Traitor

Chapter 33

THEY CAME AN hour before dawn when the camp still slept and snored. Thirty soldiers, armed with longbows and arquebuses and pikes. They had the camp surrounded before anyone even knew they were there.

Provost Pinkney stood in the first rank. He nodded to his drummer boy and a slow drumbeat began to sound in the still morning. Then the trumpeter blared forth. In an instant, the camp stirred to frantic life, like a nest of ants poked with a stick. Some tried to run but were caught. Others huddled together. One vagabond man picked up a stave to defend himself and was immediately singled out for attack. Another swung out wildly with a pickaxe and was killed by the hack of a military short sword to the neck, then a thrust to the belly.

At Pinkney’s side stood Reaphook, smirking in the eerie twilight, his eyes surveying the encampment for his prizes. His honed sickle dangled, menacingly, from his right hand.

‘There he is,’ Reaphook said.

Staffy had risen to his full height. He stood in the centre of his people, ash staff in hand, facing the commanders of the armed group that surrounded them.

Andrew looked on in horror and dismay. He tried to pick out Ursula, but there was no sign of her.

Staffy took a pace forward. ‘Come and get me, Reaphook. Come to me and I will crack your head open like a filbert between stones.’

A petronel fired harmlessly into the gloom, its fire, smoke and boom bruising the crisp air.

‘Wait!’

It was Pinkney who had fired the warning shot and who now spoke. ‘You don’t need to die this day. I will give sixteen shillings’ coat and conduct and a three-shilling pikestaff to any sound man who joins me for the wars. The infirm, small children and women will be left here, in charge of Mr Reaphook. I will hang any man who defies me. Martial law.’

‘I defy you,’ Staffy said. He began to stride through the cowering groups of vagabonds, sweeping his staff before him.

Suddenly an arrow sliced into his neck, then another ripped into his chest. He stepped forward a pace or two, then stopped. He looked down at the arrow protruding from his chest, then looked up. A third arrow hit him in the left thigh. He crumpled at the knees.

As he buckled, men descended on him from all sides, just as a wolf pack falls on its prey once it can no longer run. Spindle was there, so was Reaphook, along with the other men who had deserted the camp. They all had knives – daggers, poniards, kitchen blades, axeheads – and they slashed and chopped at the body of their fallen chief, cutting the very life from him. He made no sound, no howl of pain, nor let out any scream for mercy, but bled to death as stoutly and as silently as he had lived.

Just as the first speck of sun appeared on the horizon, golden and bright, Reaphook stood up from the body, and held the dead man’s dripping heart aloft in one hand and his bloody sickle in the other. His lips were drawn back fully from his mule’s teeth and he roared with the potency of triumph.

‘I am your Upright Man now!’

‘That one is to be pressed, and that one.’ Pinkney eyed the assembled band of vagabonds, all ranged before him in lines. ‘You may take that one and that, Mr Reaphook.’

He was walking along the lines examining the men as a horse trader might look over young colts at the fair. Pinkney ran a hand down the shot-pocked scar that ravaged half his face. One by one, he selected the soundest of the men and let the halt and lame be. He came to Andrew.

‘How old are you, boy?’

‘Thirteen, sir.’

‘Consider yourself a pressed man. You are a soldier now.’

‘No,’ Reaphook said. ‘I want that one. I wish to hang him.’

‘Indeed? What is his crime?’

‘He offends me. You agreed that I could hang one, Mr Pinkney.’

Pinkney looked askance at Reaphook, then turned and counted the men he had set aside. ‘There are only eight there, and not all those likely soldiers. You promised me twelve good men, Mr Reaphook.’

‘I will find you another four, but I want the boy.’

Pinkney tugged at his bristled chin. His cold expression did not change and neither did he look at Reaphook. ‘As you will. But I want sound men. Those that remain would not scare a Frenchie, let alone one of the Spanish troops in Brittany. Find me the men or I’ll have you, Mr Reaphook. What of that one?’ He pointed to Spindle. ‘He looks strong enough.’

Reaphook hesitated a moment, then shook his head decisively.

‘No, he’s mine, one of us. But fear not, Provost Pinkney, I agreed twelve. You shall have twelve.’

Reaphook grasped Andrew by his black gown and pulled him out of the line. He pushed him towards Spindle.

‘You have unfinished business with this thing. Take it. We shall hang it one hour from now, to cheer the company. In the meantime, I want Ursula Dancer. Where in God’s name is she, Spindle? Take men and find her for me.’

Pinkney’s drummer boy beat out his death-slow time with a single stick. Andrew stood with Spindle and Reaphook and the other six men who made up the core of his band. The boy’s arms were bound behind his back. Ahead of them, at the edge of the spinney, a rope and noose hung from the stunted branch of an ancient oak. Below it there was a box, on which the condemned would stand before it was kicked away to leave him swinging.

‘It is time.’

Andrew did not bother to struggle. There was no point. He had seen a hanging before and he knew what was to become of him. A few minutes of panic and pain and then it would all be over. If there was a God, he would ascend to heaven and be once more in the comforting arms of his father and mother and with Catherine Shakespeare, whom he had loved as a mother. He had to believe in this, otherwise there was nothing in the world or in the universe beyond. Endless nothingness.

‘Afraid?’ Spindle rasped in his ear.

Andrew ignored him. His lips moved only to mouth the Lord’s Prayer. He looked straight ahead at the rope.

‘Get on with it,’ Pinkney said. ‘I want no tormenting of souls. This is martial law. We are royal soldiers, not barbarians.’

Reaphook nodded to Spindle. The youth stood behind Andrew and began to push him forward towards the rope, at the edge of the dark wood. Suddenly a figure appeared, ghostlike, beside the rope. She stood there, then her hand reached up and took the rope. She climbed up on the box and put the noose about her own neck.

No one moved. All eyes were on Ursula Dancer. What was she doing? Would she kick the box away and kill herself by hanging?

She smiled, then removed her neck from the noose. She was wearing the gown she had worn when she and Andrew went to rob the man in Faringdon market. She was beautiful. She walked forward towards the assembly of soldiers and vagabonds. Without hesitating, she went up to Reaphook.

‘Unbind him. He is a boy. Give him to the soldiers. It is not his death you want, it is my maidenhead.’ She put her hands around Reaphook’s neck and kissed him on the lips. Then she smiled at him, as a bride smiles at her new-wed husband. ‘Will you let him live?’

Reaphook nodded, dumbfounded.

‘Say it.’

‘Yes, I will let him live.’

Ursula looked towards Pinkney. ‘You heard that? The boy Andrew Woode is now your soldier, to take to the wars or wherever you will.’

Pinkney signalled to his lieutenant. ‘Bring the boy here. He’ll make up numbers. That will leave just three to find.’

Ursula put her hand in Reaphook’s. ‘Come, sir, come with me to the woods.’ Gently, she pulled him forward, bewildered and disbelieving, ‘I have a bed of leaves there. Come and I will be yours, body and soul.’

Reaphook looked at her, then all about him. He was no longer the killer of men, but a gauche and callow fellow, unsure of himself, uncertain that he would rise to the occasion. He stepped forward, looked about him and grinned self-consciously with his protruding teeth.

‘Come, sweet Mr Reaphook. Leave your blade here and come with me.’

She took the sickle from his belt and dropped it to the ground, then squeezed his hand and led him away from the crowd. Two soldiers laughed.

Their coarse laughter and jests were drowned by a howl. It came deep from within Andrew’s throat and it seemed to split the air. Just the one word – ‘No’ – carried long and piercing across the downs, like the cry of a dying animal through the warm scented morning.