The Ravens’ Banquet (11 page)

I 
BEGAN THIS
the fourth day of my imprisonment with yet no news of my situation. My warder offers nothing but bread, cold porridge, and stale beer. Intelligence of my fate is less forthcoming. From my window, and aided with a southerly wind, I can catch the shouts of the rivermen and the sound of block and tackle as vessels come up the Thames. From my door grate I hear only the shuffle of the warder’s shoes on the steps, or more usually, the sound of drum by the Trained Bands who drill incessantly upon the Green.

Time enough here for one’s brain to overheat with thoughts of a darker nature. I thought about my wife’s motives. She can be a parlous creature when she wills. Why her silence? I can no longer believe that none of my correspondence has found its way to Devon. Had she finally washed her hands of me?

My answer arrived this afternoon. Voices upon the stairs and then the jangle of key in lock and the sliding of the bolt. The warder ushered in a visitor, and as the fellow passed from shadow to light I saw that it was Master Shelby, he who looked after our household these past seven years. I had not set eyes upon him in nearly a year. He held our keys and our confidence, and had served my father all his life. So my wife had indeed received word of my plight.

Shelby stepped into my chamber, his countenance sore flushed in the day’s heat. His face was as red as a ripened medlar and his white hair as unkempt as a beggar’s. He found it difficult to hide his surprise at my decrepit state of affairs.

“Colonel, my dear sir, are you whole?” he asked, huffing from the exertion of the steps and coming towards me with an outstretched arm of support.

“I live yet, Thomas,” I replied, seizing his hand.

The warder said not a word but turned and left us alone, slamming the cell door shut and ramming the bolt home. Shelby looked apprehensive for a moment but steadied himself and returned his attention to me.

“I have managed to bring you a few provisions and some clothing. I’ve paid the warder to give these to you and he has given me his word that he shall.”

And true enough, the warder appeared again shortly, bearing a sack which he threw upon the floor. He then left for the second time, warning Shelby that he had but a quarter of an hour.

“Is all well back at home?” I asked him. He handed me a letter.

“This is from your lady,” he said. “She will tell you, I think, that the countryside is near lawless. Between roving bands from Lord Goring’s army and what now with Parliament’s forces coming again into the West, we have had our hands full. We have now twice been visited by Goring’s men. We have bought them off with some silver and provisions… and by telling them whose house they’re in. It has sufficed up to now. God willing, they won’t be back.”

It sickened me to hear his tale. Our own troops so drunken and disordered that they could do little against the enemy that threatened my lands. They were no better now than those I fought. It was the same in the German kingdoms all those years ago. Reason and charity had fled from there as well. “Goring is always drunk and never cares to know what his men are up to,” I told him. “Prince Rupert should have had him lashed a long time ago.”

“My lady is sorely worried by the severity of the charges laid against you. She feels that her situation has become... delicate. She is concerned about how she and the children will fend if you are... found guilty, sir.”

“My dear lady overflows with wifely concern for her husband. And my little ones? How do they fare amid all this?”

Shelby managed to smile a little but his eyes strayed and he did not meet my gaze. “The boy wishes to join you and the army. Anne frets some, but is most times happy and at play. Do not worry on that account, sir.”

I tapped the unopened letter in my hand. “There is more to it, Thomas. She has taken counsel with my brother William, has she not?”

Shelby stuttered as he tried to compose his reply. “She thinks only of the welfare of the family... of the future... of your welfare.”

“He is the Member of the House for Plymouth! A scheming usurping parliament man who has thrown us over and invited this war. I cannot believe she thinks so low of me to call for his assistance and make a mockery of me.”

Shelby shook his head even as I spoke. “He is knowledgeable of the Law, sir. And he has many friends at Temple Bar. You are in grave need of good counsel, Colonel.”

“I can defend myself well enough.”

“With respect, sir, you cannot.”

“Then what does she hope to gain by seeking aid from his quarter? Tell me that.”

The old man’s watery grey eyes blinked rapidly. “I believe that Sir William intends to see you himself. Within the week.”

Of all the people in the world to enlist the help of, I would rather take the hand of an honest enemy – Fairfax or Cromwell – than deal with my own good brother.

B
Y
A
PRIL
’
S BLOOM
, we found ourselves pressed hard. General Tilly, awoken like some sleeping bear by our stings, had finally stirred himself to battle. And we in the Danish army, having come no nearer to finding allies, slowly drifted northwards again.

Our company’s meagre thievings over the course of that campaign were not the fruits of well-laid plans but merely the incidental benefits of the situation at hand. Now a new situation and potential path to profit showed itself.

Captain Tischler had offered the services of his troop to Colonel Nells as couriers, and he somehow contrived to find us some messages to carry to the Danish garrison at Münden. This little town was our farthest conquest south and we had thrown some 800 musketeers into it only a few weeks before. Its commander was a deserter from the Imperial army and like most good converts more committed to the Cause than even the King.

We rode to the town along the north bank of the Werra and all around us rose up the steep green hills of that land, thick with stout beech and oak. Here and there one could spy darker shades of green across this giant’s coverlet: great stands of evergreens growing tall, cheek by jowl, and so thick that a man would think it night even though it was midday.

I was riding next to Tollhagen, newly promoted to Lieutenant, as Münden hove into view, a collection of grey and red roofs nestled in a valley below us. Surrounded on three sides by the mountains, its true value was that it was situated at the confluence of the Werra and Fulda rivers, where these enjoined to form the great Weser. Münden sat out on a point of land where these three waters met and the town had for many years reaped the benefit of its happy placement. All boats that stopped there had by law to shift cargoes to the rivermen of Münden for transport down the Weser. The burghers had grown fat on this arrangement such as it was, and they were well defended not only by the waters that served them, but by the thick walls and towers that circled their town.

Tollhagen reined in and held his hand up for the rest of us to make a halt. From our high vantage we all drank in the layout of the town and Tollhagen shouted to Corporal Pentz as he rode up quickly from the rear.

“What say you, Pentz, a hard nut to crack?”

“I’m no sapper. Looks to me to be as any other shithole of a place.” But I saw more. Münden had a stout wall that enclosed it completely. And along its length several tall towers rose up giving vantage upon all sides. One sole bridge, a great construction of stone topped with a roof, joined the town with the far side of the Werra. Across the Fulda there was a small wooden one out to the long narrow island that lay in the middle of that water, yet nothing to the far side. If Tilly lurked along the west bank of the Fulda, he would have to cross that wide expanse to reach the town or else ford the Weser further north to reach the covered stone bridge that spanned the Werra. Neither course seemed without great risk.

And so we descended into the valley toward the stone bridge as heavy clouds floated over Münden and cast a great shadow upon the place, blotting out the afternoon sun.

Balthazar rode up to me, eager to enter the town. “We shall take all our booty to the market and exchange it for good silver and gold instead.”

He prodded me with his huge fist. “Well, what say you? Now we can get your purse filled again, eh?”

“Aye, I’m with you,” I said, goaded into a response. “If there is Fortune to be had in this war then I shall find it.”

From that point, I stopped fretting about the black mould that had seeped into my soul. I was a horseman in the army of a king. Nothing mattered except what mattered to us. Take all – before it is taken.

Our little troop (for we were but five and twenty) clattered to a halt at the far end of the bridge that led over to the town. With us came a tumbrel, loaded to the brim full of our stolen treasures gathered these last two months. Tischler had ordered it to be traded for silver and the proceeds to be taken back for distribution in Göttingen to the fellows who had stayed behind. Enough of this sort of business went on such that few questions would likely be asked, especially in a town as greedy as Münden.

“This night, you may take your pleasure as you find it,” said Tollhagen to us when we had reached the stables, “but on the morrow we finish our work. Pentz will second any transactions and then we take our money and leave this place. Any man who stands not on this spot by eight o’the clock I shall well and truly gut when I lay hands on them.”

Although a guard was posted, we took our pistols with us and slung our snapsacks over shoulder till we found alehouse or inn. Twenty-five soldiers in one inn is no good thing, least of all for the innkeeper, so we divided ourselves. Yet the the town was so narrow that one could shout from one end to the other and still carry on a conversation. In the end, we all found lodging a stone’s throw from one another. Balthazar and Christoph joined me and we soon discovered ourselves in front of an inn that lay on the eastern edge of the town.

“Come, let us fill our bellies, lads!” said Balthazar striding through the doorway, ahead of Christoph and me. “Then we can undertake other entertainments befitting to cavalrymen who’ve been in the saddle too long.”

Christoph laughed. “You’ll be fit for nothing but a good sleep after you get your fill, you old fool.”

And as I knew by now, Christoph meant this not in jest. Balthazar pretended not to hear the barb, but everyone knew Christoph was best handled like a bad horse: never turn your back. This little band of ours (Andreas, Jacob, and the others all remained with the rest of the company at Göttingen) was the sad dregs of what had been a sweet cup a few months before. We supped, we drank, we spun stories, but it was not as it had been. I had, though, like others, tucked away a few pieces of treasure into my snapsack. The leather purse at my hip, for so long a source of loud bounty, now sounded only a muffled rattle like some beggar’s belly. There were few coins left inside of it to offer one another much company.

We supped together but without much heart in it. I suppose that I, like Balthazar, had a head too full of damp that saddened my heart and chilled my limbs.

Balthazar, once his belly was full, seemed half-asleep, or half-drunk, his jug-like head down upon his chest in repose. But his eyes followed me as I hunched down next to him, the wine in my cup splashing my breeches and speckling his cloak.

“One should put the liquid into one’s mouth, young Treadwell,” he rumbled, “tis far better to gain the full benefit of the stuff.”

“I have had my fill,” I replied flatly.

“As you like,” he mumbled, unperturbed. He opened his eyes more fully. “Your spleen is in disorder, young fellow. You need a bit of hot lead flying about your ears to set you at rights.”

“You might consider taking the same physik. Your tail has drooped mightily this last fortnight. That’s clear for all to see. Is this all there is to campaign? We’re without pay this month, my purse is near an end. I have stolen some useless crockery...” I counted these achievements on my fingers, my voice tinged with adder spit. “And... even in my slumbers... I am bedevilled by nightmares.”

In truth, I had been visited thrice by the dream of the cavern inhabited by a monstrous great toad. Each dream more sharp and pregnant than the last, leaving me shaken and fretful each time I sprang from its clutches.

“Tell me of your dream,” demanded Balthazar (though more out of boredom than concern, I suspected) and he leaned on an elbow half-toward me.

“It’s too fantastical to relate properly, or to comprehend. I am in a great wood, pursuing a beast, a large toad of sorts. I follow it into its hole, and, the thing speaks to me...”

Balthazar grunted. “The portent is one of good luck, I believe. The frog is a bringer of very good Fortune you know.”

“Not a frog, a
toad
. A great toad, huge, as big as a cur.” I grew frustrated at my remembrance of the visions.

“Ach, a
toad
you say. Well that’s a different matter, that’s true. Under no circumstances is a toad a harbinger of good Fortune. My
Oma
never suffered a toad to live while she were about. She said toads were the Devil’s eyes and ears, his spies upon the earth. Evil creatures. Poisonous. You need a charm, my friend, a charm of protection.”

I cursed. “Are you trying to put a fright to me? I only want to rid myself of these damned night vapours.”

“I speak honestly,” said Balthazar, more fully awake. He reached into his doublet and pulled out a tiny object that hung from a string. “See here, a ball that even though was red hot, pierced only my coat but not my person. I plucked it out of my shoulder with nary a wince. Such shot is charm against Misfortune if it be held close.”

He thrust the misshapen lump of lead out for me to better discern it. I peered at it briefly and sniffed dubiously.

“It was a ball meant for me but which did me no harm,” he whispered.

For a moment, I thought to pull out my gipsy charm and show Balthazar, yet something, I know not what, stayed my hand. I kept silent.

Balthazar put his finger aside his nose.