William Falkland 01 - The Royalist by S.J. Deas Page A

but more often than not men lingered before they died. I’d seen plenty enough. Some screamed for hours. Others lay glassy-eyed and clammy, panting their way to the last. I’d been lucky after Newbury. Most men weren’t.
    ‘The manacles, Falkland,’ said Warbeck. As I put them on I told myself I was doing this for Caro. For our future. That there would be other chances and better ones and that I owed it to my children to wait and take them as they came. And as I told myself these things I knew that Newgate had made me into a coward.
    The wounded deserter lay on his back. He lay where he’d fallen and barely moved. Once I was chained, Warbeck lowered the musket and turned. I caught a flash of moonlight on steel as he drew out a dagger.
    ‘Warbeck!’
    He stopped. The moonlight caught his eye and I knew I’d been wrong about him. His voice might sound syrupy, but Warbeck was no jester. He was a cold killer. ‘Falkland?’
    ‘At least give him some words.’
    ‘Words to a King’s man and a deserter?’ He shook his head and spat, turned away and then paused again as if struck by some second thought. ‘God will judge each and every one of us, Falkland, when our time comes. If it troubles you to see a papist pass without his last rites then give them.’
    He moved aside and I shuffled out of the stable. I moved so slowly that I feared the man would be dead before I reached him, but as I knelt he was still breathing, moaning his harsh, ragged breaths. Warbeck’s ball had hit him in the back and he was lying on the wound. I couldn’t see exactly where it had taken him but the steady trickle of bloody foam that issued from the corner of his mouth told me enough. There was never a coming back from a wound like this. I started to search his pockets for a cross or a rosary but all I found was a small pocket Bible. The man lifted his hand and caught a hold of me. I suppose he thought I was looting him.
    ‘What’s your name?’ I asked him. He croaked something and more frothy blood ran out of his mouth. At the third attempt I thought I understood him. ‘Rowland?’
    He blinked. Perhaps he nodded a little. Something in his face said yes.
    ‘Do you have a cross, Rowland? A rosary? Something you need?’ I’d hoped he might show me but he shook his head and pulled me closer.
    ‘No . . . popery,’ he said and reached for the Bible. As I handed it to him he opened it and the moon caught the words across the front. The Soldier’s Pocket Bible . His quivering fingers turned to the last page and then back and he returned it and pulled me close again. ‘I was with . . . Northampton’s . . . Regiment of . . . horse at . . . Naseby,’ he said, forcing out each part of every word with an effort. ‘Read to me.’ He stabbed at the book with a bloody finger. I looked at the page to which he pointed.
    ‘“The Lord is a man of war”,’ I read. ‘“Jehovah is his name. Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in its power: thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. And in the greatness of thine excellency thou has overthrown them that rose up against . . .”’ I stopped. The soldier had fallen quiet. He wasn’t yet gone but somehow his breathing was eased. But I couldn’t go on. I had a terrible sense of myself lying in his place, my Caro standing distant over me, black in mourning, her brilliant grey eyes hidden behind a veil of lace. And beside her my son and daughter, John and Charlotte, John all dressed up in a Venice red coat with a pike in his hand, Charlotte weeping into her arm, her long black curls quivering in a harsh, cold wind. I shivered; and then I felt Warbeck behind me.
    ‘Enough, Falkland,’ he said. ‘Leave him with me.’ His voice was oddly gentle as he drew me away and took the Bible from between my fingers. He returned to the dying man and crouched beside him, pulling back the man’s collar. Now Warbeck, too, read: ‘“Seeing that thou, our God, has