Page 54 of Dawnlands

“How is it they don’t know we’re here?” demanded Charles Speke, leader of Speke’s Ragged Horse.

Monmouth smiled. “A good man, and a true churchman, saw them set up their camp, the officers commanding quarters in the houses at Westonzoyland, the men raiding the inns for ale and food and setting camp in the fields just outside. This man, Godfrey, came to tell me of them, and he’s going to lead us through the wetlands.”

A shepherd holding a well-worn crook ducked his head and nodded at the company.

“We’re going to circle the royal camp,” Monmouth promised. “Just as we did at Philipsnorton. The infantry will engage them at the front and the cavalry will circle round and attack from their rear, like we did then. They’re behind a drainage canal, called the Bussex Rhine; they’re trapped in a bow of the water. The cavalry will drive them forward into the river, and the infantry will finish them as they struggle out on the bank. Your task”—his dark gaze raked the men sitting in the pews, leaning against the pillars at the back of the church—“your task is to draw your men up to attack, in darkness, through wet and rough ground, in complete and total silence. Can you do it?”

“Aye.”

“Yes, sire.”

“God bless you! Yes!”

The muted answers echoed round the church as if the officers were observing silence already.

Monmouth’s face was bright with confidence. “Very well then. Break camp at ten. You’ll hear the bell. There’s a moon but it’s cloudy, and we should be invisible. March in silence! Complete silence! And may God be with us as we do His work!”

Some men said “Amen,” some said a muted hurrah. Ned bowed his head in prayer for a moment and went out to find Rowan.

She had lit a fire for him and his messmates, and was stewing a soup in the embers. A loaf of bread sat on a tin plate with a big wheel of cheese. She looked up as Ned came towards her, noted his grave face.

“Sannup?”

“I don’t know the best thing to do,” he said bluntly. “We’re going on a night attack, you can’t stay here. If we lose, the royals’ll fall back on this village and God knows what they’ll do in revenge.”

“Then I won’t stay here,” she said simply.

“I don’t know where you’ll be safe,” he said.

“I’ll go into the country,” she offered.

“It’s not woods!” he exclaimed. “There’s barely any cover. It’s as flat as the Hollands, if you get on a rise you can see for miles. And there are drainage ditches and canals and rivers all through it, hardly any hedges, just willows in the ditches and scrub. It’s a marsh.”

“I can hide here,” she assured him. “It’s easy.”

He knew she could melt into a landscape. “Keep hidden and follow the road to London.”

She poured soup into a bowl and handed it to him. Ned took his spoon from his boot, soldier-style, and started to eat. “If we win, we’ll march on London.” He gave a little smile. “If we win, it’ll be a triumphant march. You’ll hear it from ten miles away. We’ll have won the war, down here in the Somerset Levels. It’ll be a parade.”

“And if you lose, will the enemy chase you back to the sea again?”

He grunted, cutting himself a hunk of bread and eating it with the cheese. “Don’t you come back,” he said. “I don’t want you coming back to the battlefield. Whatever you hear. You can wait by the London road, and if we’re not marching up the road, then it will have all gone wrong. You go up the road to London anyway. Go to my sister. And if our army is marching but I’m not with them, don’t join. Go to my sister.” He looked up as she started to argue and all but growled at her. “Do as you’re bid, Rowan.” He did not say that if he was not with the army, then he was dead in a ditch and he did not want her to find him.

He pulled out a purse from his pocket. “Take this. It’s enough to get you food and lodging on the way. And if anyone asks: say that you’ve come off a ship that docked in Plymouth from the Americas, and you’re making your way to London. Say you’re Captain Shore’s servant atReekie Wharf.” He paused. “Say that you’re his slave so that people return you to him. God knows you shouldn’t be here. God knows I should never have brought you. I pray to God, you get home safe.”

“Pray for us both,” she recommended, optimistic as ever. “Why should you not win?”

He nodded. “We might,” he said begrudgingly. “It’s a bold plan, against a half-hearted enemy. Better now than later, when they’ll get reinforcements from the north. Best now, while they’re drunk and sleeping. Go up the road to London, and if God wills it, we’ll meet tomorrow night, and you can poach a rabbit for my dinner.”

“I will!” she promised him. “I will obey you, Ned.” She dropped down to sit beside him and put her arm around his shoulders like a comrade. Ned froze. He sat like a block of wood as she kissed his stubbled cheek and laid her forehead against his broadcloth shoulder.

“God keep you safe tonight and bring us together again,” she said.

He nodded in silence. She looked up at him. “D’you not bless me?” she asked him.

He could barely speak for the love that was choking him. “Bless you,” he said gruffly. “God bless you and keep you safe.”

ST. JAMES’S PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1685