A Cruel Fate (Quick Reads 2014) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Also by Lindsey Davis

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Background

  Chapter 1: The King Captures Marlborough

  Chapter 2: The First Night

  Chapter 3: The Provost Marshal

  Chapter 4: Cirencester Falls Too

  Chapter 5: Jane Has to Look for Her Brother

  Chapter 6: Jane Reaches Oxford

  Chapter 7: Jane Learns More

  Chapter 8: Worse News for Jane

  Chapter 9: A Plea to the King

  Chapter 10: ‘We Shall All Die …’

  Chapter 11: The Plan of Escape

  Chapter 12: News – But None for Jane

  Chapter 13: Martin’s Life in Jane’s Hands

  Chapter 14: What Happened to Nat

  Chapter 15: A Long Night of Freedom

  Chapter 16: Martin’s Cruel Fate

  Chapter 17: Afterword

  Also by Lindsey Davis

  The Course of Honour

  Rebels and Traitors

  Master and God

  Falco: The Official Companion

  The Marcus Didius Falco Series

  The Silver Pigs

  Shadows in Bronze

  Venus in Copper

  The Iron Hand of Mars

  Poseidon’s Gold

  Last Act in Palmyra

  Time to Depart

  A Dying Light in Corduba

  Three Hands in the Fountain

  Two for the Lions

  One Virgin too Many

  Ode to a Banker

  A Body in the Bath House

  The Jupiter Myth

  The Accusers

  Scandal Takes a Holiday

  See Delphi and Die

  Saturnalia

  Alexandria

  Nemesis

  The Flavia Albia Series

  The Ides of April

  Enemies at Home (coming April 2014)

  About the Author

  Lindsey Davis is best known for her twenty book mystery series about Roman detective Marcus Didius Falco, and her new series about his adopted daughter, Flavia Albia.

  She has also written Rebels and Traitors, an epic novel set during the same time as A Cruel Fate.

  If you enjoyed this book and would like to hear more from Lindsey Davis, email [email protected] and request to be added to her newsletter mailing list.

  A CRUEL FATE

  Lindsey Davis

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

  Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Lindsey Davis 2014

  The right of Lindsey Davis to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 4447 6318 8

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  Background

  This story is set in the English Civil War, when King Charles I clashed with Parliament. They were at odds over money, religion and how the nation should be ruled. In the year 1642 this led to all-out war.

  The King’s soldiers were often called ‘cavaliers’ because the King had some fine troops of horsemen, or cavalry. Parliament’s troops were mostly amateurs who had joined up to fight for political and religious freedoms. They were sometimes known as ‘Roundheads’ because some had been trade apprentices, who were made to wear short hair.

  ********

  This story begins in December, four months after the war began. There has been one important battle, at Edgehill in the Midlands, which neither side really won. Now the armies are spending the winter trying to gain ground before the next year’s fighting.

  The King has fled from London and has made Oxford his base. Nearby towns that support Parliament are a real danger, so his soldiers will attack them. Places like Marlborough and Cirencester are in great danger. Most of the men who live in these country towns have never been soldiers, and they have no idea of what might happen when real fighting starts.

  Chapter 1

  The King Captures Marlborough

  ‘Who burns books? What men are so wicked?’

  As they loot the town, the King’s soldiers make a bonfire in the street. They break into John Hammond’s bookshop, then carry out armfuls of books, which they pile on the cobbles in rough heaps. They feed the bonfire with books for three hours. Martin Watts, who works for Hammond, watches them, amazed and helpless. He loses his doubts about the war, and decides which side he supports.

  When he can no longer bear the sight of burning books, Martin tries to protest. A soldier strikes him over the head with a gun and knocks him down. Then he is taken prisoner. He is an unarmed member of the public. He cannot believe this is happening.

  ********

  Martin is twenty-seven – a lean figure, neither handsome nor ugly. He has always lived here in Wiltshire. He has little knowledge of war, but as he waits for the King’s soldiers to deal with him, he understands that the attack was bound to happen. Marlborough is less than thirty miles from Oxford. The town strongly supports Parliament and has raised money and troops. The King cannot risk having enemies so close. Besides, in Marlborough there are many wealthy homes and a thriving market. The armies on both sides badly need funds. The King’s soldiers have come to remove the danger posed by this rebel town, but also to look for booty and fun.

  For days people have been afraid of what was coming. The river would protect them on the south side, but new earthworks were hastily built to guard the north. The moment they dreaded came on the eighth of December. After a dark night with stormy weather, four thousand of the King’s soldiers (known as royalists) arrived. Their great cannon tried to pound the town, but the houses lay out of their range.

  At first the royalists tried to make a grand show of their strength. They wanted to awe the town, in order to avoid a battle.

  They captured a spy. Instead of hanging him, they paraded troops before him. Then they spared him. He was told to return home and warn people how large and gallant the King’s army was – and how pointless it would be to resist.

  The first real action was fitful, outside the town, as the royalists tried to break in to the town and the defenders fought to keep them out. Some royalists were killed in a short fight with muskets and pistols. Then a fiercer exchange of fire lasted for three hours, during which time not one defender fell. A barn full of the town’s musketeers was set alight by a shell. Then a house behind it started to burn too. The rebels retreated. The royalists overtook them. Horsemen charged in at both ends of the town. Some royalists reached the main streets by bursting through a passage in one of the great inns. In triumph they cried out, ‘A town! A town for King Charles!’

  As long as they could, the rebels shot out of windows and defended barriers in the streets. Women helped to put out the fires, urging their husbands to keep fighting. But royalist foot-soldiers were soon clearing the barriers. Once the enemy wer
e in the town, all discipline failed. The market traders, who had been given guns, threw them into the river and made a run for it. People were killed. There was noise, clouds of smoke, blood and bodies everywhere.

  When the fighting ended, the King’s men began to rob and destroy. They set more buildings on fire. They terrified people by invading their homes – slashing tables, breaking windows, stabling their horses in parlours. Property was stolen or simply wrecked. The happy royalists carried off barrels of oil, bottles of wine, vinegar, brandy, treacle, spices and dried fruit. One soldier set alight a shop filled with oil, hemp and tar. A neighbour put out the flames. Others tried to fire a draper’s shop, but that blaze was quenched too. And they burned books. They wanted to shock. They wanted to terrorise.

  ********

  Martin Watts surprised himself by making his protest about the books. And now he is forced to stand and wait, under guard, until the royalists have time to attend to their prisoners.

  ********

  Face to face for the first time with the King’s troops, Martin sees that some of them are half starved. No wonder they are so keen to take plunder. Many march without shoes or stockings. Others have no coats. People in the town who are wearing good clothes are made to exchange them with the soldiers. Those who think all cavaliers are rich noblemen in velvet cloaks are wrong. These ragged men are just hungry thieves – robbers let loose upon the people in the name of the King.

  The royalists break into the town hall. Again, this pains Martin, a man who values documents. He watches in horror as they rummage through chests full of records, old charters and deeds, which they toss into the streets or carry off. At the same time, they load waggons with cheese and other goods to send to their base in Oxford. Fifty-three houses are burned down, together with seven barns full of corn that they cannot carry with them. The cavaliers steal goods to the value of £50,000 – an enormous sum – plus arms, ammunition and four cannon. They also take more prisoners.

  Martin Watts watches as John Franklin, the town’s Member of Parliament, is removed from his place with the others and dragged to a tree. Two of the King’s commanders – Lord Digby and Lord Wilmott – threaten to hang the MP from the tree unless he tells them where his money is hidden. Martin does not see the end of this, but later Mr Franklin is back safe among the prisoners.

  ********

  One hundred and twenty men, including Martin, are herded away. They leave their town behind, burned and smoking. Its people are stripped of all they own. Many are dead. It is a scene of misery. No one in quiet Marlborough has ever known such fear and grief.

  On a dark, wintry night, the captives are driven on foot through fords and standing water. They are wet, cold and afraid. Before they set out to Oxford all of them are forced into one nasty, stinking stable. It already contains horses. One of the horses is dead.

  Next morning, they wait in vain for food. Taken out of the stable, they are tied together in pairs by their arms. Then they are forced along like rogues and thieves, up to their knees in mud, along the badly kept road. A friend of Martin’s sees this sad group passing. The royalists prevent him approaching. Another man who tries to speak to them is treated more cruelly – he is taken prisoner too and brought with them.

  After a few miles, at a village called Lambourne, a kind man brings them food, but they are allowed no time to stop and eat it.

  No one has had anything to drink. Martin has a violent thirst. When his comrades try to take up water from the road to sip, he sees them beaten in the face. The cavaliers will not even allow the men to pick up ice. As a child, Martin used to suck ice from puddles, learning to avoid the mud at the bottom of the piece. It was a game; he never thought he might do it out of desperation.

  The journey takes four days. It is like this all the way.

  Their numbers swell as the royalists pick up other captives. Men who are ploughing fields are taken, and men who look out from their houses simply to see the troops go by. Sometimes the King’s men claim that these people are Roundheads, or that they are known to have fought at Marlborough. More often they do not bother with excuses. As the group travels, the royalists steal horses, fodder for horses, and food for themselves. They take away anything they like the look of. They cause havoc by stabling their horses in barns of good corn so that the grain is trampled on and spoiled.

  ********

  By the time they reach Oxford, the prisoners are almost too weak to walk. Oxford is an army camp now, full of noise and packed with people. The colleges have been taken over by the King’s court and his soldiers. Houses burst with extra tenants.

  As the men from Marlborough stagger through the streets, soldiers, scholars and people of the town come out to watch. They shout insults. ‘Roundheads! Rogues! Traitors!’ Some even strike the helpless captives.

  For the first time, Martin learns how it feels to be hated. It teaches him to hate in return. New times, new experiences. He has never been a soldier, he has never been abused. He has never suffered as he is about to suffer.

  They enter the town at the West Gate. Oxford Castle looms over them. It is six hundred years old and stands beside a low man-made mound. The Keep is showing its age and a large crack runs down it, but the place hums with the noise of soldiers and prisoners, and is still formidable. In times of peace it has been used as the county courts and jail. Now it will be where the King locks up those who have defied him.

  King Charles has put an officer in charge, a brute called William Smith. He is free to act as he likes, with no one to oversee him. He loves the power he holds. He uses it cruelly.

  When they arrive at the castle, the Marlborough men are sent up a narrow, winding stair into Saint George’s Tower.

  Now their nightmare begins.

  Chapter 2

  The First Night

  Martin is astonished by what happens at the castle. He argues with his captors, saying he is not a soldier, he has never been a soldier, this is all a mistake. They ignore him. He tries again, asking who is in charge. They laugh at him.

  These guards are unfair and cruel in a way Martin Watts has never known before. He grew up in a gentle country town, and until now was an innocent.

  When he is forced, with the other captives, up into the tower, he thinks it is another mistake. Surely the soldiers have failed to see there is no space for so many prisoners? Nearly two hundred of them are crammed in. They have shelter, but nothing more. Nothing at all. There is one room they can use, about six yards square. Those who cannot get in have to stay on the stairs. It is terribly cold. This is a hard winter and the old tower is freezing. A biting wind whistles in through the narrow slits from which arrows were fired at enemies in the years before guns.

  Martin begins to fear that they will never have any food or water. Weak, famished and parched, he is afraid he will soon faint from thirst. Finally they are given a penny loaf each and a pot of beer. The beer is so bad, water would have been better.

  He has managed to squeeze himself into the room. There is no fire, and no lights burn. They have to sleep on bare boards. Crammed in together with no space to move, men lie on top of each other. Slowly it dawns on Martin that this is how he will live for a long time – if he can survive.

  Some men are so tired they fall asleep, with snores and grunts. Others moan, in pain from wounds. Will a surgeon be sent to tend them? Clearly not.

  Unable to sleep, Martin lies awake filled with fear. He grows very quiet within himself. He does not know it, but he is in shock. He hears in his head the terrible noise of what happened at Marlborough. Wild images of his fallen town torment his mind.

  He relives the siege. He sees again the piles of books being fed to the flames. He sees his own rage, remembers running to stop the cavaliers, dragging at a soldier’s arm in protest. He is clubbed with a gun. He falls to the ground, which may have saved his life. Now he is at the castle, his cold fingers can feel dried blood on his scalp and a great bump. He knows it could have been worse. Two hundred people were
killed in Marlborough that day. Most of them were people he knew.

  Martin loves books. He owns none, for he is a poor man, but he has read them in the bookshop. Never again. When the King’s men destroyed Hammond’s stock and burned his shop, the shop where Martin worked, they stole Martin’s livelihood. Only now does this properly dawn on him.

  What is to happen to him now?

  One change has started. Already Martin Watts is growing harder than he was before the siege. While the civil war was brewing over the past few years, he was reading news-sheets that were sold in the shop. These told him why Parliament is at war with the King. Martin has followed the reasons and believes open rebellion had to happen. He hates unjust acts and unfair taxes. He wants his rights, the freedom to make of his life whatever he can. He wants liberty to think what he chooses – the right to worship God in his own way. When those harsh guards pushed him into this freezing tower, they made sure that if he ever leaves, he will be one more rebel against them.

  Some of the men with him in the tower are thinking of their families, but Martin has no one. His brothers and sisters died young; his parents are dead now too. As he shivers in Oxford Castle, he has never felt so alone in the world.

  He is not married. Knowing he cannot afford a wife, he has kept to himself and no young woman has caught his eye. But this means he has nobody outside who will miss him. No one will want to find out where he has been locked up. No one will try to get him out. No one will pay a ransom for him.

  Here he is. Here he must stay. One penny loaf and a pot of beer – on the days when the guards provide it. Otherwise, nothing.

  Chapter 3

  The Provost Marshal

  The man in charge of the prison is called William Smith. His rank is captain. So he is a junior officer of the King’s – junior, and yet he holds great power. Too much power.

  He has another title, Provost Marshal. In an army, the Provost Marshal has the special duty of keeping order among the soldiers. Snug in the castle, Smith does not concern himself with that duty.