Brothers' Fury by Giles Kristian

Author:Giles Kristian [Kristian, Giles]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Historical
ISBN: 9780593066164
Google: CByJC4CgM-YC
Amazon: 0593066162
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-05-22T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

WHEN TOM HAD come exhausted and stinking to the foot-bridge across the Cherwell north-east of Oxford he had thought The Scot had gone, ridden east into the dawn, and thus that he was a dead man. But then he had seen shapes moving in the gloom, men and horses milling and the glint of helmets and tack against the silver tideline of the coming daybreak.

‘It’s done?’ The Scot had asked simply, whistling a signal for his sentries to come in from their positions in the scrub to mount up.

‘It’s done,’ Tom had replied, pulling himself up into the saddle and scanning the faces around him. Trencher’s face was a slab of granite and in a heartbeat Tom knew what was coming.

‘Weasel,’ Trencher said. ‘Heard it, didn’t see it. The place was crawling with dragoons.’

‘There was nothing to be done,’ Penn put in, holding Tom’s eye. Beside him Dobson bristled as though the violence in him clamoured to be unleashed in spite of there being no recourse now other than to escape Oxford before the King’s men rounded them up or flayed them with lead and steel. ‘But you know Weasel,’ Penn said. ‘He’ll swallow his own tongue before he tells those damn nigits anything.’

‘He’ll bloody swing is what he’ll do,’ Dobson said, grimacing. ‘After what we did to their precious printing press they’ll make him dance.’

‘Shut your mouth, Dobson,’ Trencher gnarred, giving the bigger man a murderous glare. Dobson shrugged casually but said no more. Yet Tom knew that Dobson was right for all that he had not wanted to hear it. Weasel, with whom Tom had shared ale and food and ridden into the fray at Edgehill, who had been his brother of the blade, would now die strangled and pissing down his leg at the end of a rope. If the Cavaliers did not bring him down before death and cut him open and pluck out his still throbbing organs.

There was nothing Tom could do, nothing he could have done differently, that would have changed the outcome for Weasel. Or if there was there was nothing to be gained by raking the ashes of it now as they rode south-east, the wind in their faces, across a land stirring towards the new day. After some fifteen or so miles they made camp in woodland near the village of Watlington. The Scot’s men shared their food with them and lent them rain cloaks to sleep under and some time later they woke stiff and damp and moaning to Tom that he still stank like a sewer. Then they rode east twenty miles into the rolling Chiltern Hills and the village of Great Kingshill, where they rendezvoused with a column of horse coming from London bound for the new Parliamentary headquarters at Thame. The day was bright and warm for the time of year and the sun made a silver ribbon of a river in the valley to the south as they watched The Scot make his introductions to a Colonel Bartholomew Haggett.

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