Entertaining Angels: A Christmas Novella, Page 2

  It sounded like perfect bliss. Solitude, and silence, and rest. Days of it - of being himself, of no pretence, no guard. Of doing as he willed, when he willed it, for as long as he chose.

  He had never known such freedom, never. And prim, frigid, solitary Russell - the Old Crophead himself, whose puritanical self-denial was an object of scorn and amusement the length of the new, libertine Court of Charles II - kicked off his boots and left them, dirty and tumbled, in the middle of the floor.

  He did not undress. Did not want to. He lay on the bed in all his travelling-dirt, grinning to himself. Closed his eyes, and wriggled his toes in his cheap, badly-knitted stockings - worn through at the heel, but what of it? Who was there to care, if he did not? - pulled the blankets over himself, and slept.

  And for the first few days, it was, indeed, bliss. The ale was good and they kept it well, and when his throat began to scratch the maid was kind enough to bring it warmed, and beat an egg into it, and that was enough. He meant to eat, and the food smelt good enough, but somehow when it came to it the thought of sitting down to meat made his raw throat close up, and so he did not. He asked if he might have another blanket, and they gave him another blanket. It was cold, black-cold and damp and sunless. It was not a thing of note that he might be cold.

  It was the fever that did it, for the maid came on him only half in his wits with it, and he talked so wild that it frightened her - of rosemary branches, and bloody swords, and sea-green ribbons - it was a brief fit, it was the calm before the storm, but it frightened her and so they kicked him out. A decent inn. No contagion here. Very sorry. Go and die in a ditch, sir, and take your money - the which we have soaked in Vinegar of Five Thieves, a sovereign remedy against what ails you - with you.

  The King - no, the other King, not this one, but the last one - hadn’t killed Russell, and neither Cromwell nor the Scots had managed it since. “Unbreakable,” he said to a passing tree, and giggled. The horse’s ears flicked, but the jade did not halt. Probably as well, for if he got off the brute he doubted he would have the strength to remount. Not sure where he was, for all woods were alike in the dark, and a frost was setting in hard as iron.

  -Cold, or wet? What did he prefer? His hands were cold, but - had he had gloves, some time, or had he dreamed that? Dropped them, maybe. He halted the sighing horse to look at his hand, almost translucent in the frost-light. (Was he already dead, then? Was that why he could see all his bones through his fish-belly white skin?)

  The road went ever on. There was a song, the lads had used to sing it, marching song. Not one of the godly ones. Russell had only ever got the hang of the godly ones - voice like a cracked vase, he’d tried singing with the company but they asked him to stop. Didn’t matter with the Psalms. No tune anyway. He raised what was left of his voice in the old Soldier’s Psalm, clattering the rooks out of the trees with his ragged shouts.

  He was ill. Knew that. Stopped the horse in a patch where the trees weren’t so gloomy and coughed till he heaved up bile and blood, steaming down the horse’s shoulder.

  (“Should have eaten,” he told himself firmly, and then, as if he were answering someone else’s question, “Well, it’s no good telling me now, is it?”)

  He wasn’t going to die. Be a bit stupid, falling off his horse and dying in an Essex ditch, wouldn’t it? He didn’t have a contagion. He had a tertian fever, that was all, the same wretched low fever he had brought back from Scotland, not a -

  Stupid. What was he doing, wandering in the woods while the rest of his company advanced without him? “Lucey,” he called, and his voice was a reedy whimper. He strained his eyes till the bare black branches wriggled in his vision, but his friend was gone on ahead, and the troop colours with him. “Luce, in all charity, will you wait for me, sir!”

  -No, that was wrong, he was not a hot young lieutenant any more, and Cornet Luce Pettitt had been left the service of the Army ten years.

  He knew that. Luce was gone, he was -

  There was a black horse, moving through the trees at a brisk canter at his side. He could hear it, and see the glint of frost-light on a man’s breastplate and the barrel of a carbine slung at his knee, and the thick fall of a tangled cinnamon-brown ponytail that hung down his back.

  He turned the hired horse’s head, and kicked the beast into a lumbering canter, hooves snapping dead wood. (Musket fire? To the right, and behind?)

  Of all things, Colonel Hollie Babbitt trusted his lieutenant to be as the sword in his right hand.

  Perhaps the dead rode, this bitter night. Perhaps Babbitt’s company of horse were reunited for this one last engagement.

  Perhaps he was dead with them.

  It was of no account.

  He set his spurs to the hired horse, and rode.