’s have a better look at your ear.’

Roughly, she pushed his head down to examine his injury, then proclaimed him sound.

‘Would he have killed me?’

‘Spindle? I don’t know. He’s a strange one. Does pretty much what Reaphook tells him. He might just have been trying to raise a laugh by making you piss yourself.’

Below them, in the vale, they heard a distant sound, carried on the warm air: the beat of a single drum. They raised their heads and gazed down. In the west, coming in their direction, they saw a column of men, perhaps twenty or thirty, marching slowly through the valley.

‘Who are they?’

‘Soldiers.’

‘Are they the ones that attacked us?’

‘No, those were townsfolk and villagers. These are soldiers, pressing men for the war. I heard they been around here a couple of days. Steer clear of them, Andrew. No good can come of them.’

As the column of soldiers passed by, their eyes turned right in the direction of Andrew and Ursula.

‘They’re looking at us. Should we run?’

‘They’re looking at the pigging white horse, you fool.’

He laughed. Of course they were. The giant chalk white horse carved into the grassy hillside where they lay.

Joshua Peace walked disconsolately towards the stables where his horse was liveried. His doublet hung from his shoulders in tatters where Attorney Hesketh’s boy had cut its seams. He felt defeated; he had failed his friend John Shakespeare. There was nothing left for him here now; he had little gold left in his purse and no possessions apart from his mare.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned. It was the curious woman from the corner of the earl’s chamber. She seemed agitated, her hair awry.

‘Mistress Knott—’

‘Come with me, quickly, before we are seen together.’

Peace hesitated but she tugged at his sleeve and pulled him.

‘What do you want of me?’ he asked.

‘You are a friend of Mr Shakespeare’s?’

He nodded.

‘Then say nothing, just come with me. You will see.’

They walked out of Ormskirk, south and west, for two or more hours, deep into the countryside, until the sun was high in the sky. They came to a wood and the woman stopped. She looked at Peace questioningly, as though doubt had suddenly seized her.

‘Are you a man of God, Mr Peace?’

Was he? Perhaps not in the way she meant it. He said nothing.

‘This is Sceptre Wood. There is darkness here. Turn away now if you wish.’

He shook his head. He had come this far; he would go on.

At first the wood was dappled and light, with well-spaced oak and ash, but then it became more dense and overgrown, thick with broken, dead trees and briar.

She stopped and lifted her chin, pointing ahead with her face.

He tried to see what she was looking at. They were at the edge of a clearing. And then he saw it, hidden in a tangle of sticks and vines and leaves. A squat cabin or shelter, built of branches and mud, and so constructed that it was part of the very forest itself.

Mistress Knott pushed him forward. ‘Go in,’ she said. ‘You are expected.’

‘No, you go first.’

‘I cannot go in. It is an ungodly place.’

Joshua Peace wished more than anything to turn and run, but he was as rooted to this course of action as the trees that surrounded him. He stepped forward. There was no door to the cabin, just a gaping entranceway, with a step that went down into the earth.

A grey-haired woman was sitting on her haunches. She was thin and bent and her face was lined. Their eyes met. She smiled.

‘Welcome, master, welcome,’ she said, her voice as thin as her small, sunken frame.

He looked away from her and surveyed the interior of the shelter. There were earthenware pots and glass vials all around. She followed his eyes.

‘I have love philtres and charms, remedies for the ague and pox and a hundred other ailments. I can rid you of the stone or the gout or turn a falling prick to oak. Tell me what you wish, master.’

‘I was told you were expecting me. Mistress Knott …’

As he said the name, he looked closer at the old woman. Though she was very different, though she exuded malevolence, yet he could see clearly now: she was Mistress Knott’s kin. No, more than that; she was her mother.

‘Indeed, yes indeed. I have the very thing. I gave it to one who came before you, but you shall have it, too.’

She laughed, an unearthly sound like birdsong in water, then began scraping at the earth close to her feet.

Peace watched her in ghastly fascination. Her quill-thin fingers scratched at the mud until they clasped something about the size of a large pebble. Then he saw that it was a glass vial. She rubbed it against her long black skirts to clear away the earth, then offered it to him. He touched it and tried to discern its contents. There seemed to be something dry and dull-coloured, grey or brown, in the little bottle.

He tried to take it but she snatched it back and held it to her breast.

‘Two marks. I want two marks. The one who came before gave me a sovereign.’

Peace knew he had no more than ten shillings in his purse. It was all he had to get him back to London. He shook his head.

‘I do not have it.’

‘Then give me your knife and a lock of your hair.’

Every part of him told him this was superstitious nonsense, yet he was fearful. What would she do with his hair? More powerful yet was the sense of duty he still felt he owed to John Shakespeare. He took the knife from his belt and cut a lock from the thin ridge of hair that was all that remained encircling his pate. He handed the hair and the knife to the woman. She placed the vial in his hand.

He took out the little wooden stopper and put his nose close to the opening. He immediately caught the faint whiff of rose petals and went cold …

Parfitt knocked at the door to Thomas Hesketh’s room and went in. His master was there, with the slender young man from London.

‘Well, Parfitt,’ Hesketh said. ‘Did she take him to the old woman in the woods?’

‘She did, master.’

Hesketh turned to his guest. ‘Then we must act, Mr Ickman.’

‘Indeed,’ Bartholomew Ickman said. ‘It is time to tie up the loose ends of this entanglement.’