The Ravens’ Banquet Read online

  Tollhagen remained unconvinced. “You had best recant or I’ll bring your wife in here as well.”

  Christoph tossed another rope over a rafter beam and tied one end to the merchant’s hands and feet. I saw then what it was that they prepared to do. For his sins, this man was to receive strappado, an old torture favoured of the Dagoes and Jesuits. He would be hauled up like a spider, the weight of his body pulling at his limbs and arching his backbone like a strung longbow.

  Tollhagen ordered me to fetch some of the troopers to haul on the rope and I eagerly made for the door. Now I did what I was bid, and told three of the comrades who were busying themselves with the merchant’s silks suits, to get to the barn and help the Cornet.

  But I didn’t join them. I would take my chances of a thrashing from Tollhagen but I could not stand to watch them torture a man who had done nothing.

  I wandered into the hall again, only to be met with the scene of Balthazar rogering the merchant’s wife upon the table and cheered on in his endeavours by the others, one of whom held her arms pinned as she struggled in terrified silence. I backed out again into the courtyard only to be met by the screams of the merchant from within the barn. I stumbled, my legs that had carried me into battle so sturdily, now weak as a babe’s. My stomach rolling, my manhood shrivelled, I leaned upon my horse and placed my head upon its neck. All had turned from honey to turd. And more the pity, I was captive to this dreadful Enterprise for its duration. I could not return to Hamburg or to England without some honour, rank, or fortune. And just as a gallon of wine provides pleasure, so too does the morning bring its payment. Here was mine.

  The cries had ceased. Tollhagen’s voice echoed out from across the courtyard. “The cock has crowed! To the well!”

  Christoph, watched by the others, hauled up the treasure from the Stygian depths, the creaking winch groaning its complaint under its burden. The comrades urged him on and another joined him at the handle to hasten the task. Slowly the prize rose to the top and half a dozen hands reached over to pull the bucket out.

  Tollhagen gestured to Corporal Pentz who shoved the others away, drew out his dagger, and upended the bucket. Two muslin sacks spilled out along with the water. He neatly cut the ties on them and ripped them asunder.

  “Silver or gold?” demanded Tollhagen from his vantage apart the others, his cloak pulled up tight.

  “Silver it be,” replied Pentz, his disappointment ill concealed.

  “Aye, well enough to compensate every man for his work. Bring it along sharply.” And we assembled in the courtyard, the comrades bundling their booty and preparing it for horseback. Someone set a pile of curtains upon my horse’s cruppers and I set to tying them to the saddleback. My eye moved to the barn door that lay ajar. Had they finished him or did he yet live?

  I led my horse slowly by its reins towards the barn, careful to make sure that my movements had not attracted the attention of the Cornet – or Christoph.

  Walking inside, in the failing light I could spy a large figure motionless upon the ground, a faint cloud of condensed breath issuing forth from one end, weakly. I moved closer to the merchant and plucking up my courage leaned over the body. He was broken backwards, like some straw-filled scarecrow, still bound, one open eye regarding me. His breaths were shallow and rasping.

  And the moving lips of his swollen and purpled face mocked me. Mocked me for the coward that I was for not saving him from his fate. The one open eye fixed me full and he spoke quietly, in one breath.

  “You have killed me, sir.”

  And the words, though softly spoken, carried both anger and confusion. I backed away from him, now doubly shamed. I was too afraid to finish the job and transport him from his misery. God knows, it is a service that I should have afforded him.

  But I was a coward. I turned and made for the door as fast as my shaking pegs would carry me. And as I entered the crisp air again, a maelstrom of dead leaves whipped up by the sharp breeze, enveloped me. Leaving that barn, I had left a barren womb only to find myself born into an even harsher world of cruelty and avarice.

  Tollhagen was shouting for the squadron to mount up and I thought about the others who were not to be seen: the wife and the three servants. I decided that I did not wish to learn of their fate and so kept my mouth shut as I climbed into the saddle.

  Pentz trotted past me as we formed up on the Cornet, every rider loaded down with new treasure.

  “So, we have found the Imperial baggage train after all!” he laughed. “Aye,” sang out Cornet Tollhagen, for all to hear. “And that is exactly what you all shall say to any who dare ask!”

  VI

  Veritas

  May 1626

  Tower Hill

  Seventh of July 1645

  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.

  BY APRIL’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.”