“There you see, sister,” Roger said, nodding. “Blood stirs a man to poetical leanings, just as naturally as love stirs a woman to tend the pot.” He grinned at Martha good-naturedly and she snorted, but she returned to the hearth to begin boiling water for broth. Though her back was turned, she could hear the rasping sound of clay over wood and knew that Roger was pulling the jug closer towards himself. It was so much to Roger’s character, she thought angrily, that he would seek to liken a blood-letting to a bard’s song while his wife lay unattended in a back room. She moved to stand at the table, her arms crossed, muttering indignantly, “There is no more meat. And this is the last of the bread. It’s good that I’ve brought all for the table or we’d have to send John out with the flint.”
Roger rose abruptly from his chair, his color high, and brushed past her, pulling from the sideboard three cups. He set them noisily on the table, and as he scratched the wax from the neck of the jug, Martha deliberately pushed her cup away. Roger poured a measure into his and John’s cups and quickly took a sip, closing his eyes to the spreading warmth. Turning to John, he drawled, “John, have you accompanied the cart today because you’ve a mind to finally marry this one here? Or have you only come to drive the nag?” He placed a heavy emphasis on the last few words while looking at Martha. She slitted her eyes but moved away from the table and into the bedroom where her sister lay.
Mary had fallen to sleep, but the boy turned his head to stare up at her, his eyes pouched and glittering. She sat at the edge of the bed, listening to the men talking, first with Roger’s clipped speech dominating, as was common when her brother-in-law conversed. But soon John’s more resonant voice gained confidence; the r’s rolling extravagantly, his breath eager, the swearing and oath-taking growing through the heat of the liquor. There were short bursts of muffled laughter, as though they hid their mirth in their sleeves, and the rise and fall of queries and answers. The men’s voices turned to sniggering whispers and Martha strained to hear more. She stood and moved softly to the open bedroom door, pressing herself against the frame to listen and not be seen. There was a sudden quiet and she froze, thinking she had been discovered, but they had stopped speaking only long enough to fill their cups again.
She heard Roger take a slow, satisfied breath. “It’s put about,” he slurred, “that your fellow Thomas is a dead shot. A fine counterweight to these yeomen who wouldn’t know a flintlock from the back end of their wife’s…” He paused a moment, finishing with “broomssss.”
“Oh, aye, aye,” John said, laughing. “The back end of their brooms, indeed. Thomas is a dead shot, t’ be sure.”
“I’ve heard that Carrier fought for the Puritan cause with Cromwell.” Roger’s voice dropped to a whisper, coarse and confidential. “Although, it is also rumored that he was bodyguard to the first Charles.” When there was silence from John, Roger slapped his palm on the table. “Come now, John. We have no fiery leanings one way or the other. I’m a good colony man. I pay my taxes to the king. I’ve served in the militia. But this, this Carrier, is a one to inspire fantastical musings. I mean to say, just look at the man.”
“Hmmm, aye,” John muttered wetly, as though still holding the cup between his lips.
“I’ll tell you what I’ve heard, John, and you tell me if it’s true. I heard”—Roger paused to drink again, and then belched loudly—“that during the Great War most of the king’s men were so ill-trained that they buried more toes and fingers than men. The Royalists were always running away. Ha-ha-ha.”
John guffawed and beat the table, saying, “Ha! It’s been said in just a way from m’ own father.”
“An’ yer own father fought with Cromwell, did he?” There was the slow scrape of the jug over the table once more.
“My father rode for Sir Will’m Balfour’s reg’ment,” John said proudly. His words slid over his tongue like heated grease over thick bacon. “It were the first year of the war in… in… sixteen and forty-two. Hard by the village of Kineton, a real be-shited li’l town, or so I’ve been told.” He chortled unevenly for a moment. “They… the Parl’ment men… piled a mountain of severed arms an’ legs afterwards. My father found the king’s standard boy with his arm cleaved clear through… clear through! His hand, lyin’ twenty feet away from the rest of himself, still holdin’ tight to the banner.” He paused briefly to drink. “If not for Thomas, my father would’ve died fer certain. But… Thomas don’t like t’ dwell on it.” The final words dribbled away into mumbling, and John hiccupped.
“It’s the Battle of Edgehill, isn’t it? What you’re speaking of,” Roger whispered dramatically, the words running thick-lipped together. “The first great battle of Parliament against Charles I.” He inhaled a sharp breath in awe, and held it in, as though reluctant to speak further; but Martha knew, of course, that he would. A chair creaked with a body settling in for a long story, and Roger said, “I’ll tell you what I’ve heard from th’ men who were there. It was in winter, the wind blowing hard from the North.”
“From the North. Aye, cold, so cold,” John said. Martha could hear him sniffling, almost weeping at the memory.
Roger made conciliatory noises and John said, raggedly, “Tell me it. Tell the story, fer I love it well.” He hiccupped once more abruptly and groaned.
“Both sides, king and Parliament,” Roger began, “were drawn up opposing each other west of the village of Edgehill. The Royals on a hillock, Parliament’s men facing them on the lower ground.” He stumbled over the last few words and paused to sip loudly from his cup. “The soldiers of each array were in their regimental colors of blue and red and russet, each carrying their standards at the fore, like a field of Turks flowers growing in the snow. The Scots, as was your father, were aligned with the English Parliament. The Welsh and the Cornish, aligned with the king.
“Parliament fired their cannons first but soon the king’s nephew Prince Rupert charged with his horsemen straight down the hill and into the heart of Parliament’s men, scattering them right back to Kineton.”
John’s heated voice suddenly erupted. “But the Royalists didn’t rally th’ charge, the cowardly pricks! They were too busy robbin’ th’ town blind to wheel ’round and renew their advan’age.” He laughed excitedly, pounding the table with his fist. “But Parliament rallied, by Christ, dinnit they?” He pounded the table once more, fiercely, as though Roger had challenged him. “Fer a time after, it were sword-to-sword an’ hand-to-hand, with limbs bein’ hacked away and blood sprayin’ o’er all like a Frenchman’s fountain. The king’s banner were taken by the Roundheads, but in the tumble of battle my father’s horse were killed and fell to the groun’, pinnin’ him underneath.
“He lay, his leg broken, and saw a horseman comin’, a king’s man with a gold-hilted sword raised to sever his head right off. He said a prayer, a good… feckin’… Protestan’ prayer, when a long shadow fell over him, an’ a giant, a pikeman as big as a tree, speared the chargin’ horse right through to th’ rider. So help me Christ! The giant pulls free the pike, twenty foot long or more, with one hand and with th’ other draws out a sword and cuts a bloody swath around my father until he can recover his feet and get on with the fightin’.”
There was a pause, and a belch, and a quick muttered oath. A chair scraped loudly across the floor as though someone had moved it suddenly to stand. She heard John moan and then hasty, unsteady footsteps running towards the door. The other chair moved and Roger called out, drunkenly, “Wait, John, wait. I’ll attend you. I have a purge that will serve.”