Marston Moor Read Online Free PDF Page B

were barely recognizable, mangled by hooves; the blood from their slash wounds seemed to have dyed every single cobble. There were women wandering listlessly in the street, stripped to their smocks and prodded at sword point by braying men who demanded plate and coin. The screams of children were smothered only by the sharp cracks of firearms. Stryker stepped round a party of grinning greencoats, presumably men from Tillier’s regiment, as they dragged a hapless individual out through a doorway. He was a stick-thin, bookish-looking fellow, with red-tipped nose and thinning pate, who yowled as he was kicked to the ground. The greencoats stood around him like baying wolves as he hurriedly blurted out where valuables might be found. Whatever he said did not save his life.
    Stryker was relieved when eventually his gaze fell upon The Swan; a large, slate-roofed affair of black timber and grubby whitewash. It had survived the fighting, and now enjoyed a heavy guard at its double-doored entrance. He was just about to make himself known to the sentries when his eye was drawn to a band of soldiers crowded around a young lad slumped in a pile of horse shit that still steamed. The boy, probably in his late teens, clutched his midriff, and Stryker, moving closer, realized that he was fighting a losing battle to keep his guts within his body. The boy was weeping as he groaned, calling for his mother, each cry eliciting a gust of laughter from the watching mob. One of the soldiers, a tall, thin-faced man with a prominent brow, a hunched back and severely hooked nose, stepped into the circle. From within the folds of a heavy, black-pelted cloak, he produced a pistol, which he discharged directly into the wounded boy’s heart. The gut-sliced lad fell back, sighing up at the rain, but still his chest rose and fell in shallow pulses.
    The shooter – an officer to judge by his fur cloak – turned like an actor playing to his adoring audience. ‘Bless me, comrades! Yonder lies one of the strongest Roundheads that ever I did meet, for my pistol hath discharged at his heart and would not enter!’ He paused, relishing the cat-calls of his men, before producing a second pistol. Spinning back with an acrobatic whirl that belied his crooked shoulders, he shot his victim again, bowing as the men cheered. ‘But I think I sent him to the devil, with a vengeance, with the other.’
    The boy was indeed dead. Stryker looked on as the fur-trimmed hunchback led a dozen of his crowing adherents into the home from which the disembowelled boy had been hauled.

     
    The acid tang of vomit was ripe on Faith Helly’s tongue. She swallowed it, stifling the urge to retch as it burned her throat. She feared she was suffocating. It was cool inside the clay dome, for the oven had lain dormant for the better part of two days, but the ash dust upon which she was curled had stirred into furious life when first Faith crawled inside, elbows and head disturbing more black plumes from the walls, and now it seemed there was no air left to breathe, her lungs becoming ever more clogged with each shallow gulp. She clamped her mouth as tightly shut as she could, leaving only the tiniest fissure between her lips through which she drew the foul vapour, feeling it rasp between gritted teeth. Her back ached and the joints in her hands were stretched to breaking point as she pulled her knees hard to her chest. She squinted in the darkness as her sight grew accustomed to the gloom, and angled her head so that she could see out through the mouth of the oven to the kitchen beyond. The larder on the far side of the room was firmly shut, and she stared hard at its doors, praying Master Sydall could sense her presence and feel shame in it.
    She held her breath as laughter rang out from somewhere in the house. A man’s voice chimed, recounting a ribald jest that had others guffawing and Faith aghast. She knew the words, but had never been in the company of men who used them with such