The Crimson Ribbon Read Online Free PDF Page B

note, my one safeguard, into his rough fingers and he looks it over, his eyes flickering to my face. I doubt that he can read it. ‘I’ll need extra, for the trouble,’ he says, passing the document back to me.
    ‘Two shillings more a day,’ Joseph offers.
    ‘I’ll have you understand that I can’t answer for her safety. It’s work enough travelling with a load, these days, with all the trouble on the roads. She’s your sister. You look after her.’
    ‘Understood.’
    ‘Make it two crown all in and I’ll take her.’
    ‘Do you have it?’ Joseph whispers to me. I nod, even though it will leave me with very little. I will be a beggar by the time I reach London.
    ‘You are a kind and generous man, Master Siddal,’ Joseph says, clapping the carter on the back.
    The London road passes through lush, rolling country. Not half a day out of Cambridge and we meet with views very different from any I have seen before. The carter hauls us up hills and plunges down slopes, making me queasy. The day has turned hot for May and I swelter in my winter layers, imagining myself seasick. I am glad when we stop at an inn and I can buy bread to still my stomach. It is the first I’ve eaten in two days yet I am not hungry and have to force it down.
    It is well into the afternoon, once Siddal has handed the reins to Joseph and snores among the skins in the back of the cart, that I dare to make comment on our progress.
    ‘I don’t see any bandits, Mister Oakes.’
    ‘Pray God we don’t. What Siddal said is true. The roads are crawling with troublemakers. Beggars, gypsies, soldiers.’
    ‘Soldiers?’
    ‘Aye, the worst of the lot. Runaways mostly. Parliament men, disaffected and run wild. The King’s men tend to drunkenness and whoring, as they’ve always done, but the rebels? They’ve had no pay, no thanks and little satisfaction. Desperate times make desperate men.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    He looks off into the distance. ‘I was one of them.’
    ‘You’re a soldier?’
    He turns to check that Siddal is still sleeping, and lowers his voice. ‘I was.’
    ‘For Parliament?’
    ‘Yes. Eastern Association. Under Cromwell and Rainsborough.’
    At the mention of Master Oliver I feel a thin vine of fear twist up my spine. I remember him discussing discipline among the troops with his guests at table. ‘Once a soldier, always a soldier,’ he had said, talking of duty and honour. He thought deserters were godless men and should be punished, even given a traitor’s death.
    ‘Are you a runaway?’
    ‘Injured at Naseby Fight.’ He pats his chest, just below his ribs, to illustrate. ‘Never went back.’
    ‘So that’s why you need me,’ I say. ‘You have no pass to travel so you need mine, and my purse too, no doubt.’
    ‘Something like that. Naseby was my first battle. God willing, it was my last.’
    I’ve heard tales of Naseby Fight. Accounts swept through the Fens in the wake of the battle. Parliament men rejoiced at stories of such conquest. Master Oliver had returned home not long after and had been grave and silent on the matter of the multitudes of dead. But those who visited him, Eastern Association men in leather coats with booming voices, slapped him on the back and drank to bravery and daring. They had all thanked Providence for the result.
    ‘But it was a great victory, was it not?’ I say.
    Joseph shrugs. ‘Victory comes at a cost.’
    ‘But to fight for God’s cause, to die by God’s will, surely—’
    The fire in his eyes cuts me short.
    ‘What do you know about it?’ he snaps. ‘You know nothing.’
    ‘I know what will happen if you are caught.’
    ‘London is a big place, or so I’m told. Big enough to hide me. Besides, I might be done with army life, but I’m not giving up the fight.’
    With one hand holding the reins, he reaches into his pack and pulls out a sheaf of papers. They are dirty and ragged, looped with string. He unties the bundle and passes the first few pages to me.