Free William Falkland 01 - The Royalist by S.J. Deas Page A

to how any man might worship his God.
    I pocketed the rosary and determined to say nothing.

CHAPTER 6
     
    A little way past the church we reached the town square. There were more tents here, formed in rings around a pyramid of steps where a market cross used to sit. I’d seen the same thing in my journeys before Newgate. Even a market cross was considered an icon by the most ardent of the Puritans. Wherever they roamed, whether with the New Model or one of the militias before it, they tore them down and smashed them up, revelling in the anguished looks of the people who watched. It had been a long time since I cared for gods and devils and heavens and hells. For me, a cross was just a cross, nothing more, nothing less, but I could never look at young men tearing up objects somebody else thought sacred and think it godly work.
    Some of the tents we passed spilled light. There were soldiers inside, lounging or playing the games of stones I used to play. Most were young men. Many would never grow old and I felt a surge of pity for them. I’d shed my youth by the time I first started soldiering and age had better prepared me for its horrors. When they saw us trot past, some came out to watch. A few saw Fairfax and cheered but yet again I saw eyes fixed upon me with strangely mixed expressions: of awe and wonder and now and then of fear. ‘It is him?’ I heard one of them ask.
    ‘Who do they think I am?’ I asked Fairfax. ‘What have you told them?’
    ‘Nothing at all. You’re an intelligencer. One does not shout the arrival of an intelligencer. Though one can’t account for rumour . . .’ He seemed less perplexed than vexed. I fancied he knew the answer to my question but rather wished he didn’t.
    We came around the square and into an older part of town. There was a high street, broad and cobbled, and up and down it lights in the houses. I wondered how many were the folk of Crediton and how many houses had been requisitioned for soldiers. I’d not heard it was a Cromwell tactic to drive people from their homes, but I didn’t know about Fairfax and I shuddered to guess. One thing was certain – there would barely be a house in Crediton that wasn’t bunking soldiers from floor to ceiling, whether the locals had stayed or not.
    At the far end of this street loomed a tall horse chestnut, branches heavy with snow. Underneath was a scaffold. As we closed upon it I saw the shadow of a hanged man dangling from the biggest bough. He looked a wretched sight and I fancied he had been up there for weeks. Half of him was frozen and the birds would have difficulty taking what was left until he thawed, but the other half of him was gone. He had no eyes, and not even his mother would tell who he was.
    We slowed as we came around the dead man and I gave him a wider berth than Fairfax, who seemed not even to notice. My fellows used to say it was a curious thing about me, that I’d killed so many men and still cringed from a dead body. In my own mind, the strange part was the killing, not the other.
    Fairfax had trotted ahead of me. When he realised we were apart he slowed and looked round. ‘Is this it?’ I asked. ‘One of the boys?’ I could see my words as fog in front of my mouth.
    ‘In the middle of town, Master Falkland? I’d reckoned on you being cleverer than that.’
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘You’d be better asking Master Cromwell.’ He brought his horse back to mine. Together we peered up at the dangling man. ‘He was a pikeman. He ravished the daughter of one of the merchants here soon after we came in for the winter. What you see is the result . . .’
    ‘Cromwell did this?’ I asked, a little too brusquely.
    ‘Discipline is important in any army, Master Falkland. I dare say you know that. How does a soldier make his living?’
    I cocked my head at him. ‘In your New Model he’s paid, is he not?’
    ‘So he is; but in any other army he makes his living from the aftermath of battle, from loot and