Clouds of insects rose from the water as the fugitives splashed through it in the thirty-yard gap between the hawthorn and blackberry tangles; the smoke from their burning wagons thinned, to reveal their abandoned cannon on each side of the rout.
The Royalist infantry surged after them, Monson on his great black horse now leading them. But as he reached the Swine Brook one of his men overtook him—
This was the moment of victory, and also the moment of the act which was to immortalise that victory—and Black Thomas with it—when greater triumphs and commanders would long be forgotten.
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The soldier tore off his helmet and filled it with the dirty, reddened water. Then he climbed back up the bank and offered it to the Royalist general.
There was a growl of approval from the footmen as Black Thomas lifted up the dripping helmet high for all to see, a growl rising to a great cheer as he lowered it to his lips, the water cascading on either side down his gilded black half-armour.
Black Thomas had promised.
Black Thomas had fulfilled his promise.
'A Monson! A Monson!'
'God and the king!'
The Royalist infantry shook their pikes and waved their swords in triumph; and the watching crowds on the hillside above, who had been waiting for this above all things, took up the applause.
Henry Digby, observing the spectacle from his post beside an old willow ten yards upstream, grunted his disgust. One well-aimed musket ball would have cut Lord Thomas Monson down to size at this moment, and would have gone some way towards avenging the Swine Brook Field slaughter of the righteous. But he had no musket and today there had been no musket ball with Black Thomas's name on it. That day would come, but it was not yet come.
The dead man beside him raised himself on an elbow.
'He's not actually drinking the stuff, is he?' asked the dead dummy5
man.
A dying man who had been dabbing his toes in the water nearby laughed. 'I wouldn't put it past him. Just like the real thing—and I'll bet they're all damn thirsty by now.' He pointed to Digby's plastic container. 'It's not poisonous by any happy chance, is it? But that would be just too much to hope for, I suppose.'
'The dye?' Digby shook his head, frowning at the implications of the suggestion. 'Of course not. It's strictly non-toxic. But I hope to heaven he doesn't drink it. The stream's full of cow-dung.'
'Yrch!' The dead man stared at the stream, wrinkling his nose.
'But
'I expect they had stronger stomachs than we've got.
Probably had all sorts of natural immunities,' said the dead man.
'I doubt that,' said Digby. 'They were rotten with dysentery at the Standingham Hall siege a week later.'
'Both sides were rotten with it,' countered the dying man. 'I was arguing with a chap from Boxall's Regiment last night in the pub. He said the cavalry was queen of the battlefield, when it came to a killing match. But I reckon squitters was queen. More of the poor bastards crapped themselves to dummy5
death than ever killed each other, for a fact. I had a bad dose of enteritis last summer, and it bloody near killed me, I tell you. And I was full of pills and antibiotics.' He nodded wisely. 'I should think the safest ingredient in this water back then was probably the blood, and Monson just struck lucky.'
As if he had overheard their conversation, the Royalist commander came riding along the bank towards them while his troops surged across the stream in pursuit of the broken Roundheads.
He waved at Digby. 'Keep pouring it in, Henry,' he shouted.
'We want to make sure it goes all the way down to the road bridge—that's where the crowds will be.'
Digby waved back and slopped more dye into the stream. It hadn't occurred to the silly man that it was pointless to waste the dye when everyone was churning up the water, but now most of them were across and he wasn't going to argue the toss. It was enough that he understood better than anyone that his role today, though unglamorous, was probably the most important one of all: just as Black Thomas's unhygienic act had fixed Swine Brook Field firmly in the history books, so that it was remembered by people who'd never heard of such crowning mercies as Naseby and Marston Moor, so today's red stream was what would catch the public eye and the public imagination. The afternoon before, when the other officers had been checking out the battle scenario, he had superintended a dress rehearsal of this bit of it for a BBC TV
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News crew. By this evening with any luck it would be seen in colour by millions, and from those millions there would be some hundreds of would-be recruits. From them the Mustering Committee would be able to raise half a dozen new regiments—good quality regiments of those who knew what they were fighting about, and loved what they knew.
'How long do we have to lie here?' The dying man consulted a wristwatch. 'I'm getting damn thirsty—it comes of watching Black Thomas do his thing.'
Good quality regiments were composed of better material than the dying man, thought Digby disapprovingly. Wristwatches were strictly forbidden in battle, together with all other anachronisms except spectacles, and even those had to be National Health steel-framed.
He added more dye to the stream. '5.30 for us.' The man hadn't even read his scenario properly. 'We have to perform for the crowd first.'
