The Whispering Swarm
‘And my musketeers abroad!’ Prince Rupert groaned despairingly, fearing for his Cosmolabe. Then he looked up and ahead as a deep-throated boom sounded from the west. ‘What gun was that, Jemmy? What I think?’
‘That was Old Thunder’s tune i’truth, my lord.’ Jemmy spoke in some awe. ‘A hand cannon!’ He looked from face to face. ‘Few attract her anger, sirs, and retire unwounded at least. A blunderbuss such as is used at sea. That’s Thunder. ’Tis the fine Prussian tromblon carried by Jake Nixer, our new Intelligencer General. He has warrants to pass where he pleases!’
‘And has gold to pay a few traitors,’ swore Mrs Melody, waving her double-barrelled pistol. ‘The swine are coming through the cellars. Which means they have charts showing the Alsacia at her deepest. A whole nest of traitors, I’d say.’ She had pushed her way to the front and flung open the door. ‘This is dangerous. Dangerous. Look! They have every street and alley covered. Save what we guard with our traditions and our ranks so thin.’ The Alsacians defending us were scarcely enough to call a line. Their weapons looked clean and oiled, however, which suggested they anticipated attack.
‘Everywhere but the abbey. No doubt they could find no connecting cellars.’
I turned to look behind me and to my utter astonishment saw a row of wealthy young Orthodox Jews, with heavy black beards, in black mediaeval kaftans and tall astrakhan hats hurrying in a row through the door into the abbey. They looked at us in some concern but didn’t stop to help. Then they were gone. The door closed swiftly behind them. I had never before seen Orthodox Jews in the Sanctuary. I thought I remembered that all Jews were still banished from London at that time. Those were not evidently contemporary Jews, either. They looked more like people I had seen in ghetto engravings from Venice. Contemporaries of Prince Rupert? But, if so, Cromwell would not yet have invited the Jews back to England. Another damned hallucination? Or was this the only sanctuary Jews could seek and hope to be safe in times still close to the late Middle Ages? I was going to have to see a doctor. An optician at the very least.
Hallucination or not, I was scarcely unprepared. I had a big basket-hilted cutlass in my right hand, two pistols in my belt and one more in my left hand, hastily issued by Toom from that secret arsenal disguised as a wine cupboard. All of us, men and women, were similarly armed. But I doubted anyone carried a gun as powerful as Nixer’s Old Thunder, rattling roofs and windows in the distance. No doubt he set it off to frighten us.
Still the Intelligencer General had not made an appearance. Hard-faced, disciplined veterans of a score of great battles, slowly the stripecoats began to converge on three sides of the square. They all wore the jerkins and homespun woollen shirts and plain armour of the new Parliamentary police. Some wore helmets and others, mostly musketmen, wore felt hats with the front brim pinned to the crown. We had fallen back so we were defending both the Inn, the abbey and the narrow street behind. The soldiers marched in strict order, halberdiers in front, archers behind, swordsmen and musketeers between them. We were one thin, overstretched line, even when a few more from the Inn came to join us.
The Roundhead ranks parted and through them strode that short bantam of a man in a badly fitting red leather jerkin and a russet shirt. He had small, pale eyes, close together over a sharp nose. His cheeks were discoloured and puffy and his face was set in deep, neurotic lines. On his head he wore an iron war hat; a steel breastplate protected his chest and he had the woollen britches of a common foot soldier. Cradled in his arms he carried a massive long-barrelled, trumpet-shaped gun. This was Nixer’s feared tromblon, Old Thunder. Resting on a scrawny turkey’s neck, Nixer’s gaunt Kentish face had deep-set eye sockets with such dark hollows they reminded me of a skull’s. His thin lips twisted in a smile and his fingers were like tentacles, curling around that long, heavy gun. Sharp little pale blue eyes, heavy, hooded lids and twin red spots on his cheeks spoke of an obsessive disposition if not outright madness. His famous tromblon boasted a hardwood monopod to help balance it while firing. I had never seen such a beautifully finished weapon in silver, copper and brass, blackened from recent firing around the wide mouth and well-crafted locks.
Nixer’s only other weapons were a long dirk and a big plain pistol at his belt. He had a slightly stiff and awkward manner and bristled with simple-minded self-righteousness. Self-importance personified. I’d heard he was a furious shiresman, a small Kentish farmer convinced that any city was a sinkhole of sin where Satan was openly worshipped. If so, then London would take a lot of cleansing. His unblinking eyes surveyed the defenders and came to rest on me.
Corporal Love brought his lugubrious, horsey face down to the level of Nixer’s head and murmured something while the Intelligencer continued to gaze steadily in my direction. His unblinking eyes gave me the creeps.
I looked for Colonel Clitch but he had disappeared. For all I knew he was already blowing roads underground into our houses.
‘If you’ve come for my machine, Jake Nixer,’ shouts tall Prince Rupert, stripping off his white smock to reveal all his silks, satins, lace and rings, with his long curling brown hair running over his lapels and shoulders, a long horse pistol in one hand and in the other a longsword. ‘You’ll best know, fool, that your damned unsubtle cannon and your kegs of gunpowder threaten the scientific work of decades! Gone in a moment. You shall suffer for your fanatic religiosity. That machine was built by the most skilled craftsmen of the Occident and Orient, the combined wisdom of centuries. Inspired by our Creator himself! ’Tis a sublime engine for cultivated men but it baffles the foolish whose only thought is to destroy it. With such an instrument we might truly still change the world and bring about Paradise on Earth!’
‘You speak in lies and mysteries, Sir Sorcerer. Blasphemies, too, Master Stuart, I do believe.’
‘Have the goodness, knave, to address me by my God-granted title. There is precious little Stuart in my veins, but plenty in my heart and in my brain. I speak God’s honest truth. The truth of our invention remains undisputed. Last I saw her she was being rained on by brick and rendering. What d’ye think drove us up to confront ye?’
‘You would divert my attention from the abbey. But I believe I am thoroughly wise to your devil’s tricks, brother…’
‘Wiser than I, sir! What other Treasure would we have?’
Nixer sneered with a practised ease. ‘Men, you all know the plan,’ he called out to his soldiers. ‘We’ll kneel and rise, likely to give us the advantage again.’ He seemed to stare directly at me. ‘Advance upon the abbey! Let’s take it back in Christ’s name!’ He raised his right hand and the archers drew arrows from their quivers.
‘Strategy which won us Agincourt!’ called Prince Rupert with a broad grin. ‘But can she win two centuries on?’ He put his hands on his hips and laughed his mockery. ‘You forget, Mr Nixer, that I have made something of a study of strategy.’
‘We’ll have an answer for thee soon enough, Master Stuart. There’s still time for you all to join your kinsman and master on the block. Traitor to God and traitor to our country,’ sneered Jake. ‘We’ll find much evidence to prove it when this midden falls to our cause!’ Nixer was all strutting confidence and gamecock twitching of his long neck, like a self-righteous rooster. His discoloured cheeks burned bright and crazy. His nasty little eyes glittered with malice. ‘Satan, son of the morning, is ever alert for new ways to trick us. That Treasure be the property of the people and I claim it in Parliament’s name. We’ll discover where it’s hidden, never fear, for only thee, Rupert Stuart, know the veraciousness of that, I think!’ He spoke in that stiff, pompous, semiliterate way common to most Low Church clergy, adding: ‘When I see it,’ as if he belatedly found a missing clause.
‘If I could de-convolute thy sentences, man, I’d know whether I agreed with you and could offer you honest parley. Whatever it is you bray in your donkey speech, like old Bottom the Weaver in the play, we demand you lay down your arms, for you come illegally to a place of holy sanctuary.’
‘Play, is it? Ha! O, Corruption! O, Disgust and Misery!’ Jake Nixer had learned his rhetoric well. ‘You speak of Paradise. Let me tell thee that hellfire shall come to this place this day and it shall burn as it were kindling in the dry heat of summer. Our holy places and the Church’s shall not fall to God’s enemies, nor shall the Just perish!’
‘Poppycock!’ English slang in a familiar French accent. The mellifluous voice of Captain Claude Duval rang out across the square. ‘The old laws of London are on our side! The good old laws of the ancient Christians from the time of Joseph’s landing. And before that, from the time of the pagan kings of Troy. Law upon law to keep Englishmen forever free and give example to the world! I am a student of history. So believe me, messieurs, I know of what I speak!’ All ready for battle, Duval rode his lovely sorrel mare, Petite Marie, which he stabled next to his lodgings, Mistress Spott’s in nearby Carmelite Yard. Mistress Spott’s sister Persephone looked after his other wants.
There came a pause. None of us had expected this.
In a moment, Claude Duval went into action. Complaining at his galliard’s interruption and roaring a series of French curses, many concerning the fate of his liver, he tapped Petite Marie into a gallop. He came on quickly behind the redcoat troops, running one unprepared archer into the next, startling some and shoving others to the side as, with powder and flints and ramrods, musketeers sought to prepare their weapons. His pistols in his hands, his reins looped around his saddlebow, Duval steered his lovely mount with his knees and filled the air with muffled curses. ‘Name of a dog, these cowardly reversos in their depressing clothes shall pollute our thoroughfares no longer!’
I found myself grinning at this glorious rhetoric even as the soldiers lifted their bulky muskets. Beside me, Moll laughed openly. ‘Duval always said he was prepared for just such an eventuality as this.’ Her eyes shone and she applauded him vigorously. Then I guessed that Duval was perhaps her ‘cavalier’, the older man who had seduced the strange girl fresh from college. The man whom she still refused to name. Who could not love Duval? He had saved us all. Women keep secrets much less ostentatiously than men.
Duval was a wonderful rider, perhaps the first skill required of a professional highwayman. He cut a dashing figure with his long auburn hair streaming in the wind, topped by a dark blue befeathered hat. He wore a fine navy blue silk frock coat, his pale blue waistcoat and stockings all lace trimmed. The incongruous, almost comical, aspect of his outfit was that he still had on his dancing shoes. The black leather pumps looked dainty in his heavy military stirrups, at odds with a massive cavalry sabre clattering at his saddle. Three Roundheads were alert enough to shoot an arrow into his left greave and try to engage him with their pikes. Two caught the force of his pistols. He drew his sword and dispatched the third. Then he was off, Petite Marie carrying him at a lick down another street. Ducking to avoid the overhanging walls and signs, laughing as he went, he left behind him a bunch of disoriented soldiers who no longer knew which way to expect the next attack—
—allowing Prince Rupert to lead his brightly dressed raggle-taggle army in a charge against the Parliamentarians. At his command our pistols and muskets blazed all together so that happily I never knew if I drew the blood of men I actually admired. My political sympathies were never Royalist, though romantically I enjoyed their dash. Like Confederates in the American War, they were the defeated past and a worse tyranny followed them. In this situation I had no choice save to side with the king’s men. All my declared friends were for the Stuarts and my enemies represented Cromwell. I knew Clitch, Love and others to be turncoats of the most despicable kind. They had none of the best Parliamentarians’ simple sense of fair play. A dangerous fanatic Jake Nixer might be, but he was driven by his convictions. There was something congenial about most of the Cavaliers. I couldn’t help liking them. What’s more, it is hard to see the viewpoint of the man who makes your blood run cold as he leers at you and fingers a massive, much-polished knife.
So rapid was our rush that the astonished Nixer had no time to reload his tromblon and fell back, letting the thing swing behind him on a great leather strap. He drew his broad-bladed sword. Unexpectedly outmanoeuvred, his archers and musketeers were unable to make use of their weapons and the Alsacians were good, it soon proved, at close fighting. Many more were moving in from the back streets to catch the soldiers in a perfect pincer movement.
Once I let off my ‘barker’ I fell back. I had no taste or talent for hand-to-hand combat. To be honest, I took no pleasure in any kind of fighting, except as sport. I prefer my antagonisms kept to the archery field or the debating stage. I come from a long line of cowards.
I had to admit I felt the camaraderie. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Prince Rupert, on the other hand, and soon Moll Midnight and Mother Melody, the elegant Lu Wing and young Jemmy Cornwall, I almost enjoyed myself. In our exotic clothes we were a most mismatched group of individuals. Every one of my comrades clearly relished the skillful business of taking life. Their faces were flushed. Their eyes sparkled. They fought side by side like old comrades. They were ecstatic. They had new blood in their veins. I fell back as they led a little group deep into the Roundhead ranks fighting with swords and only a few pikes and pistols. I saw Moll suddenly stagger, her body blocked from my sight by Sebastian Toom’s small ferocious figure. Forgetting my own uselessness, I took a grip on my cutlass and ran into the main press, cutting and defending, fighting my way to Moll’s side as, gathering her strength, she continued to drive the redcoats back towards the gates. My love for her somehow gave me physical courage. I took a firmer grip on my massive cutlass and pressed forward ready to do the unthinkable if her life were threatened.
Discharging my other gun at an attacker, I reached her. Moll’s wounded thigh wasn’t serious but it looked as if Jemmy Cornwall’s was. He lay twisted on his back, the flesh of his face pressed to one side by the cobbles, while blood oozed in a slow, steady stream from his mouth. He bore a jagged wound in his side. I was almost frozen by the sight but thought of Moll’s safety kept me going. She had tripped, she said. Somehow I helped her get Jemmy back to the local doctors. They had set up a field hospital in the public bar and they were doing their best with very little. Gin was the main anaesthetic.
Those of us who were able returned to help push into the Roundhead ranks. Having expected an easy victory, the Commonwealth troops were demoralised. To my surprise, they did not concentrate their forces on the tavern’s basement. The abbey was their goal. Though doubtless well indoctrinated into the nature of the Papist Beast, many had remained uncertain whether they desecrated holy ground or not, a question of great importance to such decent, upright men, volunteers in the service of their religion and respectful of Christ, if not their fellow Christians.
Eventually scowling Nixer called an order to retreat. He demanded that we let them drag their dead and wounded with them which, with great gravity, we permitted. I have since seen men wounded in grisly ways yet it surprised me even at the time why red-stained shirts and shallow cuts to face and hands seemed the most serious signs of brutal slash and thrust. The bearers came up and the bodies of the dead were arranged on stretchers. In a moment or two, led by their officers, they had marched from the square. In the silence, we counted our own losses.
27
COUNTING LOSSES
Very few of our men were seriously wounded and not one, it seemed, was dead. Even poor Jemmy Cornwall was able to walk without support, that great gash no longer bleeding. I was amazed people had not expired from the ferocious thrusts they had received from pikes or bayonets. Indeed, bandages very soon hid the wounds and few seemed seriously hurt. When I mentioned this to Prince Rupert, he laughed and reminded me that we fought to preserve the world’s most ancient traditions, ‘as well as the sacred ground of this great, old abbey. This is where miracles are made.’
As the silence faded and we realised that we had actually fought and defeated a larger, better armed force, I heard
Father Grammaticus’s voice behind me offering up a short unfamiliar prayer in what I guessed was Latin.
Beside me, suddenly, Friar Isidore materialised. ‘There is too much pain in the world. They seek to remedy that but, sadly, they only increase it. They see their salvation in simplicity and purification, but the world is not simple. Nor is it easily purified. God made it complex and mysterious. They want to obey man’s rules, not God’s.’
I acknowledged that he spoke even if I didn’t entirely understand him.
‘They sought their simplified salvation through our Treasure, which they planned to steal. We were prepared to hold our ground, in spite of the danger.’ I thought I heard an unseemly slightly spiteful note in his otherwise gentle tones. ‘But our prayers were answered. You fought a brave battle.’
I said I found it sad that Christian fought Christian. He agreed with me, vigorously shaking his head. ‘Isn’t that so! Sometimes I wonder why we threw in our lot with them.’
It seemed to me he excluded himself from his judgment. Surely a Christian monk had to feel empathy? Did he mean that the order was not actually Christian? He was decidedly melancholy, I thought, but in a way that set him apart from the rest of us.
Prince Rupert congratulated Duval on his tactics. ‘You always claimed it was common sense to keep mistress and steed separate from one’s quarters. The worst would have come if Nixer had not been so considerately overconfident. As is often the case, the battle was won not by the perspicacity of the conquerors, but by the errors of the conquered. We had to make sure he did not reload and fire his Old Thunder! His men were leaderless while he spoke. Show me a zealot who can resist making a speech and I’ll show you a dead one.’