A Soldier of Substance Page 15

  I contemplated Morgan’s words with interest. Browne was certainly close enough to the military command to have access to the kind of information that had been passed to Lady Derby. He could have been in league with one of the other officers: Ashurst or Dandie, perhaps. It was then that I remembered that Browne had been present in The Ship Inn the previous evening. If there was a connection between the three murders and the spy within Rigby’s camp, did that not make Browne a prime suspect too, along with Chisnall, Ashurst, and Dandie? I did not remember seeing Browne when I left the tavern. He could, I reasoned, easily have been lurking in the shadows outside, waiting to shoot me.

  I thanked Morgan for his thoughts and had just begun to walk back slowly to the main camp when I happened to glance across the moor-like ground towards the postern gate. There, padding its way in between heather and bracken, was the same black and white dog I had seen earlier, this time going in the opposite direction.

  Quickening my steps, I ran through the connecting trench, climbed the outer earthen wall, and headed directly for the stone chapel from where I had seen the dog earlier that day. Just as I reached the narrow lane, the animal disappeared from sight between two tall alder trees. Heading straight for the copse, I began to wade through long grass, towards a natural clearing in the trees. There was no sign of the dog, but I noticed that the grass and undergrowth around the clearing appeared to have been disturbed.

  I could see nothing, but I had the strange sensation that unseen eyes were watching me. I scanned the undergrowth for signs of movement but quickly realised I was wasting my time, and, sighing with exasperation, I turned to retrace my steps. As I did so, I nearly jumped out of my skin, for barring the way was a slip of a girl, aged no more than twelve, carrying a wicker basket laden with herbs and flowers. Next to her was the dog, which nuzzled into the girl’s skirts as she stroked the animal on the head.

  “Is the dog yours?” I asked, trying hard to smile so as not to unnerve the girl.

  “Who’s asking?” demanded the girl.

  “My name’s Mr Cheswis,” I said. “I was just walking along the lane-”

  “Are you one of the roundheads who wants to kill my brother?”

  “I’m no soldier, miss,” I said, somewhat taken aback by the directness of the response. “Why would I want to kill your brother?”

  “There’s plenty as do. He normally minds his own business working in the earl’s deer park, but now they want to shoot him, leastways that’s what me mam said…an’ they killed her too these past days.”

  A flash of recognition went off in my brain and I took a closer look at the girl. Thin, almost to the point of emaciation, she had long, straggly brown hair, but clear, piercing eyes that betrayed a sharp intellect. She looked and smelled like she could do with a bath, and her faded green skirt and shift looked like they had seen better days, but who was I to judge? If she was who I thought, she needed help, not persecution.

  “Your mother?” I enquired. “You wouldn’t be young Jenny Reade, by any chance?”

  “Aye, that’s me, mister. How do you know that?”

  “Let’s just say I heard what happened to your mother. I’m sorry about that. What are you doing in the woods, Jenny?”

  “Gathering herbs and foraging for what food I can,” said the girl, who now looked at me with suspicion. “Why are you asking me this?”

  “No reason,” I said, “but here’s a shilling. Go and buy your family some food.”

  Jenny’s palm closed on the coin but she didn’t move. “Why would you give me this, mister?” she asked. “I don’t know you.”

  I didn’t answer, but I wasn’t given the chance to either, for Jenny immediately pocketed the money and headed off out of the clearing, back onto the roadway, closely followed by the dog. Just before she disappeared behind a clump of trees, she stopped as though she had forgotten something.

  “An’ just in case you were wondering, the dog isn’t mine,” she shouted over her shoulder. “It just likes following me.”

  Chapter 19

  Lathom House – Monday March 11th, 1644

  It was four in the morning when they came. It was a dark night, cloudy, overcast, and with a hint of drizzle in the air. Those of us positioned in the inner trench were finding it a struggle to keep our matches dry and wishing we had carbines or pistols to fall back on. It was nearing the end of our watch, and most of us were hunkered down with our backs to the inner wall of the ditch, waiting for the signal that would allow us to swap places with the next group of musketeers tasked with guarding our defences. An occasional glance through the loop holes towards the moat revealed nothing. There seemed to be little activity on the walls of the house, although, in truth, it was too dark to see clearly.

  I had considered myself fortunate in avoiding digging duty that night. Rigby’s captains had performed miracles during the afternoon, and what seemed like hundreds of locals had been pressed into action, most of them labouring in the trenches, which were slowly and inexorably creeping their way around the northern perimeter of the house. Having been trained as a musketeer, I was allocated a position in the inner trench to the south-west of the house, not far to the left of the main gates. Alexander was positioned a few yards to my left, and so, in between checking the loop holes for signs of movement, we were able to discuss what we had found out during the course of the day.

  My friend, it turned out, had been fortunate in that he had been seconded to help deal with the influx of labour brought in from Ormskirk and the surrounding countryside, which meant that he was able to carry out brief discussions with the remainder of Rigby’s captains, as well as with a number of local farmers and tradesmen.

  Particularly useful was the confirmation that Captains Davie, Duddell, and Sharples were all from the Amounderness Hundred north of Preston. This meant they had few, if any, contacts locally and less opportunity to gain access to strategic information than the colonel’s other officers. This, in my view, made all three unlikely candidates for the spy in Rigby’s ranks.

  What concerned me above all, though, was that I was faced with two ostensibly separate tasks, which appeared to becoming intertwined, perhaps unnecessarily so. On the face of it, there was no firm evidence to support the theory that there was a connection between Lady Derby’s informant and the murderer of Katherine Seaman and the Bootles, and yet I was being drawn inexorably towards that conclusion. How could that be so, I asked myself. Whether it was mere intuition that was drawing me in this direction, I did not know.

  However, there were, I reasoned, several links connecting the two cases. The first of these, quite obviously, was the royalist officer Edward Chisnall, who knew the Seaman family and was present in Seaman’s house until very shortly before Katherine Seaman’s death. Chisnall was quite clearly relaying information to and from the Earl of Derby and was even now ensconced behind the walls of Lathom House.

  The second connection was the Bootle family. Both William and John Bootle had been employed in the Earl of Derby’s household and Katherine Seaman had been staying with her sister, Jane Bootle, until a few days before her death. But William Bootle, now in the service of Parliament, was considered a traitor by the Earl of Derby. So how, if at all, were they connected?

  And then there was the unproven status of William Seaman, friends with Chisnall and a close business associate of Sir Francis Gamull, himself a leading royalist, and Robert Whitby. What did William Seaman’s expected inheritance from Henry Oulton’s business in France and Spain have to do with this affair? I was at a loss to know.

  One thing, however, was certain. Until the siege works around Lathom House were complete, it would be relatively easy to smuggle information into and out of the house, as proven by the ease with which Chisnall was able to move around, and by the case of Mary Reade, whose daughter, Jenny, even now appeared to be communicating with the house with the help of her dog.

  Assuming that the four main parliamentary commanders, Assheton, Egerton, Moore, and Rigby co
uld be eliminated from suspicion, there were, I reasoned, nine officers and civilians with close enough connections to Parliament’s military command to be considered potential suspects for the role of informant. These were the two majors, Morgan and Robinson, the engineer Browne, and the six captains: Ashurst, Bootle, Dandie, Davie, Duddell, and Sharples. Assuming that the last three and Robinson were unlikely candidates, that left five; Ashurst, well known in the area, trusted by the royalists and responsible, at least in part, for the strategy of besieging rather than attacking the house; Bootle, erstwhile servant of the Earl of Derby, knowledgeable about the layout of the house but considered a traitor and hated by the earl’s household; Browne, the unpopular engineer, accused of constructing the siege works too slowly and of building them too close to the house; Dandie, father of the lieutenant who had been captured by the garrison and who had, therefore, had access to Lady Derby, and Morgan, the small, arrogant Welshman, head of artillery and overly critical about the siege plans.

  The issue of the murders was even more complicated. All I had to go on was a plethora of unanswered questions. How were Sir Francis Gamull and Robert Whitby involved, and how important was Henry Oulton’s will? Why did Katherine Seaman go back to Chester from Ormskirk, and, if Katherine and the Bootles had died because of it, why specifically choose to kill them – people who were relatively low in the line of inheritance? Why was Katherine so shocked to see Chisnall in Seaman’s shop in Chester? Why did the murderer of the Bootles try to make it look as though John Bootle had committed the murder and subsequently committed suicide? Who was the mysterious guest staying with the Bootles, and why had he disappeared? And finally, was the person with the fowling gun outside The Ship Inn aiming at me or at Lawrence Seaman?

  It seemed an impossible series of conundrums, a profusion of dead ends leading only to more questions, but it was a puzzle on which I would have willingly dwelt a little longer, were it not for what happened next. I was watching Alexander, who was sat a few yards away, his head drooped over his knees, seemingly asleep. I picked up a small stone from the floor of the trench and was about to toss it in my friend’s direction, when he jerked awake, shaken from his reverie by an outburst of angry shouting not thirty yards away. Almost immediately, I heard the unmistakeable crack of musket and carbine fire, multiple shots, one after the other, accompanied by screams and more frenzied shouting. I jumped to my feet and peered through my loop hole. What I saw chilled me to the bone.

  Through the gloom, I could make out at least twenty glowing matches and many more shadowy figures creeping their way across the ground to my left. A good many of them were stood by the edge of the trench and were firing into it.

  “God’s teeth, Daniel,” rasped Alexander. “We are under attack. There are scores of them!”

  In truth, it was too dark to see exactly how many royalists were approaching our lines, but it was clear that they had skilfully used the advantage of surprise to panic the mixture of labourers and guards gathered further down the trench. I glanced over the rear of the trench and saw that a number of men had jumped out of the trench and were fleeing towards the outer breastworks. Several of them had forgotten that the central ditch lay between them and safety, and at least two of them clambered over mounds of earth only to plummet into the darkness, howling with pain as they landed awkwardly in the three foot trench. They were the lucky ones.

  A rumble of hooves signalled the arrival of a small troop of horse, perhaps ten strong, who entered the fray from around the side of the house, having clearly exited from the postern gate, passing in front of the stone chapel. Those men who had been foolhardy enough to escape from the trench on the inside froze in their tracks, and I watched in horror as one after the other was cut down with swords and carbine fire.

  Through the melee, I heard a harsh Scottish voice barking orders at the rows of royalist attackers, and for a brief moment it reminded me of Major Lothian, the parliamentary officer who had been captured by Lord Byron’s forces near Nantwich during the previous winter’s siege.

  Suddenly, Alexander and I were spurred into action by the sight of four men fleeing towards us down the trench.

  “Quick, run for your lives,” yelled one of them. “They are trying to kill us.”

  I glanced back over my shoulder at two musketeers further down the line gesturing to us to follow them.

  “Don’t get out of the trench,” said one. “That’s what the bastards want. Keep your heads low and follow us. We’ll escape down the connecting trench the other side of the main gates.”

  Stumbling after him, we weaved our way through the darkness along the trench, which veered off every few yards, first to the left and then to the right. One of the labourers ignored the musketeers and clambered out of the trench, aiming to run towards the outer breastworks. He had barely gone five yards when a flash and a crack from among the swirling horsemen was followed by a guttural scream, and the man fell forward onto his face, remaining motionless.

  Ahead of us, the two musketeers led the way silently through the trench, the sound of gunfire receding behind us.

  “They don’t want to venture too far,” hissed one of the musketeers. “We’ll be safe now, if we keep-”

  It was the last word he ever spoke, for, as he rounded the next turn in the trench, there was a sharp volley of gunfire, and his head jerked suddenly back, strangling his final word. A soft wet spray spattered against my face as the man fell backwards into Alexander, almost knocking him over. My shoulders tightened as I fought back the panic rising in my stomach. Ahead of us in the trench was a group of four musketeers, two kneeling and two standing, all with their weapons trained on us. On the edge of the trench stood several more. We were trapped and there was no way of escape. There was only one thing to do.

  “Quarter,” I yelled, at the top of my voice, and, sinking to my knees with my hands in the air, I entrusted God with the task of deciding whether I lived or died.

  Chapter 20

  Chester – Thursday March 7th – Monday March 11th, 1644

  Simon hobbled down the alleyway towards the glover’s workshop belonging to Jack Taylor, pain shooting through his ankle like red hot daggers. Behind him he heard the sharp report of musket fire. He thought briefly of Daniel and Alexander, but he had no time to stop. Staggering into Taylor’s yard, he crashed like a dead weight straight through the door of the workshop and collapsed in a heap on the floor.

  “Help me, Jack,” he breathed, through gritted teeth. “I think I’ve broken my ankle.”

  Taylor rushed over to where Simon was lying and hoisted him to his feet. “What happened?” asked the glover, breathing heavily as he supported Simon’s weight.

  “We’ve been betrayed. Never mind how. We’ve no time. Where can I hide, Jack? If the bastards find me, they’ll shoot me, and that’s the truth of it.”

  Taylor gestured towards a murky corner of the workshop, where a pile of hides was being stored against the wall.

  “Over there,” he urged. “Lie down against the wall, and I’ll cover you with hides. But whatever you do, don’t move. I’ll come and get you when the coast is clear.”

  Meanwhile, inside a workers’ cottage on Bunce Lane, Roisin Byrne was saying a quiet prayer in thanks for her good fortune. Jem Bressy had recognised her from The Boot, but fortunately he had not seen her with Simon. To her surprise, she had been able to persuade Bressy that she had sent the two parliamentary spies packing.

  “They’re away across the fields towards Black Friars,” she said, “and good riddance too. If you’re quick you may catch them, but then again, you might not.”

  “They will not get far,” said Bressy, his piercing eyes studying Roisin for any hint of treachery. “There is little point to them leaving by the Watergate. Their horses will be being kept somewhere on Eastgate or Foregate. They will need to leave the city by that route in order to return to Nantwich, so we will simply wait for them by The Boot.”

  Roisin bit her lip in concern. She had no i
nkling that Bressy and his men had been watching Simon’s brother and his friend, but there was little she could do about it now. She had helped them the best she could, and they would have to rely on their own stealth and cunning to escape Bressy’s clutches.

  Roisin waited patiently until she heard the sound of the eleven o’clock bells from the cathedral. When she was sure that Bressy and his men were no longer around, she tucked her auburn hair inside her coif, crossed herself, and marched out of the front door, down Bunce Lane and into Jack Taylor’s yard.

  As it happened, Roisin’s moon-shaped, freckled face was the first thing that Simon saw when the thin layer of calf skins was removed from above his head. It was a sight he would see much of during the coming five days. Simon’s knees had begun to stiffen up due to his cramped position, and his ankle was throbbing painfully. Nonetheless, Roisin, with the help of a stick provided by Jack Taylor, managed to push and cajole Simon back up Bunce Lane to her cottage, where she fed him and provided him with shelter and protection while his ankle healed.

  Roisin, he learned, had come over from Ireland with her family several years previously to sell skins and hides to the leather trade. Jack Taylor had been one of the family’s first customers. However, her mother had died in childbirth and her father and two brothers had succumbed to the sweating sickness not six months previously. Left alone, with no means to support herself, becoming a whore, she explained, was the only way to earn a living.

  Simon had felt a pang of guilt when she had told him her name that night in The Boot, but he found himself strongly attracted to her. He had to lie low when she left every day to work in The Boot and was surprised to experience feelings of jealousy and disgust when she came back smelling of other men.