For a moment, no one reacted. Then they started muttering to one another. And of course, he realised, why wouldn’t they? What a sight he must have been to them – a stranger, old, grizzled, wild-haired, wild-eyed, his face as white as ash after his years indoors and his days in his cell, brandishing a pistol, wearing his old Cromwellian coat. A madman.

  Russell looked at him in shock. ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘I’ve seen them, coming across the plain. Where are the soldiers?’

  ‘Gone to Deerfield – it’s burning. There’s fighting.’

  ‘For God’s sake, John, we must be quick! They mean to attack here as well!’

  Russell’s glance searched his eyes, trying to gauge if he was entirely sane, then turned to his followers. He shouted above the murmuring, ‘He speaks the truth! Ring the bell! Lock the door!’

  Suddenly, activity. The scrape of pews being pushed back. A clatter of muskets being produced from underneath them. Wails of alarm. Cries to God. The bell ringing.

  Will jumped down from the pulpit and started pushing his way back towards the doors. As he walked, he surveyed the windows. Too many. Too large. And set in a building made entirely of wood. Fire was plainly the natives’ chosen weapon. They would burn them out. For sure, that was what he would do – what he had done, countless times in the war.

  ‘Open the door,’ he said. It had just been locked. He hammered on it with the butt of his pistol. ‘Open it!’ he demanded.

  Someone produced a key.

  He stepped outside, half expecting to find the enemy, but the green was clear. Quite close, on the northern side of the grass, no more than fifty yards away, was a house.

  ‘There!’ He pointed. ‘Every man with a musket, follow me.’

  He set off a few paces, then stopped. Nobody had moved.

  Russell was just behind him. ‘He knows his business,’ he said. ‘Do as he says.’

  ‘Fetch water,’ Will shouted over his shoulder, ‘to put out the fires. Then lock the doors and stay inside.’

  He led a detachment of perhaps forty musketeers – some so old they could barely keep up, others scarcely more than boys – across the green and into the yard of the house. ‘Find a position at a window, but don’t open it. Stay quiet – not a sound – and stay out of sight. No one to fire till I give the order. Then pick a target, aim and shoot. Understood?’

  A chorus of ‘Aye!’

  They were following him without question now – the only one among them who seemed to know what he was doing. By God, he would make soldiers of them yet.

  They deployed into the house. Two storeys. He moved from window to window. Six faced south to the church. Four men at each, the rest of the force spread between the windows east and west. He went downstairs and stood at the door. God forgive him, he had not felt so alive in years. The women of the town were passing buckets of water from hand to hand in a line stretching back to the well. If they were not careful, they would be caught in the open. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, ‘Enough!’ He gestured to them to retreat. The line broke up and they hurried into the meeting house. The door closed. And just in time, for barely a minute later, he saw the first of the attackers moving stealthily onto the green, holding a musket across his bare chest.

  He stepped inside, closed the door and ran upstairs.

  Pistols cocked, he stood behind the men crouched at the window and watched. Thirty attackers, maybe more, armed with muskets and bows, some on horseback. Young men, well muscled, half naked, they moved straight towards the meeting house. The riders peered down through the windows. Another two on foot tried the door. Suddenly they started yelling – no plan of attack, no strategy, no fear, just rage and excitement. A few shots rang out. The sound of smashing glass. Then a flaming arrow, beautifully aimed, swooped across the green and through a broken window. The others stood watching to see what would happen, yelling their encouragement. Another fiery arrow was unleashed. This one hit the timber frame just below the roof and stuck there, burning.

  Will aimed one of his pistols, even though it was useless at this distance. ‘Fire!’

  The house seemed to explode with noise and smoke. The sting of sulphur briefly blinded him.

  When he looked again, the green was carnage – the war party scattered, men sprawled on the ground, riderless horses stampeding in fear, one man with his foot caught being dragged across the grass. Those who were still upright were looking around to see where the shots had come from. One fired his musket at the house.

  ‘Reload!’

  Half a minute to reload a flintlock – prime the pan, ram the powder and the ball down the barrel – and take fresh aim. In the meantime, the Indians had started running towards the house.

  ‘Fire!’

  He used Ned’s pistol, saw his target drop, drew his sword.

  ‘Charge!’

  He was the first man down the stairs. They poured out of the house. Bodies on the grass. Some of them still alive. The rest of the attackers running. All very young. He gave chase to one who was wounded in the leg, limping, hopping like an injured bird. He caught him at the edge of the green and hacked at his neck. He went down with a cry of pain. Behind him he could hear gunshots and screams as the righteous men of Hadley finished off the wounded.

  God made them as stubble to our swords . . . Give glory, all the glory, to God.

  He stood astride the Indian, grasped the hilt of his sword in both hands, raised it and plunged the tip of the blade with all his force into his victim’s sinewy back. He pulled it out and wiped off the blood on the grass. Then he walked back to the Russells’ house, up the stairs to the passage, climbed down the ladder, replaced the boards, and sat huddled on his mattress in the darkness – his hands clasped around his legs, his knees drawn up, his head pressed hard between them – shaking with cold despite the summer heat.

  Hours later. Shouting. A rumble of people talking all at once – a crowd, by the sound of it, milling around in the parlour and the yard. He lifted his head to listen. He could hear Russell’s deep voice – soothing, placatory, and finally commanding – then the door slammed. Heavy footsteps ascended the stairs and passed above his head. The boards lifted. A shaft of light. Russell’s head appeared.

  ‘Will?’

  This was the situation, as Russell explained it. Twelve Indians were dead. Three Englishmen wounded. No wounded natives had been left alive. The survivors had fled. The fire on the roof of the meeting house had been put out. A mass grave was being dug on the edge of the Great Meadow.

  ‘They were all very young. I wonder if the elders of the tribe even knew what they were planning. It seems the main fighting is all to the north, around Deerfield.’

  ‘So, we slaughtered boys?’

  ‘Murderous youths,’ corrected Russell. ‘They would have killed us if they could. You saved the town. People are calling you an angel sent from Heaven. They are looking for you. They want to know who you are.’

  An angel!

  ‘I had to show myself, John. There was no choice.’

  ‘Yes, and God be thanked that you did. But you see how it is? I’ve ordered them away for the present, but they can talk of nothing else. It is a certainty they’ll return.’

  ‘Then I must leave.’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Russell, ‘I fear you must – and soon, before the garrison returns from Deerfield. I’ve arranged for you to stay in Hartford. There’s a good Puritan there named Captain Bull, seventy or thereabouts, an old sailor, who lives alone with his wife and is willing to take you in.’

  ‘Good. I’ll go tonight.’

  ‘No, no! The hurry’s not so great as that! Stay and take another meal, at least. I’ll find a man to guide you tomorrow.’

  ‘I have no need of a guide. You say the fighting is all to the north. Well, Hartford is the opposite way, and I know easily enough how to find it – merely follow the river south.’ Will smiled and clasped Russell’s shoulder. ‘You see how well I know the country after all this time? I can be halfway there by morning. I should like a horse, though.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Which I shall pay for.’

  ‘How can you suggest such a thing?’ Russell looked offended.

  ‘I should prefer to leave with all things straight between us. You have done so much these past eleven years.’ He looked around the room. Eleven years . . . In truth, he would not be sorry to get away. ‘To everything there is a season, John. And my season here is done.’

  His belongings were already packed. It was merely a matter of fetching them up from his hiding space and loading them onto the horse in the barn. By half past seven, the sun had set, and he was ready. In the golden dusk he walked around to the back of the house. The grass had grown over Ned’s grave. Nothing marked it. The birds sang their evening chorus. The breeze stirred the leaves of the apple trees, and the last of the summer bees hummed among the wild flowers. He knelt and put his palm to the ground. There ought to be a headstone, but he knew there never could be. Here lie the bones of Colonel Edward Whalley – husband, father, man of God – who broke Prince Rupert’s line at Marston Moor. He stayed like that for some time, then stood and walked back to the barn.

  Nobody observed him leave the town. By midnight he was at Springfield. He rested a few hours in the woods a mile beyond it, and at first light moved on. He reckoned it was safe enough to travel in the daytime – the authorities would hardly be looking for him in the middle of a war. Still, when he met a column of troops marching north, he was careful to put his head down, and it was a relief when they passed without giving him a glance. In the middle of the afternoon he reached the ferry station at Windsor, crowded with people carrying their belongings, heading south to safer territory. He answered their questions curtly, to avoid being drawn into conversation. No, he had seen no Indians. Yes, he had heard that Brookfield and Deerfield had both been burned. No, he did not agree that the war must go on until every last Indian had been killed – he did not mind what the Scriptures said about the right of Christians to slaughter the heathens: it was contrary to Christ’s teachings. After that, they left him alone.

  At nightfall he entered Hartford, and had barely gone a hundred yards before he was stopped by a patrol carrying pikes and muskets. There was a curfew, was he not aware of that? Who was he? What kept him out so late? He gave his name as Walter Goldsmith and said he was looking for the road to the South Meadow, for Ward’s lot. He had no idea who Ward was; he simply wanted to avoid mentioning Bull’s name, and Russell had told him his lot was next to Ward’s. They waved him on his way.

  It was dark when he reached his destination. A lamp had been set in the window. A man came to the door – short, wiry, the antithesis of his name.

  Will removed his hat. ‘Captain Bull?’ How many times had he done this – greeted a stranger in the dark? ‘John Russell sent me.’

  ‘Thomas Bull, sir.’ A handshake. ‘God be thanked for your safe arrival. My wife, Susannah . . . Let me show you to your room . . .’

  The familiar routine. Up a winding staircase to an attic. A narrow bed. A table. A chair. An iron-hooped chest – a seaman’s chest – with a basin and a large jug of water set upon it. It occurred to him that he had no means of letting Frances know where he was or what had happened to him. He felt so exhausted and lonely, a sob rose in his throat. He put his hand to his mouth and disguised it with a cough.

  ‘This will do me very well. God bless you, Captain Bull, for taking me in.’

  Once he was alone, he took his candle over to the tiny window. The world beyond it was completely dark. He could see nothing except the reflection of his face, watery in the rippled glass, pale as a drowned man’s.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  FOUR YEARS LATER, in Paris, on a July afternoon in 1679, an Englishman left his house in rue Saint-Denis and set off on his habitual daily walk. Montorgueil was a rough neighbourhood, in the city’s northern quarter, a district of narrow winding streets and wooden houses, gambling dens and fortune-tellers, thieves and whores. In his left hand he carried a stout stick, in his right-hand coat pocket a small pistol. Even at sixty, he gave the impression of a man who could handle himself in a fight. A familiar figure, L’Anglais – people generally stepped out of his way. He was bearded, and heavier around the waist than he had been in London, and beneath his periwig he was almost bald, but his shoulders were as broad as ever, and he still exuded a faint sense of menace, as if he knew something about you that you did not want known.

  He walked, unmolested, down the centre of the street, avoiding the chamber pots occasionally emptied out of the upper windows, and a few minutes later emerged onto the right bank of the Seine. The weather was warm, the river stinking even more than usual. He strolled alongside the turbid brown water, stopping at some of the wicker boxes where the booksellers had laid out their wares, picking up the odd volume and leafing through it. Nothing took his fancy. Too much religion. The Pont Neuf was a likelier bet. Spread out along the parapets of the bridge were all manner of quacks and hustlers – purveyors of wooden teeth, glass eyes, and Spanish fly for drooping cocks; card sharps and ticket touts; jugglers and acrobats. He felt a pickpocket brush his coat and knocked the woman’s hand away with his stick.

  In the middle of the bridge was a vendeur who specialised in the latest English publications. This was more like it. Fifty sols secured him a two-week-old copy of the London Intelligencer, stamped by the censor as fit to read. He wandered on across the Pont Neuf to the Île de Notre-Dame, but by now the jostling crowds were boring him – he was often bored – and after a quick circuit of the Sainte-Chapelle, he turned for home.

  In truth, Nayler had been bored most days ever since Hyde had died in exile, and that was four and a half years ago.

  The Lord Chancellor had fallen, exactly as he had feared – felled like some great ancient oak by a combination of old age, rotting limbs, heavy storms, and the well-aimed blows of his enemies. The Great Fire had first exposed his weakness. Not long afterwards, the Dutch had burnt the English fleet at the mouth of the Thames, a national humiliation for which he was unjustly held responsible. Hostile graffiti had been scrawled on the walls of his enormous house, alleging that it had been paid for by corruption. His gout and age and corpulence rendered him not only immobile but repulsive to the court.

  Even so, he might have survived, with royal protection, had it not been for his unconcealed disgust at the morals of the King, whose habitual greeting to any woman entering his presence had become to feel her breasts and thrust his hand between her legs. There had been a terrible final interview between the Lord Chancellor and His Majesty, with people gathered in the garden outside to eavesdrop, among them Lady Castlemaine. The certain fate of impeachment by Parliament, imprisonment in the Tower, followed by execution by beheading was bluntly laid out, with the King claiming he was powerless to save him. Exile was his only hope of survival. As he was carried out of the meeting, Nayler at his side, the King’s chief mistress had laughed and pointed. ‘He cannot rule. He cannot even walk!’

  ‘O madam, is it you?’ responded Hyde. ‘Pray remember that if you live, you will also grow old.’

  A coach had been arranged to take him along the Thames to Erith, where a ship was waiting. When Nayler came to see him off from Clarendon House, his master had looked so forlorn that on impulse at the last minute he had jumped into the seat opposite. Hyde had looked at him, nodded, and looked away, as if he had expected it.

  ‘I am grateful, Mr Nayler, but be warned – I cannot pay you.’

  They had sailed to France and settled in Montpellier, then Moulin, and finally in Rouen. The old man had been an embarrassment to the French, who didn’t want him. On one occasion he had nearly been killed by a mob of English sailors demanding to be paid the arrears on their wages. After the initial shock of losing power, he had occupied himself, like many another ruined politician, by writing his memoirs – with Nayler acting as his secretary – a brilliant work of rolling prose and pointed insight; and when those were done, at sixty-four, he lost the desire to live. According to his doctor, he had eaten himself to death. The King, who had refused his pleas to be allowed home to die, graciously consented to permit his body to be returned for burial in Westminster Abbey. Nayler had been due to accompany the massive corpse to London, but at the last minute he had succumbed once more to impulse. This time he had clambered out of the coach.

  What was there left for him in England? Nothing. The place disgusted him.

  Nokes, with whom he had maintained a regular correspondence, and who was now secretary to the clerk of the Privy Council, wrote to him about the funeral, which took place in January: At six o’clock in the evening we gathered in the Old Palace Yard, at the little brick house going up to the House of Lords, & from there the coffin was borne to the door of the abbey, where, it being met by the Dean & Chapter, my Lord Clarendon was laid to rest in darkness with only the faces of a few old friends to see it.

  Once he had sorted out Hyde’s papers and dispatched them to his heirs, Nayler had drifted from Rouen to Paris, rented the squalid timber-framed house in rue Saint-Denis that was all he could afford, acquired a mistress, gambled successfully at cards, drank too much cognac, acquired a taste for laudanum, and generally went to ruin, his life entirely lacking aim or purpose – until that July afternoon.

  Catherine Louvois was the illegitimate child of the illegitimate descendant of some noble family in the Loire, reduced to dependence on a succession of men whose standing in society had declined over the years in direct proportion to her fading beauty. Now she found herself at forty living with Nayler in Montorgueil, and God alone knew what her next step down might be. She was out when he arrived home. She was out a lot these days. He was sure she was unfaithful. He didn’t mind. He would have been unfaithful himself, if he could be bothered.

  He poured himself a glass of cognac and sat down in an armchair with the London Intelligencer. There was little news of any interest. He rather regretted parting with his fifty sols. Indeed, he was on the point of throwing the newsletter aside when his eye was caught by a small headline: The Angel of Hadley.