" ' Milton Keynes, Newport Pagnell, A509,' " Hordle read. "And 'The North,' at the top-that's original, innit? Specific, too. Better be careful, sir," he went on, as they turned their horses up the eastward-leading access road. "This is the slip road for oncoming traffic. We'll cop a ticket if we're seen going down it the wrong way."
"You are incorrigible, Sergeant," Nigel snorted.
There was no need for him to ask why he got so much encouragement; and they were careful as they passed a blue-and-white sign with an arrow directing drivers to the Ml for Luton, London and points south. The lesser road that led to the town itself was far more densely overgrown save for the narrow path Buttesthorn's men had hacked, and a good deal of it had been ripped at by heavy floods, starting with the wet spring in the year of the Change. There were sections where only a scalloped edge of pavement remained above overgrown mud and there they had to dismount and lead the horses. Nobody was maintaining levees anymore; even in late summer he could see patches of reed and livid green marsh grass to his left as they rode. The arched 1920s roof of the Aston Martin plant had slid quietly into the silt:
Stay alert, he told himself. The bubble of misery sitting below his breastbone threatened that; it would be so easy to plunge into gray apathy:-or worse, tormenting memories of Maude. Work is the best remedy for care. You have other lives depending on you now, including Maude's son.
The graceful arch of Tickford Bridge was still clear of vegetation, save for vines crawling along the railings and up the cast-iron lampposts; the bridge itself was iron, built in 1810 when that was still a novelty. The tiny Lovat ran below, thick with reed and sedge, flanked by tall willows and oaks that had spread upslope in both directions in waves of saplings. Over their tops ahead and to the right he could just see a slip of the tower that crowned St. Peter and St. Paul Church, looming above Newport Pagnell town as it had since the Wars of the Roses. But when he looked directly ahead, up St. John Street:
"Not much left," he said.
Fire had passed through the little market town, fire and flood. The buildings to his left were nothing but mounds under second growth; the forest was reclaiming them faster than it was the open fields, and tall saplings reared among the rampant bramble and thorn. To the right, on the higher triangle of ground between the meeting point of the rivers where the original settlement had stood, occasional snags of wall or even roofs remained-though many of the newer frame buildings had simply been ripped apart by Russian vine pressing on their joists. Under the scent of vegetable decay and silt was a fainter one of wet ash and crumbling, moldy brick-the taint of corruption was probably his imagination.
Insects and rats had picked the bones clean long ago.
"Major Buttesthorn's men said it was clear to that pub where they hid the canoes, sir," Hordle rumbled. "But tricky in the dark."
It was eight thirty, and the long twilight of an English August was drawing to a close. Nigel felt the drain of exhaustion, sand in his eyes and the feel of it in his joints.
John Hordle gave a low whistle as they walked their mounts forward, cautious on the bad footing. "This is a good place to hide something, and no mistake. It looks like it's been abandoned for a hundred years, not less than ten."
"Why's it called a port?" MacDonald said suddenly.
"Odd name for a town sae far inland. Na'er seen it before, mind you."
"It wasn't named a port, originally," Nigel said. "It was porta, that's Latin for a trading post. This was the border with the Danes, in those days."
"Danes?" the Scot said, turning in the saddle to look at him.
Nigel smiled and inclined his head towards his son; perhaps a friendly voice would keep the farmworker steady.
The younger Loring said, "Founded in 917, before Edmund Ironside completed the reconquest of the Danelaw. Then given to Sir Fulk Paganell by William the Conqueror for services rendered at Hastings in
1066."
MacDonald grunted. "Ah. Like this Commandery business of the king's."
He spat aside to show what he thought of that. Sir Nigel winced a bit behind his impassive face; the bones of the idea had been his as much as the monarch's-a quick and simple way of organizing and defending the resettlement of the mainland, with the existing guards and SAS units as a framework. He hadn't meant to take it quite so far towards outright neofeudalism, of course:
Alleyne smiled. "The labor levies, you mean?"
"Aye, that in particular," MacDonald said. "It's a nuisance that drives you fair mad, when there's so much wants doing to haime."
The younger Loring pointed over his shoulder at the path Buttesthorn's men had hacked through the vegetation on Tickford Street . "Of course, without the levy, all the roads south of here would look like that."
"Weeeeclass="underline" " MacDonald said reluctantly. "Perhaps ye've a point."
They rode up the curving High Street; many of the two-story Georgian storefronts had collapsed into the streets, from fire and subsidence and sheer decay, but there was enough brick and pavement to keep the trees and brush from growing too thick yet, though saplings and shoots showed where its infinite vegetable patience was at work. The horses snorted and rolled their eyes as their hooves clattered and crunched through the uneven footing; there were scuttlings and scurryings through the piles of rubble and wreck, behind the blind windows like sockets in skulls where a piece of wall survived.
"Where'll we put the horses?" Archie MacDonald said. "This is no' good for their hooves."
Sir Nigel nodded; the three beasts they'd borrowed to supplement their own were a substantial share of Jamaica Farm's capital assets, and the man was entitled to be worried. In fact, he felt a sudden liking for the wiry redhead. Archie MacDonald had no particular reason to feel any loyalty to the Lorings. He could simply have gone to his local Commandery and turned them in, and gotten a good farm ready-stocked out of it, rather than breaking his back for years to earn one. Instead he was risking his life in this tangled, sodden wilderness to help a man he'd never met before, for his friends and because he thought it was right. And if he seemed a bit nervous, well, he wasn't a professional soldier as were the Lorings and Hordle.
"The churchyard," Nigel said. "If the fencing's still intact-it should be, it was iron palings. Hmmm: one watch here with the horses, the other up the street with the canoes. We'll want to get an early start."
Despite his exhaustion, he would have preferred to start now, if the sky weren't already turning purple-blue in the east, and the first stars appearing. They'd be following the river, north and then eastward to the Wash and King's Lynn where the ship was supposed to meet them. But:
God knows I've done water work before, and mostly at night. Not to mention Borneo and Belize. But the Ouse will be difficult. Full of obstacles and winding about, breaking its banks and retaking the old floodplain, and it's a long journey. I wouldn't care to try it in the dark, not when losing a canoe would be a disaster. We can afford the time: the king won't send pursuit overland. It's too late to do any good, and he'd have to arrest Knolles, and he certainly can't afford that, politically-it would touch off revolt for certain if he turned on one of his most loyal officers. A night's delay will give him more time to set something up at sea, but that's less of a risk than blundering about exhausted in the dark.
They turned in past the great silvery gray bulk of the church; the moon was up now, and it seemed to make the ancient limestone glow. Hordle lit a lantern from their baggage, adjusting the wick and then lifting it on the tip of his bowstave as the two Lorings pushed the tall doors open. Inside the hundred-foot length of the nave things were less orderly than the nearly untouched exterior suggested. The pointed arches and pillars along each side still stood, but in spots the white plaster had been discolored by smoke, probably from the missing pews. There were ashes and fragments of bone near the altar, where the rood screen had been, and blasphemous, incoherent graffiti scrawled over the walls. Hordle reached up to hook the wire loop of the lantern over one of the dead electric candles around a pillar, then knelt, taking a pinch of the ash between thumb and forefinger and bringing it to his nose.