The King's Spy (Thomas Hill Trilogy 1) (2 page)

‘Happily, we have seen little of it in Romsey, though we thirst for news.’

‘Then I shall have the honour of giving you some.’

‘And what news is that, captain?’

‘We come from Bristol, which, praise God, is now in Royalist hands. Three days ago the Princes Rupert and Maurice took the city. It was a glorious triumph, and I’m proud to say that my men and I were part of it.’

‘Bristol. Noted for its ale, I believe. You didn’t go thirsty then?’

Brooke let out a raucous bellow. ‘We certainly did not, my friend. Nor hungry once we’d cleared the shitten scum out of their shops and houses and filled our stores with meat and bread.’

So much for an end to the war. Thomas said nothing. He could guess what was coming. Plunder, destruction, rape, murder. The usual litany of crime dressed up as a gallant victory. Another dragoon piped up. This one was short, with a face ravaged by drink, a big belly and the voice of a fishwife. ‘Those traitorous, whoreson bastards got what they deserved. When
Prince Rupert asked them politely to open the gates, they refused, the donkey-headed dung eaters. We had to breach the walls and storm the city. Good men died.’

‘So they did,’ agreed Brooke. ‘We had to make an example of the place. They should have opened the gates. It was a bloody business getting in. Women and children were killed. I hate the sound of screaming women, it puts my teeth on edge. But it was their own fault. Later we hanged a few of the scroyles for good measure.’ Thomas tried not to show his horror.

‘They’ll open the gates to the king next time,’ said a dragoon, raising his tankard. ‘The city’s ours now, and everything in it.’

Thomas had heard enough. Another city destroyed, men hanged, women raped and murdered, children butchered. And these so-called soldiers boasting about it.

‘Well, bookseller,’ went on the fat dragoon, ‘and what have you to say to that? A great victory, eh?’

Thomas did not want to say anything. He put down his glass. Before he could turn to go, however, he found himself flat on his back in the dust, struggling to breathe. The fat dragoon had punched him hard on his breastbone, knocking him backwards, and was now astride him, his backside planted on Thomas’s chest. Thomas was quick on his feet and much stronger than he looked, but it had all been so fast that he barely
knew what had happened. He gasped for air and opened his eyes. A bulbous nose, two watery eyes and a black-toothed mouth were inches from his face. He shut his eyes again and held his breath. The stench of the man was revolting, never mind his weight on Thomas’s stomach. And he could feel something sharp pricking the skin under his left ear. The dragoon had pulled a knife from his belt. Blood trickled down Thomas’s neck. The man hissed at him. ‘So, Hill. You choose to ignore my question. Perhaps you didn’t want to hear about our great victory. Perhaps you’re a piss-licking Roundhead after all. Is that it? A piss-licking Roundhead is it, Hill?’

Thomas felt the point of the knife digging into his neck. Bile rose to his throat from the weight of the man, and he turned his head to the other side and vomited. It ran down his chin into the dust. He retched and coughed, his eyes clamped shut. Then, suddenly, the weight on his chest was lifted and he was being helped to his feet. He heard the voice of the captain.

‘God’s wounds, man, we’re soldiers of the king, not highwaymen. You’ve had too much ale again. Master Hill meant no offence, and even if he did there’s no reason to kill him. Go and find a bucket of water and stick your ugly head in it until you’re sober. Or as sober as you ever are.’

The fat dragoon, stunned by a heavy blow to his head with the hilt of the captain’s sword, struggled unsteadily to his feet and, cheered on by his colleagues, stumbled off in the direction of the duck pond.

The captain turned back to Thomas. ‘My apologies, Master Hill. The man’s a drunken oaf. Are you recovered?’

From the winding, Thomas was recovered. From the shock, he was not. ‘Thank you, yes, captain,’ he replied quietly, wiping away the blood and vomit with a white handkerchief. ‘I meant no offence, but I don’t care for violence of any sort.’

‘A soldier must do his duty and obey orders. War is violent.’

‘Then let us pray that this war ends soon. Enough English blood has been spilled on the land.’

‘I too pray that it ends soon, and with victory for our king. Now, will you take another glass of claret with me while that fat fool has his head in a bucket?’

‘Thank you, captain, but I shall be on my way.’

‘But what about your French philosopher? Mountain, was it? You were going to share his wisdom with me.’

‘Montaigne, captain, Michel de Montaigne. He lived in the last century and said many wise things. Here’s one with which to bid you farewell:
To learn that
we have said or done a foolish thing is nothing; we must learn a more ample and important lesson: that we are all blockheads
. God be with you, captain.’ Thomas bowed, and set off back up Market Street towards Love Lane.

Watching him go, the captain took off his hat and scratched his head. ‘If any of you understood that, be sure to enlighten me. Now go and see if that gorbellied idiot is alive. We must be on our way.’

Still a little dazed, Thomas walked slowly. When he reached the bakery on the corner, he stopped to breathe in the aroma of tomorrow’s loaves. His sensitive nose twitched in pleasure. The dragoon had smelt like a midden. It was a blessed relief to get the stench out of his nostrils. He breathed deeply and looked around.

From this point in the village, he had a good view of the countryside. To the west, he could see the great oaks of the New Forest, and to the south, fields of wheat and barley yellowing in the summer sun, copses of oak and elm, and the Test winding down towards Southampton. Every time he stood here, he offered a silent thank you to the Benedictine nuns who had chosen this lovely place for their abbey more than seven hundred years earlier. It was an abbess who had been granted a charter to hold fairs and markets, from which the town had grown and prospered. The nuns might have left, but the good people of Romsey had managed to save the abbey
from destruction by buying it from the king for a hundred pounds, and now it was their parish church. Even with the country at war, Romsey was a thriving market town of over a thousand souls and a centre for the trading of wool and leather, with busy watermills all around. Now it stood precariously between the Royalists in Winchester and the Parliamentarians in Southampton, and at the risk of being ravaged as so much of England had been ravaged.

Margaret was sitting outside the shop on her wicker chair, reading a book and enjoying the last of the evening sunshine. When she saw Thomas coming up the street, she put down her book and watched him. ‘There you are, brother,’ she greeted him, ‘and walking steadily, I’m pleased to see.’ She had never seen him less than sober, but teasing ran in the family.

‘Certainly, my dear, though I was sorely tempted. A troop of dragoons on their way through were washing the dust out of their throats. I’m surprised you didn’t hear them from here.’

‘Royalists, Thomas?’

‘Yes, Royalists. I’ll tell you their news later. Are the girls in bed?’

‘I’ve just put them down. They’ll be asleep.’

Pity, thought Thomas. He liked telling them a story before they fell asleep. It was usually something from
the Bible or the classics. Hercules was popular, so was David, though Polly was already expressing doubts about a giant as big as Goliath being felled by a little pebble. ‘There’s chicken from yesterday, if you’re hungry,’ said Margaret, ‘and plenty of cheese.’ So far, the privations suffered by so many towns and villages had not come to Romsey, and no one was starving. ‘You can tell me what the dragoons had to say while you’re eating.’

In between mouthfuls, Thomas told her the news of Bristol. He left out the worst bits, and Margaret knew that he had. She had heard it all before, and she too was sickened by it. ‘God forbid that Polly and Lucy should grow up in such a country. They’ve lost their father and, if it goes on much longer, they’ll lose their childhood. Polly asked me today what happened to the farmer’s face. We saw him in the market. What am I to tell her? That he tripped over a plough, or that it was hacked off by a man with an axe? One’s a lie, the other would give her nightmares. She’s only five, for the love of God.’

Thomas sighed. ‘I have no answers, my dear. A war that was supposed to be about the principles of government is nothing of the kind. Men change sides as it suits them, and mercenaries fight for whoever offers them most. It’s a war driven by fear. Fear of a king with a Catholic queen, fear of Puritanism, fear of the Irish, fear
of losing. Perhaps all wars are the same. We all fear something.’

Margaret smiled. ‘Philosophical as ever, Thomas. Does your great Montaigne have anything helpful to say on the matter?’

‘Probably. I offered the captain of dragoons a little something to send him on his way.’

‘Something from Montaigne, Thomas? You’re lucky he didn’t run you through on the spot.’

‘Am I?’ he asked thoughtfully, but told her nothing of his brush with the fat one.

When Margaret was five, Thomas’s mother had died giving birth to him. Their father, a Romsey schoolteacher, had brought them both up to love learning for its own sake, and, from an early age, to think for themselves. ‘It is the duty of a father to teach his children how to think, not what to think,’ the old man had been fond of saying. ‘If only more fathers understood that, there would be fewer wars and less poverty.’ Thus encouraged, Thomas had learned to read and write by the age of five, and to read Latin and French by eight. Much as he loved words, however, he loved numbers better. Numbers fascinated him, especially the ways in which a simple symbol could reveal the truth about something. Pythagoras and Euclid had led him to Plato
and Aristotle. While Margaret had stayed at home to run the household, at fifteen Thomas had gone to Oxford. A scholar of Pembroke College, he had studied mathematics and natural philosophy, had excelled at tennis on the court at Merton, had been much in demand as a dance partner for his boyish good looks, nimbleness of foot and grace of movement, had first bedded a girl, and had learned to make up for his lack of height and weight with speed of hand and quickness of eye. More than one fellow student had come to regret a drunken insult or unwise challenge to Thomas Hill.

Yet for all this, Thomas had always found it difficult to conform. He avoided societies and associations, attended chapel only because he had to, moved in small circles, and preferred the company of teachers to that of students. He had intended to stay in Oxford to continue his studies but after three years, when his father became ill, he had returned to Romsey to help care for him. After the old man died ten years ago, Thomas had stayed in the town, bought the house and shop in Love Lane, and settled down to the quiet life of a writer, bookseller and occasional publisher of pamphlets on matters philosophical and mathematical. And when Margaret had married Andrew Taylor and moved to Winchester, he had been content with his books and his writing for company. But the war had changed that. Andrew had left
Margaret and their two daughters to join the king’s army and within six months had been killed in a skirmish near Marlborough. Margaret had sold their house and returned with the girls to Romsey. Now they all lived together. Thomas had many friends in Romsey and Winchester, including the unmarried sister of an old Oxford colleague whom he visited every month, and had never seriously considered marriage. At twenty-eight, an age when some men were still searching for their path through life, Thomas was settled and content.

His was only a small shop, made smaller still by crowded shelves and tables overflowing with books and pamphlets. As well as Thomas’s writing table and chair, there were two more chairs for the use of customers and visitors. The latter being more frequent than the former, the shop barely provided them with a living, but Thomas’s inheritance and Margaret’s money from the sale of her house kept them comfortable. While in Oxford and London both sides in this war burned books they found offensive – how an inanimate object could give offence was a mystery to Thomas – he lived his life happily surrounded by them, appreciated the scholarship even of the self-regarding John Milton, with whose opinions he largely disagreed, and waited for peace to return. He knew it might be a long wait.

Ten days after his brush with the fat dragoon, Thomas and Margaret made their regular trip to the market with the girls. Ever since the charter had been granted three hundred years earlier, market day had been by far the most important day in Romsey. Farmers sold eggs, poultry, meat, vegetables and fruit; clothiers and haberdashers set up stalls to show off their finery, and everyone from the mayor and aldermen down came to meet friends and exchange news. The town population seemed to double on market days. Polly and Lucy wore their best bonnets, Margaret her shawl and her string of pearls. She insisted on them when out with Thomas, wanting him to be proud of her.

‘You’re a respected man in this town, Thomas,’ she had said more than once. ‘You’re educated, you write important pamphlets, and you’re looked up to by everyone. It wouldn’t do to let you down.’

‘Thank you, sister,’ he would reply, thinking privately that Margaret could never let him down, and that she always exaggerated a little for the girls’ benefit.

She was a very good-looking woman. Few in Romsey could match her long brown hair, brown eyes and flawless skin, and Thomas reckoned it was only a matter of time before one of the town worthies asked for her hand. He would allow whatever she wished, although he dreaded the day. Margaret and her
daughters were his family. He adored them and they him.

Since the visit by the dragoons the town had been quiet, and little news had arrived with the merchants who came from all over the county to buy the wool finished and dyed there. Hoping that market day would prove more informative, Thomas and Margaret shut the bookshop and walked hand in hand with the girls down Love Lane and Market Street to the square between the Romsey Arms and the old abbey.