A Cruel Fate (Quick Reads 2014) Read online

  From time to time, the rules of war are read out to the army. It has even been known for the King to have soldiers hanged for stealing from the public – to show that His Majesty respects the rules of war. On the whole, though, discipline is not prized in the King’s army.

  At the King’s prison in Oxford, conditions are more grim than most. But Martin Watts does not know that. He has led a quiet life and never committed any crime. He has no idea what life is like when people are locked up. He will learn quickly.

  At this time a jailer is required to supply only the most basic things to keep his prisoners alive. It is said that the King allows sixpence a day per man, and maybe King Charles believes he does. But Smith only spends one penny farthing – a penny loaf of bread and one drink of weak beer each. In all jails prisoners have to pay extra for anything else. Laundry, better food, a fire … in bad prisons you must even pay for a place near the fire. Smith does not allow any of that. He gives captured officers slightly better treatment than the ordinary soldiers, but even officers are not allowed to buy comforts.

  The men from Marlborough begin to hear things about William Smith. They do not like what they hear. All too soon, they see for themselves.

  One loaf a day is all they have to eat for many weeks. Some go two days at a time with no food at all. They still have only bare floorboards to lie on. A little straw is laid down, but that is where they must piss and shit. There are no latrines or chamber pots. The filth is so deep it comes over their shoes.

  They all grow very weak. Many fall sick. There is a great risk that jail fever will kill them – the feared ‘bloody flux’, which is probably typhus. One man starves to death. As he draws towards his end, others appeal to Smith to allow some help. The officers beg him to ease the invalid’s distress. He refuses and the man dies.

  He is just the first.

  ********

  A few days later Smith has the men taken down to the castle yard. He makes them stand there while he reads out an oath he wants them all to sign. He asks them to swear they will change sides and support the King. The prisoners refuse. It is against their beliefs. They bravely reply that they have already sworn to support ‘King and Parliament’ – which is the rebels’ way of claiming that they are loyal to proper government.

  At that, Smith flies into a huge rage. Martin Watts wonders if the King has ordered Smith to force the prisoners to submit. The angry jailer calls them damned rogues and traitors. He beats them with a stick as he drives them back up into the tower.

  Now his rule becomes even harsher. He has permitted no one to bring them food or clean shirts, but he discovers a hole in the wall, through which things have been delivered by well-wishers. He has the hole blocked up, and forbids people on pain of death to bring anything else. If friends send any food into the castle for the prisoners, his soldiers steal and eat it.

  So great is the men’s misery that the officers and gentlemen who are imprisoned with them, and who have money, decide to donate a weekly sum of money. The collection is intended to buy bread and beer for the poorer men. Without this act of charity, half the men would be dead. Smith hears what is going on, so he stops it and threatens death to the steward who had been put in charge of the cash.

  A short time later, one of the King’s generals, Sir James Pennimen, needs more soldiers. Once again the Marlborough men are taken down to the castle yard. On their way, they pass a room where some gentlemen have washed at a basin. Parched prisoners rush to this basin and cannot be restrained from drinking the dirty slops. Down in the castle yard, they defy the jailers again as they lap standing rainwater from the tops of barrels.

  The royalists go through the same process as before. They demand that the captives change sides and fight for the King. Again the prisoners refuse. Pennimen curses them. He threatens to withhold food from them entirely, saying, ‘Those who will not work, shall not eat.’ Smith joins in with angry oaths, then chases them back up the tower, beating them with his stick.

  Smith decides the prisoners will stay on their cruel tiny food allowance. He tells them, ‘I will make you shit as small as rats!’

  ********

  Smith never stops his efforts to persuade them to change sides. The man is so desperate to win them round, that it seems as if he will be in trouble if he fails.

  He tries again. He calls them back and lines them up in the yard. As he argues the case for them to change sides, he even quotes from the Bible. According to Smith, none of them will find salvation unless they join the King’s army.

  They still refuse. He rages. Knowing now what he is like, they wait in dread to see how he will punish them.

  ********

  Monday the sixth of February is a black day. Smith takes forty of the prisoners away from the castle. Martin has the bad luck to be one of them.

  Smith sends them to an even worse prison, a local lock-up called Bridewell. To Martin’s horror, they are put underground in a dungeon. There is so little room they cannot move or even sit. The fetid place is filthy and stinks. There is nowhere for them to piss or shit, so each man has to do that where he stands. The floor does not drain. Soon they are standing up to their ankles in their own piss and shit.

  Captain Smith keeps them there for the next four weeks. That is, he keeps those who survive.

  ********

  As he tries to bear this misery, Martin prays to the Lord. He thinks bitterly about the monster, Smith. Given power, Provost Marshal Smith uses it with no restraint. Why should he? He behaves like this because nobody stops him. He calls it the fortune of war. The more he gets away with cruelty, the more he believes he has the King’s consent. He convinces himself that this is what his royal master wants. Maybe that is true.

  Either way, Smith has no fear of god or man. He has no conscience. Martin Watts begins to see the King in the same way. King Charles, too, views his subjects as less than human – he believes God gave him the right to rule, and he can do so in whatever way he chooses.

  Chapter 4

  Cirencester Falls Too

  In February, another rebel town is in trouble.

  Armies try not to fight in winter. There is a reason for that. When Nat Afton is captured by the King’s men at Cirencester, he starts to find out why.

  ********

  To King Charles, Cirencester is important because it lies on the way to the rebel centre at Gloucester, which he wants to capture. Cirencester is rich – a wool town, with many merchants trading in cloth.

  The town committed to Parliament’s side early in the conflict – last August. At that time a lively scene took place when a royalist, Lord Chandos, tried to raise troops for the King. The ordinary people were against King Charles and his high-handed style of ruling, although the gentry and clergymen remained loyal to him.

  Lord Chandos met a hostile reception. People urged him to promise to uphold the freedom of Parliament. Chandos tried not to commit himself. A rowdy mob gathered, and Chandos became so nervous that he departed without fuss. He left his coach behind in the town centre, as a decoy. The coach was torn apart in protest the next day.

  Nat Afton helped to wreck the coach. He enjoyed it so much, he joined up to fight as a rebel. Always a little feckless, he cared nothing for politics, but he hoped to get a uniform, new shoes and free rations.

  ********

  A few months later, Nat starts to regret this. True, he has a warm coat, bread and cheese and beer every day, and a knapsack to hold the Bible they have given him (though he has sold the Bible secretly). In January he feels concerned when Prince Rupert, King Charles’s glamorous German nephew, appears near the town with his soldiers. Rupert is clearly planning an attack. Nat has no wish to fight. He thinks about running away, but is too lazy to do anything about it. In any case, the Prince then leaves.

  But Prince Rupert comes back in February, with about six thousand troops – a small army. Nat feels nervous, but he finds himself caught up in the excitement. He sees cannon set up and extra soldiers brought in. He w
onders what fighting will be like. When he says this to his sister Jane, she tells him straight that it might be better not to find out.

  Jane is the sensible one in their family.

  ********

  Before the royalist troops can enter the town, they have to capture the heavily defended Barton Mill. First they cause confusion by setting fire to barns, haystacks and houses. The rebels try to fend them off, firing their two cannon. But the royalists break through a barrier of wood, carts and chains that has been set up at the bottom of a hill. Then Prince Rupert and his cavalry thunder into the town, following the line of Black Jack Street into the marketplace.

  The cavaliers shoot with pistols at any rebels they see, as they make a clear path for their foot-soldiers to follow. In return, shots are fired at the royalists from houses. A tailor who is holding the rebels’ banner is shot dead by a sniper. Three hundred other defenders are killed. Both Barton Mill and the Spitalgate have been overrun. More and more royalist troops now stream through the streets, while the rebels flee over the water meadows and river.

  The assault takes an hour and a half. Afterwards there is serious looting and all houses belonging to those who resisted the Prince – and even some belonging to royalists – are burned. The victors seize over a thousand prisoners, including two puritan ministers. They take them to a field to be reviewed by the royalist commanders. The prisoners are stripped of their shoes and stockings, hats and doublets. Gentlemen have their britches stolen. All shivering, and some of them wounded too, they are locked in the parish church overnight. Nat is one of them.

  The prisoners are marched off the next day. Like the men from Marlborough, they have a horrible, bitter-cold journey. At least a small piece of cheese is given to each of them before they start. For two days they are driven along, tied together with match cord. At Burford they receive a piece of bread each, but only after they have waited for hours on a hill in freezing weather. Most are barefoot and with bare legs. An icy wind howls around them and they are standing in snow.

  At Witney they stay overnight in another church. Finally they come to Oxford. The King himself rides out to view them, bringing his two young sons, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York. So these two beautifully dressed young boys are taught to jeer at distressed subjects, watching them being driven along like dogs or horses, not men.

  Nat Afton sees now why a war against the King is being fought.

  ********

  Held in Oxford Castle, the new prisoners from Cirencester are taken out daily to help build great earth walls around Oxford to protect the city and the King.

  Within a month Cirencester humbly submits to the King, and apologises for rebelling. The town and the gentry from surrounding areas are fined the huge sum of £4,000 a month, plus £3,000 straight away to pay for the upkeep of the King’s garrison. Cirencester is given a royalist governor.

  After the town apologises, most of its prisoners are freed and allowed to go home. Over a thousand of the captured rebels have now taken the oath to support the King. But sixteen men have refused.

  Nat Afton is one who refuses. He is one of the men who do not return home.

  Chapter 5

  Jane Has to Look for Her Brother

  Nat Afton has three sisters. Two of them, Mary and Lucy, are married with children. Mary is due to give birth to another baby any day. When Nat fails to arrive home with the other men, Mary and Lucy put their heads together. They inform the third sister that they have enough to do. So, it must be Jane’s task to find out where their brother is.

  Jane Afton is a spinster in both senses of that word: she is a single woman and she spins wool for a living. The cloth merchants around Cirencester use home-workers to prepare their thread. Jane and her sisters do this – but Jane has the bad luck to be a spinster in the other sense too. Since she is now twenty-three, in the eyes of the world Jane is an old maid. Only when she feels very low in spirits does she think ruefully that she has stayed single because she is the sensible one.

  All the Afton girls work hard, because they are poor people and they have to. When they go to church on Sundays, they hope the parson will speak loudly in his sermon. If not, they risk falling asleep from weariness. For the two wives, having a second income takes the pinch out of very tight home budgets. With what she earns, Jane is able to rent a tiny cottage. One up, one down. Smaller than many stables.

  Jane would rather live alone than be a burden on one of her sisters – which, everyone knows, means they will make her a household drudge. But soon she will have to face that because, if she keeps living alone, people will think she is not just an old maid but an old witch. That would be too dangerous.

  Like her sisters, Jane is a shrewd, neat woman with a country complexion and a town wit. She can tell beans from peas. She is strong enough to scrub a pot clean even after a stew has stuck in it. She is a determined woman who will bother to do that.

  Her steadiness will be vital when she tries to find out what has happened to Nat.

  ********

  Like many brothers, at all times in history, Nat is not quite the brother a sister would choose. Still not twenty, he is a light lad. He had a trade once. It only lasted seven months. He worked for a dyer and could have become a dyer himself, if he had tried. He thought he had tried. The dyer thought differently. It all went wrong, although Nat assured his sisters it was not his fault. They knew him, so they knew better.

  For Nat to have volunteered as a soldier was no real surprise. This was just one in a series of jobs he drifts in and out of. Jane had expected him to tire of it. She thought Nat would prefer to wander through life, spending times with a beer tankard in one tavern or another. He is not a hard drinker. He just likes to take life easy. If ever he is in trouble, he knows one of his sisters will see him through it. Mary and Lucy’s husbands may grumble and forbid them to help, but Nat will move on to the next sister. He can always rely on Jane.

  Well, Jane is a spinster, an old maid. What else does she have to do, but look out for her feckless brother? Nat, who has sweet honest charm, even used to point this out when he came to cadge off her.

  ********

  As a soldier, Nat is half-hearted. He has no idea of the politics in this civil war. Oliver Cromwell, the most famous rebel general, will draw a bleak contrast between the troops on the two sides, saying: ‘I had rather have a plain, russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows, than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else.’

  Men of humble birth may sometimes become officers, but Nat Afton will never be a captain. He will not aspire to it. He wants to lie low. It is a great surprise to Jane that he has even been taken prisoner. In her heart, she knows it was more like Nat to run away when Prince Rupert’s soldiers attacked.

  Yet in a way Nat fits Oliver Cromwell’s description. Cromwell will also admit that not all rebel soldiers are good, worthy men. ‘Your troopers are most of them old decayed servingmen and tapsters,’ he says of his own side, while of the King’s, ‘their troopers are gentlemen’s sons, younger sons and persons of quality …’

  This could be said of Nat. He really is a tapster, a man who turns the beer tap in a pub. If landlords give him a few pence for it, he serves beer and ale from the barrel in the taverns where he drinks. He is not ‘decayed’ as Cromwell calls it, not old, lame and toothless – but that will come. Even Jane, who loves him although she can see his faults, knows what will happen. Nat will go downhill at an early age.

  The right wife could stop it and save him, say their sisters Mary and Lucy. This is wishful thinking. Jane, being the sensible one, thinks that living with Nat would be too hard on a woman. But she keeps this to herself. Spinsters are not allowed to have opinions on married life.

  Nat Afton has caused his sisters worry since he was a child, and Jane has borne most of the burden. So now she accepts quietly that she must go to Oxford, looking for him. She has never been out of her home county before. Her sisters show their support by fin
ding the money to pay a carrier to take her. Families must rally round.

  Jane has no idea what she has taken on.

  Chapter 6

  Jane Reaches Oxford

  When Jane Afton arrives at Oxford, she begins to learn what war means. She is shocked. She does not expect people to be stopped from going into the town. But this is now the King’s capital city. He has made it safe from attack, and work is still in hand. A Dutch engineer, an expert who knows about sieges, is here to oversee that. Ordinary life has changed.

  Huge earth walls, patrolled by guards, circle the city. Watchtowers look over all the countryside around. Bridges are barred. Even the River Thames is blocked with booms that have been laid across the water. Some of the walls were built by students. People of the town are supposed to help, though they often refuse to turn up and are fined. After the Cirencester prisoners were pardoned and returned home, Jane heard from them how they were forced to take up picks and shovels to do this hard labour. Maybe Nat took part. He would not like that.

  Sentries question anyone who wants to enter Oxford. Entering through the military lines is the first task Jane faces. You need a pass, and she does not have one. To issue a pass, the King’s soldiers have to know you. Even then, they must like your reason for coming. Asking about a prisoner of war will mark you as one of the enemy. Jane sees at once that it is better not to ask. Better not to make them notice her.

  She starts to use her wits. Food is needed here in great quantities. Anyone supplying food gets special treatment. In the end, Jane makes friends with an old woman from a farm who brings butter to sell, and slips past the guards with her.

  ********

  The high Mound, with the broken-down old Keep alongside, makes the castle easy to find. She makes her way to Saint George’s Tower, which is also easy to see. Jane looks up in fear at this square, grey, stone building, which was built to scare away enemies with its size and strength. Is her brother somewhere high up inside? If so, what pitiful state has he been reduced to? The Cirencester men brought home grim stories of Marshal Smith’s cruelty. Already nervous, Jane hurries to ask about her brother.