As Meat Loves Salt

The Christian moved away from the wall and pointed silently over his shoulder. I saw, and ran to, a well. The water tasted like sucking an iron spoon but I drank enough to split my sides, far beyond the prompting of need, for I had learnt what it was to thirst on the road.

‘Now get you gone,’ he said. ‘Those are your garments right enough; you’re big like all the rich. Tell them we’ve nothing to eat but the scurf off our heads.’

He must be crazed with want, I thought, to fancy that a quartermaster would come with neither horse nor weapon. I started along the street and looked about me for saner company, and a house where I might beg a little bread. But my surly friend was right: wherever I looked I saw folk draw back from the windows. There were no cows, nor no grain neither, in the fields, the fruit trees in the gardens were all picked bare or even lopped and not a single hen picked a living from the clay and stones of the road. I walked on, and on, and on.

We had suffered nothing of this at home: by some stroke of luck or stupidity they had never asked us for free quarter. I had heard of it, how the soldiers ate everything they could and stole or broke up the rest, nay, debauched the women too if the commander turned a blind eye. The King’s forces were the most dreaded for that their officers had precious little control over their men, but no army was welcome. Now I was seeing it for myself. At every house where I tried to beg I had the same answer in words angry or civil, and many seemed persuaded I was a spy, sent to ascertain what remained to be devoured. In the end I took to stealing by night, mostly the odd apple in a garden or griping crabs from the hedges. Breaking into the dairy at one place I found a cheese, and wept with joy. In this fashion I passed perhaps a week, and was lucky not to be put in the stocks.

But at last there were no more houses, and the torment began in earnest. The Devil lashed me onwards with ugly pictures of Caro and Zeb; he rode me hard, driving in the spurs. I had pain all along my breastbone and I thought of the words broken heart. My pace had slowed; I knew that beggars could walk for days without food, but I could not do as they did, being used to good feeding. What victuals I had picked up no longer sustained me. My path began to zigzag, and from time to time a knee buckled or the heel of my shoe turned aside. I was like one that has had a beating, my body tender, swerving, weakening as I went, and my throat parched. There was none on the road, and I sat for a moment to ease my blisters. When I made to get up I could not, and sprawled on the grass. It was sweet to dissolve into blackness and the earth. When daylight came back, I was talking to someone who asked me, Is Isaiah in gaol? I answered, Patience and Cornish might name him. They are most hardened against Zeb and me. If they take him it will be with Caro and they must hang him in gold. On my asking how Patience could leave Zeb for Cornish, he answered me singing, that Zebedee was cruel to her and this makes maids devils, maids devils, maids devils.

Aye, I said. And devils themselves grow crueller by the continual action of pain upon them. I opened my eyes and there was nobody with me.

The sun grew stronger on my face. Noon. My head ached as from strong drink and I wished only to remain lying and speak to none. A woman passed me with a little child, walking by on the other side. Afterwards I tried to rise, but getting upon my feet my body pitched forwards and I was again stretched in the dust. I rolled onto my back. The walnut was in my throat, burning the flesh black, but I could lose it by falling asleep. The old man stood over me, dropping something onto my face. I said to him, They are in bed at the inn together, but he is dead of the fever; I made to sit upright but my head was nailed to the ground. He forced another nut between my teeth, a hard one. It let something cold into my mouth.

‘Keep your feet on him,’ a man said. I could feel no feet on my body; was someone standing on me? There was a smell of smoke and I heard our horses run into the wood.

The sky was wet. I lay on my back and saw men move at the sides of my head before darkness closed over me again.

‘His eyes opened,’ said a gentle voice near me, and then, ‘drink.’ The hard thing was once more put between my lips and I turned my head away.

‘Leave him, Ferris.’

‘We cannot leave him like this.’ Warm fingers wiped my mouth and chin. I looked up to see a young man gazing perplexed into the distance, his profile lean and pensive, but full-lipped and long-nosed. He knelt at my side as if watching for someone, his hand still absently stroking my lips so that I breathed its scent of sweat and gunmetal.

I coughed against his palm, and he turned on me a pair of eyes as grey as my own. Pale hair hung thick on his collar; I saw he had shaved some days before. As I met his eyes they darkened, the pupils opening out like drops of black ink fallen into the grey, then he looked away, and his fingers slid from my face.

‘Let me drink,’ I creaked out.

‘Get on your side.’ He tugged at my arm, gritting his teeth as he tried to roll me over. ‘Up. Up on your elbow.’ When he had pulled me into position, I reached out my hand for the water, and caught a wry look from him.

‘You could have saved me a job. Here, and don’t spill, this is precious.’

There was mould on the sleeve of his jacket. I took the flask, swallowed about half, and handed it back.

He waved his hand. ‘Drink more,’ and he stayed close as if to say, I don’t go until you do.

I sat up and looked about me for the other man I had heard, but he was gone. On both sides of the road, pressed around small fires, were soldiers wrapped in garments that had once been bright red but now were faded to yellow or filthied to brown, except where patches had escaped the mud and smoke of battle. At one fire nearby a boy sat watching us. He smiled and waved to my new-found friend.

‘We got some water down you earlier. Drink anyway. I’ll fetch you some victual.’ Ferris sprang up and walked off, stopping to speak with the lad I had noticed and clap him on the shoulder before passing behind a group of men and out of my sight. Pale blue smoke blew across me, smelling of home, and a thin rain, like spit between the teeth, chilled my neck. I could see now the cropped hair of the young boys round the fires. Some of them, and most of the older men, still wore theirs long. I put my hand up to my head; someone had cut my hair close to the scalp. There it lay on the grass, a knot of wet black vipers.

‘Feel better?’ He was back, squatting easily by my side.

‘Did you do this?’

Ferris glanced at the dead man’s locks on the grass. ‘No.’ He held something out to me, but I could not take my eyes away from what had once been myself, and was also Izzy and Zeb.

‘Here,’ he pulled my hand away from my shorn skull, ‘best eat without looking.’ It was bread and cheese, the bread hard as your heels and the cheese popping with mites, but I grabbed at it.

‘Not too fast if you haven’t eaten lately, you’ll hurt yourself,’ said Ferris. ‘Easy, easy!’ He snatched the cheese from me.

‘Why are you feeding me?’

‘Call it your ration. You’re in the New Model Army.’

‘You mistake. I am—’

‘We lack men. What, going to lie down and die are you?’ He laughed.

‘But I’m weak, unwell. I’ve been starving.’

‘Starving!’ The grey eyes mocked me. ‘Granted you’re somewhat hungry. We see it all the time. And that suit of clothes! We thought we’d found us a deserter, a Cavalier officer. Until you spoke.’

‘I said nothing to them.’

‘O yes. While I was bringing you round. And struggled. We stood on your coat to keep you down.’ He offered me the bread and cheese again. ‘Some of the lads thought we’d caught up with Rupert of the Rhine.’

‘He’s a devil,’ I mumbled into the tough crust.

‘So they said, and they were about to take a short way with you, but I told them, Prince Rupert’s not a man you’d find lying in the road. What is your name?’

‘I – well, I have a mind now to be Rupert.’

‘Aye, who wouldn’t be! Roast goose for him, no bread and cheese.’

‘Were you told to enlist me?’

‘No. I am squeamish – would not leave a man to die of thirst on the highway – so I came to see if you were well enough to enlist. You’re well enough now,’ and as I made to protest, ‘now.’ He jerked his hand towards one of the fires. ‘Yonder’s your corporal – he’ll teach you your drill.’

I considered. ‘Is it all bread and cheese?’

‘Not always that good! But there’s beef sometimes, and eight pence a day – when they pay it.’

He got up and put out his hand to me, but my hipbones, dry as the ones in Ezekiel, grated as I struggled upright, so that my weight pulled him down; laughing, he was forced to leave go.

While I was lying in the road the day had passed into evening, and I was glad Ferris walked before me as it was hard to discern either form or order in the groups of soldiers lying round the fires. He stopped in front of a man whose hair was so dirty it might have been of any colour, and was soiled with more than mud: as I looked closer I saw brownish blood all down the right side of his face, cracked where the sweat had oozed up under it.

‘Prince Rupert come to serve under you, Sir,’ said Ferris. I bowed awkwardly. The men around laughed.

‘And what might be his real name?’ asked this gentleman, whose voice was pinched with pain.

‘If I may, Sir,’ I put in before Ferris could spoil my game, ‘I will take the name Rupert, since it seems I am known by it already.’

He waved his hand as if to say, what was that to him?

I was put down in the Officer’s book as Rupert Cane – the first name that came to mind – and ten shillings given into my hand.

‘That’s your entertainment money,’ said Ferris, who was come with me.

‘Entertainment?’