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Worcester, 3 September 1651
Sir Edward Lovelace rode for his life. As part of the King’s cavalry, he had surged out of Worcester’s Sidbury Gate to attack the Parliamentary army at Red Hill to the east. Cut off from his fellow cavalrymen during the failed attack, he had no choice but to flee south in the hope of entering the city by another route.
Where his king and the remainder of the Royalist cavalry were, he knew not, but he must find them!
Edward hadn’t expected to be pursued across field after field by Roundheads. Pistol shots rang out sporadically. Lead balls whizzed past him. Eventually he risked a glance over his shoulder. Most pursuers had fallen back, giving up the chase as he proved too difficult to catch.
There was just one pursuer now.
Ahead was safety. Surely if he could get amongst that copse of trees he could wheel about and discharge his last, unfired pistol on the relentless enemy. He spurred his tiring horse on with voice, hand and heel.
Edward felt his horse lift to jump a fallen tree trunk guarding the entrance to the grove. He gritted his teeth.
A shot rang out.
His horse rapped its fetlocks on the jump and screamed. Then they were falling, tumbling onto the leaf-strewn ground, hitting hard. Winded and hatless, Edward fought for breath, as his horse rose and stumbled off.
His pursuer’s mount soared over him, and Edward scrabbled towards the shelter of the log. The bay charger shied and plunged in fright. Its rider struggled for balance but lost, sliding to the ground.
Edward drew his rapier and lunged towards the man, but missed his mark. The Roundhead slashed his heavy sword towards Edward’s neck.
Edward deflected the stroke but it struck his left upper arm, cutting into his leather buff coat. Another blow came from the man’s boot, straight into his thigh.
Edward staggered back against the tree trunk.
The helmeted horseman pressed forward to finish him off. Surely he would die this time! The blow came quickly, aimed for his gut. Edward’s sword pushed it off target so it only gashed his abdomen, beneath his breastplate. His own sword hit bone on the Roundhead’s leg. Blood seeped from Edward’s wounds.
The man stumbled and Edward lunged at him but was countered and kicked to the ground. He lost his sword. Panic clutched his chest, his breath rasped his throat.
There on the ground was one of his pistols – his last chance for survival. Edward surged towards it, hoping and praying it was the loaded one and its wheel was tensioned.
The big man approached, sword raised for a deathblow. As the blade swung downwards, Edward raised his gauntleted left arm in self-defence and jerked the pistol in his right hand forward, pulling the trigger.
A moment’s pause, then the pistol sent its ball to its target in a cloud of smoke.
The man’s sword clipped Edward’s ear, before he fell atop him, his tri-barred helmet dashing against Edward’s head.
The day turned black.
***
Charity Goodwyn sat on her placid grey horse, her back upright, her hands gentle on the reins. The sun had shone warm on her shoulders for most of this autumn day, but now it was dipping into the west.
Would she ever find her husband?
Yesterday, while the engagements between Cromwell’s forces and the would-be king’s predominantly-Scottish army had proceeded in fits and starts, she had paced from room to room, wall to wall, haunted by fear. Word of the Royalist defeat had come to her late in the day, and all evening she had awaited her husband’s return as a victorious cavalry officer of Cromwell’s New Model Army.
This morning she had instructed that her horse be readied, then had ridden away from the inn like a troubadour, with all her meagre luggage attached to her saddle.
On the lush green fields, bodies littered the sites where Cromwell’s army and the invading force had met. Most were Royalists. Such was the completeness of the Parliamentary victory. None she’d seen had lived the night and most had been stripped of their clothes and armour by looters.
Apart from the occasional raven’s caw, silence hung across the landscape.
Dark, thickened blood splashed the trampled turf. Contorted limbs and torsos made grotesque sculptures of lost souls. Ravens walked boldly from corpse to corpse. Already the sickly smell of death wafted from the scene. Nausea roiled up from her stomach and Charity clamped a linen handkerchief to her mouth.
Now she had reached the end of her long search. No-one had seen or heard of Captain Goodwyn. He must be still engaged in military duties or she would have found his body ‒ or someone would have seen him.
Her horse snorted and danced away from the mangled corpse it had almost stood upon as she daydreamed. “Be brave, Bess.” Her gentle words calmed her mount.
Ahead, beyond an expanse of fields, stood a small wood. Maybe there was a stream beneath the trees where she could bathe her sun-scorched face before returning to the inn.
As she approached, it became obvious there was no stream, but under the trees stood a cavalry horse grazing, still saddled and fully equipped for battle. She urged her mount faster. The closer she rode, the more familiar the horse appeared.
It was her husband’s!
Finally, she would know her fate, fear tasted bitter in her mouth. Did he lie dead or was he merely wounded, awaiting assistance?
“Come on, Bess,” Charity urged as she steered her horse around a large tree trunk.
Beyond it lay Jacob, face down, as though he had been felled by an axeman. She gasped, frozen in the saddle. Nothing stirred in the grove, except close by, her husband’s horse methodically tore long grass by the mouthful. Her hands trembled on the reins.
He was dead...wasn’t he?
She forced herself to dismount and face her future.
At her feet sprawled not one form, but two battered and lifeless bodies. She stood swaying over them, her hands gripped together.
Had they fought and died together?
Touching her unsteady hand to Jacob’s shoulder, she found it as stiff and unyielding as it had been in life. She tugged at the sleeve of his thick buff coat with all her strength. He rolled onto his back. Glazed eyes stared fixedly in death. On his forehead was the gruesome evidence that a pistol’s ball had ended his life.
Charity staggered backward onto the ground, her stomach heaving, threatening to empty onto the trampled ground. She shuddered, then eased herself onto her knees and wiped her mouth with her handkerchief.
But something arose in her heart.
Hope.
Charity took a deep shuddering breath and looked around the grove. There were signs of a recent skirmish ‒ abraded turf and scattered leaves. A Cavalier’s hat rested in the shadow of the log. Two swords lay beside the men’s bodies, with a pistol still clutched in the Cavalier’s hand.
She edged closer to examine him.
He was as tall and broad of shoulder as her husband, but slimmer, younger. His cheekbones were high and prominent, nose straight, mouth determined. Long, brown hair lay in crumpled waves around his head. He had been a handsome man.
A dark bruise tinted his forehead, while his buff coat was slashed in several places and decorated with dried blood. Which wound had killed him?
Now, smudges shadowed beneath his eyes. What colour had those eyes been? Brown to match his hair, or blue like hers? So sad that such a fine and young a being had been extinguished. She clutched the handkerchief in her hand.
Charity chided herself for her flight of fancy, just as Jacob would have done. There was no more to be done for the Cavalier now. Both needed burying...and she must arrange it.
Charity stood to begin the task. She grasped the shoulders of her husband’s coat, pulling hard. His body didn’t move at all.
Instead, the Cavalier groaned!
A sharp, strangled scream burst from her throat. She dropped to her knees, putting her head to his chest to listen for a heartbeat.
Dear Heaven - he lived!
With fumbling fingers, she unbuckled his breastplate and undid his coat, revealing a blood-soaked linen shirt. Gently she peeled it from the slash across the taut muscles of his abdomen. Beads of glittering blood oozed afresh from the re-opened gash.
He needed help quickly.
Charity tore her linen cap from her head with one sharp tug, folded it into a rough pad and held it against the wound to stop the bleeding. It took long moments to stem the blood flow and secure the bandage in place using its long ties.
With a huff of relief, Charity sat back on her heels, then froze with indecision.
Dusk was falling. Shards of red light streaked the sky. She was alone in a distant corner of the battlefield with her husband’s body, tending an injured Cavalier. Should she help the man who’d probably killed her husband, and other Parliamentary soldiers? He was the enemy.
But surely it was her duty to help her fellow man? But if she did, then what? What would be his fate?
Besides, she owed this man her freedom. Her greatest wish was to escape her current life. Now, with her husband’s demise, she could.
Yesterday she had secretly wished Jacob would not come back. Guilt followed swiftly like an avenging demon. Her face flushed hot with shame when she remembered her thoughts. She cooled her cheeks with her hands. She had prayed for forgiveness for such a wicked desire, but it would not go away.
Jacob had been her husband and provider, the man her stepfather had chosen as her life partner, and a highly respected Puritan. Charity had hoped for companionship, even love, when they married. She had quickly discovered a tyrant worse than her stepfather, and a living hell of cold silence and beatings, interspersed with pious sermons. Soon she’d avoided his presence and shrunk from his touch.
She flinched at the memory and struggled to forgive him.
But what would happen now?
She began to pace the grove. For the year of her marriage Charity had lived mostly on Jacob’s estate in East Anglia, a few miles from her family. With Jacob’s death there would be a new owner and she would have to return to her stepfather’s home.
He didn’t want her there. She was the daughter of her mother’s first husband. Not his child. Not someone to nurture. Just a responsibility to be rid of quickly. He would arrange another marriage.
She cringed at the thought and strode across the green grass to the fallen log and back.
No, she must never go back to East Anglia.
Now, suddenly, there was the hope of a new life, with possibilities about which she had scarcely dared to think, let alone dream, before.
Her pacing stopped.
But how did a woman survive alone?
She had heard how some women lived ‒ by following armies, finding a protector until he grew tired of her. Then she found another, and another. She shuddered at the thought of that future.
Surely there was a different way?
Aunt Phoebe was a widow living independently with just her servants. Could she do the same, now she was a widow? She slumped against the rough back of the log and her bruised back reminded her it was tender still.
But she didn’t have money like Aunt Phoebe, so where could she go?
Her hope faltered. She would have to marry again. Bile rose in her throat. She clamped a hand to her mouth to quell the sensation.
Anything but that!
Then an idea arose so strongly in her thoughts she couldn’t suppress it. She sat upright.
Aunt Phoebe.
Get to Aunt Phoebe and seek her help. She would know what to do. She might even be persuaded to take her in. It might work.
It must!
But how to get there? Charity sagged back against the log and felt again her back’s soreness.
Aunt Phoebe lived near Brockenhurst in the New Forest, many miles to the south.
Charity had some money for food but not enough for staying in inns along the way ‒ assuming they would take in a woman travelling alone. She had her husband’s horse, armour and weapons which she could sell if necessary.
She could do it.
She must!
But how could a woman, alone, travel so far without coming to harm or being questioned? The fog in her brain cleared and Charity saw the answer.
She could disguise the Cavalier as her husband and travel under the pretext of taking him home to nurse. She would be helping him flee the Parliamentary Army and any retribution they planned for enemy soldiers.
Surely it was the right thing to do – to help the man who had freed her to gain his own freedom?
She nodded.
Relief, like a wave of euphoria, flooded her body. A gurgle of hysterical laughter escaped her mouth. She gulped deep shaky breaths, fighting to slow her heartbeat.
Now she had a plan, she must act quickly before night fell.
With unsteady hands, she stripped the helmet, breastplate and back armour from her husband’s corpse and collected his weapons. From the Cavalier she tore his lace collar and cuffs. As both wore buff coats, she left them untouched. With her husband’s camp knife, she hacked the stranger’s long wavy hair to shoulder length, to resemble Jacob’s puritan style.
Using new-found strength, she dragged Jacob’s body into the trees where she covered his face with the Cavalier’s hat and mounded rocks and leaves over him. If the beliefs of her family and his own were true, Jacob had met his predestined fate.
She knelt in the quiet grove and prayed for his soul and that he might be forgiven for his sins. And she for hers. Afterwards she caught her husband’s horse, unsaddled and tethered it near her own, before collecting kindling for a fire.
She created a flame with her tinderbox and heated water for a poultice, using the herbs she had brought in case Jacob was wounded. She applied the remedy to the Cavalier’s injury, again tying the compress in place and refastening his coat.
Satisfied he was as comfortable as possible, she turned out his pockets, searching for a hint to his identity. A letter in one pocket and a purse of coins in the other were his only possessions. She left the coins but took the letter.
She settled against the log with the Cavalier’s sword near her for protection against any dangerous two-legged creatures of the night. Warming her toes near the low fire, she ate the bread and cheese she’d brought, and read the Cavalier’s letter by the light of the fire.
It was addressed to Edward, so presumably that was his first name. His mother wrote of his home and brother Maurice. She had signed it, “with all our love and wishes for your safe return”, after a long list of names of friends who wished to be remembered to him. So this man, Edward, had a family that waited for him, and a home to which he was welcome to return. A wave of envy rose in her.
Using the log as a windbreak, Charity huddled in her cloak behind it for the night. The Cavalier lay nearby, where he had fallen.
Fear of discovery by the unscrupulous thieves who had robbed the battlefield’s dead and dying caused every animal noise to wake her, sending a prickle of fear down her back. Each time she checked her patient by the light of her candle. Still he lived.
Although dawn’s chill set her shivering, Charity dared not rejuvenate the fire now a new day, with new hazards, approached. Bleary-eyed, she wriggled closer to the Cavalier, seeking warmth and comfort.
He looked so unwell, she wondered whether he would live beyond nightfall. But what would she do with him if he recovered before their journey ended? Weren’t Royalists supposed to be charming debauchers of women? Their hedonism and decadence were notorious ‒ at least, that’s what her family had told her. Her stomach lurched at the prospect.
She would keep her husband’s sword close at hand – to slit the Royalist from chest to groin if he tried to attack her.
Hah! If she could swing it...if she could even bear to do such a thing.