2

27th December 1643

North Norfolk

Dearest brother,

My heart grew wings when I received your last letter. I had worn my knees down to the bones in beseeching God that you would not be harmed. The knowledge that you would be in the van of the fighting weighed upon me such that I cannot describe the turmoil of my thoughts! Mercifully, my prayers were answered, and knowing that you are safe is the greatest gift the Lord could bestow on our small family. It tells me we are truly blessed by God. Because of this, I know Parliament will prevail.

Yet, now the danger has passed – or so Father informs me in my ignorancy of these things – I must admit what I have not before; that all has not been well at home. I beg you to return to us as soon as you are able. Please do not delay for any matter.

I will not share the whole story now. It is long and will, I fear, seem unlikely to you, reading by daylight. But I write in the shadows, by candlelight, with my hands shaking – even now you will see the difficulty I have in forming these letters – because our home is under attack by a great and ungodly evil.

This wickedness surrounds the harlot Chrissa Moore. You will remember she appeared in April, without character or respectable family name. I swear to you, Thomas, the girl is drawing our father more and more into her corruptions. There are times when I think he is fascinated by her, when he does not hear me. I fear for his safety, and for his soul. He is quite unmanned. She is Babylon, brother – the abomination of the earth.

Exodus is clear: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ As this is God’s Word, so I must act. The matter can wait no longer. I hope by the time of your return our home will be restored to peace. However, if the witch is victorious over my small strength – should God not see fit to lend me more – she might find in you a doughtier enemy. Do not fail God, or me. Please come home as soon as ever you can.

May God bless the King always, and may the army under Cromwell succeed in freeing him from the papists’ evil counsel.

God bless you.

Your loving sister,

Esther

I folded the letter and replaced it in my jerkin. I had only taken it out to remind myself of its contents, and found that, in the fading light, with my body rising and falling with the trotting of my horse, I regretted it, as I could barely read my sister’s shuddering scrawl. I remembered all the occasions Esther had asked me for help with her letters and felt a keen twist of shame.

She was hysterical, obviously. It was natural enough, being sixteen, stuck on the farm all this time. A young woman, particularly one with her imagination and melancholic humours, needed friends, people to laugh with and balance her tendencies towards overanxious thinking. Our estate was too isolated, buried in its own shallow valley, surrounded by just a few hamlets. She had no mother to teach and guide her. Apart from Father, the others in the house were servants: this girl, Chrissa, whom I hadn’t met, and Joan, our other maid. Joan was an honest, kind girl, but daft, as inconstant as a kid goat. I decided to speak to Father about finding some companion for my sister, someone her own age who might bring her out of herself.

Of Chrissa Moore I hardly thought at all. Though Father rarely took on new servants and, had I given it more attention, I might have found it surprising that he had hired a woman without a character, I was preoccupied by other matters. I was injured, carrying a wound unhealed since Newbury, and every stumble of the horse brought a lance of fresh pain near my groin, filling my mind with unwished-for images: the sawn-off shaft of my enemy’s pike as it struck out with disembowelling force, my desperate twist away, the other man’s frightened face, and then the moment of shock as the steel point pierced my inner thigh. I had killed my man, but paid the price for it.

It was getting on in the day and very cold. We were passing All Saints, near Scottow, and the sky was beginning to darken. The church’s stone porch looked inviting, but would be locked against bandits. These were turbulent days. There was no shelter for us here. ‘Come, Ben,’ I said. The horse whinnied, seeming to know it would soon be time for a meal and a warm stable, but there were no taverns or alehouses nearby, and anyway, it did not seem worth the blow to my thinning purse of seeking lodgings for another night. Not so near my destination.

Instead, I rode on, anticipating my welcome. I saw in my mind’s eye what I so hoped to see in truth: Father’s face lifting at the sight of me, his large hands enfolding mine. He would say I had proved myself. Treat me as a man, not a boy.

It was Christmas. I had just missed the day itself, but still the house would be snug and merry, with a fire in the hearth, perhaps a pie from the turkey or the boar’s head, whatever Father had been able to get hold of for a simple celebration of Christ’s birth. There would be no plum puddings, no hobby horses, no kissing bush of holly and bay hung from the ceiling, as Father, though he maintained it was not our place to judge others who followed the old ways in their own homes, said such things were licentious. Still, there would be wintry tales, warmed wassail, and small gifts for Esther and me on New Year’s Day; a pair of gloves or a printed prayer. In the evenings, Father would roast apples and read from Revelation in his deep, strong voice.

At those thoughts, something soared inside me, something strong enough to steal my breath: a deep, resurgent hope. A hope that, once home, I would be forgiven the missteps of the past – I didn’t want to think of them, but there they sat, huddled traitorously in the corners of my mind – and all would be as it was before.

Most of all, I thought of peace, even if it could only be temporary. If my journeying had told me one thing, it was that this was a land in chaos. How few moments there had been, on the road north, when I had not looked over my shoulder for vagabonds, or known the exact position of my sword. How the wind from the west had sniped at me, laughing at the inadequacies of my cloak and hat. I longed to put down my burdens and sink into the comfort of my own bed, free of the grunts and farts of other men, forgetful of the guttural cries of battle, safe behind our whitewashed walls.

By then, my sister’s letter lay unthought of inside my jerkin, though somewhere at the back of my mind was a vague intention to talk to her about it. I would find out what disagreements and jealousies had soured things between her and the Moore girl, reassure Esther, and remind her that she was the mistress of the house, with no need to enter into petty wars with the servants. Should this Chrissa turn out to be a troublemaker, she could easily be dismissed.

First, though, I would wash. A kettle of hot water, clean linens, too much peat charcoal on the rufous-hued fire. I wondered whether, if I spoke particularly sweetly to Esther, I could persuade her to sing. The memory of her high, sad voice releasing its song like a mistle thrush on some long-ago occasion – a birthday, or Christmas – was bitter-sweet, as I knew Father would frown upon the frivolity of music in these more holy days.

I gave the horse an encouraging pat on his hindquarters – rest soon, my friend – and straightened my hat. We rode on.

An hour later, I leant against the trunk of an ash tree. It was too dark to see the tree clearly, but I knew it was an ash, and which one; I was less than three miles from home.

Somewhere above my head was a branch as thick as a man’s waist. From that branch, in the reign of fat King Henry, two men had dangled by their necks for a murder they had not committed, or so the legend went, and their dolorous spirits had often been reported moaning about the trunk. I’d never heard them. I was told there was a stone boasting the Devil’s claw marks around here somewhere, too, and a healing well, but had never found those, either, though I had searched many times; more, I suppose, to prove to myself that they were just stories for the credulous, than for any other reason.

I squinted into the darkness. The night had been lively with stars, but thick clouds had now passed in front of the moon’s face, and I wouldn’t have seen a camel lumber by six inches from my nose. It had not been my intention to stop, knowing the road like the back of my own hand, but when Ben had stumbled on his forelegs and limped thereafter, I’d doubted myself. I so desperately wanted the comforts of home, but if the animal broke a bone, I would have to put him out of his misery and I liked this horse.

So I dismounted and turned Ben loose in the field, seeking shelter beneath my cloak and the thinning canopy of the ash. I would continue in daylight until I stood once more on my own acres.

I suppose I was feeling sorry for myself as I huddled in a fissure of the ancient trunk. Ben was happy enough cropping grass ten or so feet away, and there was nothing for me to do except close my eyes, but my wound throbbed, and as I dug sharp stones out from beneath my breeches and shifted my weight against the hardened bark, I knew sleep would not come easily. It made me think of the night before the last fight, at Newbury. After a long march, the King’s forces had reached the town before us. When we halted for a few short hours of rest, we had sworn violently on realising the site of our camp: the flats along the banks of the river, without roofs or beds, and on short commons. The fear, though, had been worse than any material discomfort; a ravenous cold deep in my belly, a tremor afflicting my limbs as I listened to fifteen thousand men talking without surcease, all knowing that in the morning we would face the earth-shaking terror of a cavalry charge, and the hot smell of musket blasts, woven into the noise of war, a noise like the end of the world.

I shivered beneath the tree branches and turned over, shoving my knapsack under my head. It did not help to dwell on the battle. We hadn’t won, nor had we lost, and now Essex’s army was ensconced in London, while the King had retreated to Oxford, and what would come next, no man could say.

There was the future to think of. The war wouldn’t – couldn’t – last forever. Even if I survived, and whether King or Parliament emerged victorious, the outcome might be little concern of mine, as I had no intention of remaining in England to see it. In the months since the fighting broke out, I had seen men shed an ocean of blood in pursuit of their rights and prerogatives. How much of the money in his pocket a man could be forced to hand over to his King, whether the law should apply equally to a beggar or a lord, what beliefs a man or woman had the right to hold in their heart – all such things lay in the balance of this war. And in their desperation to be free, the religious reformers had chosen revolution.

But I was tired of it. All of it. Tired of men beating one another into the dirt as though they were slaughtering hogs. Tired of hearing bones shatter and seeing my fellows soil themselves, all because some men far from the battle believed God had a perfect foreknowledge of who was damned and who was saved, and some others didn’t.

And there was more than one way to be free.

On that same night, before Newbury, Captain Jack Trelawney and I had swapped the names of our people. He was senior to me in the company, and a little older, but as raw recruits we had worked out we had grown up less than twenty miles apart, and become friends. Before the battle we exchanged our information solemnly, like strangers, though we felt more like brothers, having shared the same feet of earth and the same scurvy food for more than a year now. We did this in the unspoken understanding that, if the worst happened to one of us, the other would seek out those who must be told, and give as false an account of the last moments of the dead as might be needed to avoid a deeper grief.

When we had finished, Jack scratched his beard furiously. In the dim light of the campfire his pockmarked face looked different: more thoughtful. He said, ‘When this is done… When this is done…’ I had the sense that what he was going to say mattered, and waited. ‘The New World, Tom,’ he said, in a voice thick with something hopeful, something new. ‘Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut. There are ships sailing every day from Plymouth. Or there were before the fighting. All you need is the price of your passage, and your sword. There’s land, millions of acres of it, and no bugger to tell you what to do. They grow tobacco and get fat off the proceeds.’

America.

The thought of that massive continent, its green expanses, its clear waters, its unclimbed mountains and untrodden shores, danced before me like a chimera.

‘Doesn’t the land belong to anyone?’ I said, doubtfully. The idea of a space so vast, and yet lawless and godless was terrifying, and intoxicating.

Jack shook his head. ‘It’s endless, I tell you. There to be settled. What do you say?’

Startled, I said, ‘Me?’

‘Why not? You’ve no wife or children. You’re a useful man. You stink like the back end of a fox, and you’re too pretty for my liking, but you’re not scared of anything and you pay your way. How about if we meet after we de-enlist, and get berths on one of those boats I was talking about?’

‘That’s if we’re both alive,’ I said, and Jack gave a short laugh.

‘Can’t say I’m confident of that,’ he said, dourly. ‘But will you think on it?’

‘I will.’

And I did. Somehow, through all that followed, the pain of my injury and the deflated feeling in the wake of killing another man, my initial apprehension dissolved, and I thought of nothing else; for what could frighten me after this? As for living, Jack survived the battle, but he would not be going to the New World. He had thought his tassets too heavy, had gone out to fight without them, and taken a sawn-off pike in his thigh. The wound had been a bad one, and the tax he had paid his King had been in the form of a leg, cut off on the Round Hill as Essex advanced. Generous to a fault, when I spoke to him, he insisted I should go alone, and leave all that was rotten behind me.

Now, I was determined to do it. I just needed to get through the war, earn enough money for my passage, and find a ship.

In the darkness, as if he heard my thoughts, Ben nickered uneasily.

In the morning, the horse nosed my face, as if to say, Come. I pushed away his velvet nostrils, feeling the blunt, browning teeth beneath my fingers. ‘Get off, demon-breath.’ Ben continued to stand over me like a nursemaid until I sat up, damp all over where the night’s water had settled, rubbing my ice-cold limbs, breathing clouds of the frigid air. It was not quite light, but I had slept longer than I had intended.

Ben ate breakfast – the church’s grass, probably theft – while I searched for a stream I remembered ran through these parts. When I heard its trickle behind the nave, I approached, then knelt and cupped the water in both palms, and drank, wincing as the cold hit the roof of my mouth; I had not realised my hands had become so numb. When my thirst was sated, I washed my face and hands, forcing myself to think kindly of these final miles as a postscript on the end of a long journey that, soon, I would be describing to my father.

There was something wrong with the picture in front of me.

I surveyed the fields on the south-west side of our farm. Other parts of Father’s land were tenanted, but these fields contained the animals we raised ourselves. I scanned the landscape, taking in the russet palette of the near-frozen ground beset with the long shadows of trees, barely touched by a sun that had risen sulkily in the two hours since I had left Scottow, and which would rise no further today. I held Ben’s bridle as I looked through a gap in the hedge, out across the open fields. My eyes saw the problem before my mind caught up.

It was late December. Father liked to put the ram to the ewes early. There ought to have been a mating dance in play: running, bleating, mounting, a ritual at once crude and sacred, as old as time. I half-expected to see Father cresting the low hill between the farmhouse and the road with his drooling mastiff, and a ‘Hey-ho!’ for his son.

Nothing moved. An uncertain breeze stirred my cloak and, from somewhere nearby, an owl emitted soft hoots. It was late for the bird to be abroad.

What was that I could see? The light was thin and reedy. I strained my eyes to make out something lying on the ground, several hundred yards off, something lumpen and white, and beside it, another, and, as my eyes refocused, another, on and on, like a congregation of fallen angels. I watched, held between fascination and horror as, from a tree behind me, the owl swooped on its pale prey, holding down the unmoving flesh with its strong talons, tearing at the woolly hide with its cruel, curved beak.

I am become a brother of jackals, a companion of owls.

I shook the words off, secured Ben’s halter to the tree and crossed the ditch boundary into the field. I had to see.

The first sheep might have been sleeping. It was hunched at the shoulders, resting on its front legs with its back to me. But as I came around to the animal’s head, I saw her tongue, black and engorged. A single blow fly, a fugitive of summer, crawled across her nose. Deep, bloody holes gaped in her head where the owl, or the buzzards before it, had begun to feast. Her eyes had gone. But she had not been dead long. No more than half a day, at a guess.

I walked on. The second sheep had been less lucky than the first. She had died on her side, exposing her soft belly. Thin entrails trailed like ribbons where, sick but still living, she had tried to crawl away from her attacker. I heard a roaring in my ears: a faraway echo of soldiers as they tore into one another like carrion.

I counted the animals as I passed them. By the time I reached the far side and began to think about going back to reclaim Ben, I’d lost count. Somewhere north of seventy beasts had died in this field alone. They bore no signs of violence or struggle, no injuries other than those inflicted after death. It had to be disease. But I had never seen anything as virulent as this, or heard of it. These ewes looked as though they had been healthy as little as a day ago. And they were well-fed, well-kept animals, as my father’s sheep had always been.

The thought of my father gave me a jolt. I turned, retracing my steps. He had to know about this, if he didn’t already.

I reached Ben and freed him. I was half a mile from home if we followed the road, and I considered mounting, but the horse still limped. I decided against it, and pulled hard on the halter to hurry him.

We encountered nobody as we went along. The track was smooth and solid. Few carts or gigs were driven this way; the path led nowhere except to our house, a good-sized property my father had built himself upon his marriage to my mother, who lay in the churchyard west of here, having passed before the blessing of committing her to memory had been allowed me.

Soon, we came to the house. Separated from the surrounding fields by a tall hedge and an orchard of apple, plum and damson trees, it stood some way back from the track. Ben appeared to prefer the road. He was not a nappy animal, but now he baulked, planting his weight so I had to drag him up the rocky path to the front door. I didn’t bother stabling him, and instead turned him loose into the paddock. I would take him in later, and get some attention for his injury.

Our arrival seemed to have gone unnoticed. The door remained closed, and moreover locked from the inside, which was unusual. I knocked. No servant came to admit me. I rapped again, and waited. I saw, frowning, that someone had carved a small chain of daisy heads into the wood near the floor. From the back of the house came the dog’s bark. On the third knock, the door swung open, revealing wide blue eyes in a face as colourless as curds. Hovering behind the heavy oak frame, younger than her years and as slender as a reed, lacking in the womanliness one would usually recognise in a girl of sixteen summers, stood my sister. ‘Esther,’ I said, joyfully, then was startled as her face crumpled, and she threw herself out of the door and into my arms, weeping like a child half her age. I was shocked; she was young, and often emotional, as girls could be, I supposed, but I had never seen her like this. ‘I’m here,’ I said, stroking her hair. ‘Where’s Father? I must speak with him. The sheep…’ I gathered from the upset in the house that the disaster in the fields was already known to them.

‘Oh, Thomas!’ Esther wailed. ‘It’s… I…’ But she could hardly get the words out.

I cradled her head, awkwardly. ‘Now, Esther, calm yourself. Come. Let’s go inside and we can talk to Father about what to do, and everything will be well.’

Esther pulled away. She pressed her small fists into her eye sockets, pushing back her tears, and when she lowered her hands, seemed more like herself. ‘No, brother,’ she said. ‘It’s not the sheep. Another calamity. And much worse.’