The Wolves of Andover

mind to finally marry this one here? Or have you only come to drive the nag?” He placed a heavy emphasis on the last few words while looking at Martha. She slitted her eyes but moved away from the table and into the bedroom where her sister lay.

Mary had fallen to sleep, but the boy turned his head to stare up at her, his eyes pouched and glittering. She sat at the edge of the bed, listening to the men talking, first with Roger’s clipped speech dominating, as was common when her brother-in-law conversed. But soon John’s more resonant voice gained confidence; the r’s rolling extravagantly, his breath eager, the swearing and oath-taking growing through the heat of the liquor. There were short bursts of muffled laughter, as though they hid their mirth in their sleeves, and the rise and fall of queries and answers. The men’s voices turned to sniggering whispers and Martha strained to hear more. She stood and moved softly to the open bedroom door, pressing herself against the frame to listen and not be seen. There was a sudden quiet and she froze, thinking she had been discovered, but they had stopped speaking only long enough to fill their cups again.

She heard Roger take a slow, satisfied breath. “It’s put about,” he slurred, “that your fellow Thomas is a dead shot. A fine counterweight to these yeomen who wouldn’t know a flintlock from the back end of their wife’s…” He paused a moment, finishing with “broomssss.”

“Oh, aye, aye,” John said, laughing. “The back end of their brooms, indeed. Thomas is a dead shot, t’ be sure.”

“I’ve heard that Carrier fought for the Puritan cause with Cromwell.” Roger’s voice dropped to a whisper, coarse and confidential. “Although, it is also rumored that he was bodyguard to the first Charles.” When there was silence from John, Roger slapped his palm on the table. “Come now, John. We have no fiery leanings one way or the other. I’m a good colony man. I pay my taxes to the king. I’ve served in the militia. But this, this Carrier, is a one to inspire fantastical musings. I mean to say, just look at the man.”

“Hmmm, aye,” John muttered wetly, as though still holding the cup between his lips.

“I’ll tell you what I’ve heard, John, and you tell me if it’s true. I heard”—Roger paused to drink again, and then belched loudly—“that during the Great War most of the king’s men were so ill-trained that they buried more toes and fingers than men. The Royalists were always running away. Ha-ha-ha.”

John guffawed and beat the table, saying, “Ha! It’s been said in just a way from m’ own father.”

“An’ yer own father fought with Cromwell, did he?” There was the slow scrape of the jug over the table once more.

“My father rode for Sir Will’m Balfour’s reg’ment,” John said proudly. His words slid over his tongue like heated grease over thick bacon. “It were the first year of the war in… in… sixteen and forty-two. Hard by the village of Kineton, a real be-shited li’l town, or so I’ve been told.” He chortled unevenly for a moment. “They… the Parl’ment men… piled a mountain of severed arms an’ legs afterwards. My father found the king’s standard boy with his arm cleaved clear through… clear through! His hand, lyin’ twenty feet away from the rest of himself, still holdin’ tight to the banner.” He paused briefly to drink. “If not for Thomas, my father would’ve died fer certain. But… Thomas don’t like t’ dwell on it.” The final words dribbled away into mumbling, and John hiccupped.

“It’s the Battle of Edgehill, isn’t it? What you’re speaking of,” Roger whispered dramatically, the words running thick-lipped together. “The first great battle of Parliament against Charles I.” He inhaled a sharp breath in awe, and held it in, as though reluctant to speak further; but Martha knew, of course, that he would. A chair creaked with a body settling in for a long story, and Roger said, “I’ll tell you what I’ve heard from th’ men who were there. It was in winter, the wind blowing hard from the North.”

“From the North. Aye, cold, so cold,” John said. Martha could hear him sniffling, almost weeping at the memory.

Roger made conciliatory noises and John said, raggedly, “Tell me it. Tell the story, fer I love it well.” He hiccupped once more abruptly and groaned.

“Both sides, king and Parliament,” Roger began, “were drawn up opposing each other west of the village of Edgehill. The Royals on a hillock, Parliament’s men facing them on the lower ground.” He stumbled over the last few words and paused to sip loudly from his cup. “The soldiers of each array were in their regimental colors of blue and red and russet, each carrying their standards at the fore, like a field of Turks flowers growing in the snow. The Scots, as was your father, were aligned with the English Parliament. The Welsh and the Cornish, aligned with the king.

“Parliament fired their cannons first but soon the king’s nephew Prince Rupert charged with his horsemen straight down the hill and into the heart of Parliament’s men, scattering them right back to Kineton.”

John’s heated voice suddenly erupted. “But the Royalists didn’t rally th’ charge, the cowardly pricks! They were too busy robbin’ th’ town blind to wheel ’round and renew their advan’age.” He laughed excitedly, pounding the table with his fist. “But Parliament rallied, by Christ, dinnit they?” He pounded the table once more, fiercely, as though Roger had challenged him. “Fer a time after, it were sword-to-sword an’ hand-to-hand, with limbs bein’ hacked away and blood sprayin’ o’er all like a Frenchman’s fountain. The king’s banner were taken by the Roundheads, but in the tumble of battle my father’s horse were killed and fell to the groun’, pinnin’ him underneath.

“He lay, his leg broken, and saw a horseman comin’, a king’s man with a gold-hilted sword raised to sever his head right off. He said a prayer, a good… feckin’… Protestan’ prayer, when a long shadow fell over him, an’ a giant, a pikeman as big as a tree, speared the chargin’ horse right through to th’ rider. So help me Christ! The giant pulls free the pike, twenty foot long or more, with one hand and with th’ other draws out a sword and cuts a bloody swath around my father until he can recover his feet and get on with the fightin’.”

There was a pause, and a belch, and a quick muttered oath. A chair scraped loudly across the floor as though someone had moved it suddenly to stand. She heard John moan and then hasty, unsteady footsteps running towards the door. The other chair moved and Roger called out, drunkenly, “Wait, John, wait. I’ll attend you. I have a purge that will serve.”

Martha slipped into the common room, where the cauldron had begun to boil at the hearth. She picked up the chair, overturned by John’s hasty departure, to set it right and carefully laid into the churning water the meat and herbs to make the broth for her sister. She could hear John in the yard, first laughing, then swearing, then retching. She hoped Roger’s physic would work so that John would be well enough for work in the morning. As it was, she would most likely be listening to John’s groaning the whole day over his thick head and watery bowels.

She flung open the front door and loudly shushed the men, and then pointed them to the barn, scolding, “If you wake my sister, I’ll purge the both of you till you’re as dry as Lot’s wife.”

She closed the door and returned to stab at the sluggish fire in the hearth, thinking that a man’s storytelling was like a madwoman’s embroidery, plied repeatedly in careful rows that, by themselves, knot by knot, could be neat and pleasing, but that taken together made a larger grotesque image of mayhem, becoming more monstrous with every reworking.

But she knew that women, as well as men, had their own history of blood-letting, their own lust for conflict. In some moments of dire threat, she had desired to run screaming towards the danger, brandishing a knife, with her hair on fire. She had listened, rapt, to John’s every rendering of the battle and felt no aversion to the descriptions of carnage, or of the tall soldier of Edgehill, rather, only a taut, vibrant anticipation.

She felt a presence at her back and looked around to see Allen standing at the bedroom door, frowning, his brows knitted together like two geese in a fog. She smiled at him but he turned back into the room and soon she heard Mary calling for her.

THE DAY WAS too hot for Patience to stand over the huge washing pot. The rain had vanished, leaving clouds at the top of the sky, crimped and mottled like the underbelly of a sea turtle. There was no breeze, and dampness hung in the air like in late summer even though it was still May. Martha wiped at the sweat around her collar and lifted, with both hands, a weighted pile of boiled linen with the paddle. Not satisfied, she dropped the clothes back into the water and stood back from the heat.

She heard Joanna singing to herself as she sat, bare-bottomed, on a bucket, her apron and skirt tied up around her middle. The child had resisted all efforts to stop wetting herself, demanding to still wear clouts, and Martha was intent on breaking her of the practice before the new babe came. Martha had warned Joanna not to stand from the bucket until she had passed her water into it. She called encouragingly to the girl, but Joanna