Grey air blew in through the barn windows. My friend sat beside me in the straw; he looked weary and when I studied his profile he seemed not much fatter than Tommy. I dreaded the day’s marching after my broken sleep. I could hear men outside moving carts and cooking pots, and I remembered that my rations were forfeit. Ferris opened his sack and held out a piece of bread.
I shook my head. ‘No, keep it.’
‘I can’t eat if you have nothing. Come on.’
We descended to the farmyard outside the barn. Someone had found eggs and laid them in the ashes to cook; the farmer would be angry, not only for the eggs but for the hen, which was doubtless under some soldier’s coat. Our morning food and drink was handed out, and mine went straight to Tommy. I had thought of refusing him payment, but could not in front of Ferris. My friend took some water from the cauldron in a pot he had and supped half his bread in it, then offered the mess to me. Musty as it was, the smell of it broke my self-control and I ate, urgent as a starved dog.
‘It’s warm at least,’ I said. I hoped Ferris would not be too hungry without it. Not far off the thief was handing hot eggs out to his friends, laughing to see the men juggle them from palm to palm. I saw Philip come up and beg for one. He waved to me and I nodded back. The thief refused him a share, and I was glad. Then the prentice pointed me out to another man. There followed a series of curious gestures, followed by laughter.
‘Was that the lad cut my hair?’ I asked Ferris.
‘What makes you think so?’
I watched Philip pat his skull, grimacing in mock amazement. ‘It was.’
Ferris shrugged. ‘What does it matter? It’s been shaved since.’
‘You talked once of bodily dignity.’
‘I’ve seen heads shot off.’
He seemed out of sorts. We had no drill that day, and as soon as the men had eaten and packed up their belongings we were ready to go again. Mud covered the road and we sank in up to our knees where those in front had churned it. The troops plodded on like cattle, heads bowed.
‘Do you still fear action?’ I asked as the soldiers just ahead moved off.
He nodded. ‘So will you, when you’re in it.’
‘When did you last engage, then?’
‘Bristol. We were there from late August to the tenth of September. We began the real assault at two in the morning, and it was eight before the Prince appealed for terms. We were two hours at push of pike. Two hours.’ He whistled.
‘A long time?’
‘You’re a pikeman. Work it out.’
‘Last engaged at Bristol? I thought you were at Devizes?’
‘Aye, Devizes! That was nothing. They surrendered straight off. But Bristol – first I got a blow on the head knocked me out, then a fellow who took a musket ball in the guts fell with his belly right on my face, bleeding into my nose and mouth. Russ pulled him off, else—’ Ferris grimaced. ‘I can still taste him.’
I shuddered as we squelched onwards.
‘It was just after Devizes we found you, Prince Rupert. Some of the men reckoned you were Plunderland himself, others thought how a black man was lucky, and said you’d brought us luck already.’ He grinned at the memory.
‘You didn’t believe it?’
‘No, of course not! God decides these things, not a man’s skin.’
‘Amen to that.’ Yet I wanted to be lucky to him. ‘Why you? Why were you the one to save me?’
‘O, it wasn’t just me. The prentices helped.’
‘You mean they cut my hair. You were the one gave me food and drink.’
‘Well, you weren’t very thankful just at first! They held you down while I poured it in.’ He laughed, and turned to me. ‘What does it matter? Rupert?’
‘It matters not at all.’ I felt strangely cold. Perhaps I was sickening for something.
‘Are you well, friend? Nothing wrong?’
‘Only hunger,’ I said and vomited up the bread he had given me.
By the time we got to Winchester I was sweating, dizzy, barely able to walk. Ferris dragged me onwards, saying that once we arrived I could lie down.
The troops had been ordered to conduct themselves in a Christian manner, to carry nothing away nor cause any nuisance or harm to the citizens, provided we were entertained without resistance and not obliged to assault the place. We waited, armed and ready, at the city gate while Cromwell summonsed the Mayor, one Longland, and demanded access into the city ‘to save it and the inhabitants from ruin’.
Word went round that Longland had half an hour in which to reply. Men picked lice from their bodies, rubbed their hands and stamped against the cold, while I fixed my mind on standing upright so as not to be trampled should we go in by force.
After a short time Longland returned to the gate, bringing the civil reply that the place was not his to yield up, but was in the gift of the Governor, Sir William Ogle, and that he himself would undertake to bring Ogle to it.
At this Cromwell would tarry no longer, and we burst in regardless of what Ogle might do or say. Their men barely resisted, so that the whole army was got in without hurt.
‘Sit here,’ said Ferris, leading me to a low wall. ‘If challenged, you are too sick to move. I will find out where you should go.’ He pushed through the mass of soldiers towards the nearest officers. I sat head in hands, wondering if I should die there without having seen action.
‘Rupert.’ Ferris was back and plucking at my arm. ‘They are laying the sick and wounded in a church near here. We must get you in.’
I rose, dazed, and allowed him to lead me where he would. Men were swarming like ants through the streets.
‘Ogle has shut himself up in the castle,’ Ferris went on. ‘So it’s to be siege, after all. I won’t be able to watch out for you.’
He was short of breath. I clung to him, afraid that once fallen, I would never rise again.
‘Don’t lean on me, you’ll have me down,’ he gasped. We staggered along; once I slipped on the cobbles and Ferris swore at me. At last I heaved myself up some steps and through the pointed archway of God’s house. I heard Ferris cry, ‘Help here, I beg of you,’ before I sank onto the flags of the church.
During the siege I lay on a hurdle, taking nothing but sips of beer and the odd spoonful of pease which someone gave me. At times methought I was talking to Zeb. At others I was with Caro, and newly espoused. I must have said something blushworthy, for the man who was in charge of tending the wounded grinned at me whenever he saw me after. Ferris told me later that the second day of the bombardment was a Sunday, which had boggled them somewhat at first, until Hugh Peter, chaplain to the train of General Fairfax, led them in prayer and preaching even as the artillery was set off. In the midst of this I lay drifting in and out of fever, perhaps coaxing the attendant with the honeyed words of courtship.
When I came to my right reason I first saw the roof far above me,its carvings and gilt. There was a stench of blood and other foulness in my nostrils, and on turning my head I saw a line of sick and wounded laid along the nave. Their screams and prayers echoed from the walls of the church, then slackened to an exhausted muttering. Camp followers, wives and women who passed for wives, wept over the flayed and shattered bodies they were come to nurse; men crazed with pain called on long-dead mothers who could once kiss a hurt away. Near me one panted as if from a hard fight, while on my other side a man wailed something I could not interpret, the words twisting into a howl as the pain opened