Everything changed when Captain Smith arrived.
The first Gideon knew was waking to angry voices. He heard a rumpus upstairs. There must be an alarm.
He pulled on his boots and grabbed his weapons. As he ran to the upper floor, he detected real horror in the major's voice. Smith, whose whine Gideon recognised, was making self-righteous excuses. As Gideon tumbled into the room, Major Wilkes stormed accusingly, 'You are an accessory to it!' He was pulling on a boot, in his haste tangling his toes in mismanaged boot-hose. Seeing Gideon, he cried out despairingly, 'Colonel Rainborough is murdered! He lies dead in the street, basely betrayed by Cholmeley and this man!'
Captain Smith turned and told Gideon defensively, 'I was taken ill during the guard. I carried on as long as possible, but was urged by Master Watts and Corporal Flexney to seek a house with a fire — '
'At the Hinde? It's a damned whorehouse!' muttered Wilkes, struggling desperately into his coat.
Smith carried on justifying himself. 'Truly I knew it only as a travellers' rest. I saw nothing of any trouble until I heard a great noise of horses, the enemy leaving — at once I put the men on guard and came to you, sir — '
'Out of my way! Come with me, Jukes — '
It was just after sunrise. They tasted mist on the sharp autumn air. They ran to Rainborough's lodging. He lay out of doors, on the cobbles some yards from the house, with blood trails all along the street. They recognised his body instantly, that big, powerful man: unmistakable. A small crowd had gathered, standing not too close. Their shocked murmurs stopped as Wilkes and Jukes approached. Beyond, a saddled horse stood, trembling, also covered in blood.
A second body lay somewhat apart. Major Wilkes walked over and turned the corpse, discovering their lieutenant. Neither Wilkes nor Gideon wanted to touch the colonel. The soldier who had been on guard as the colonel's sentinel was sitting on the kerb, badly shocked and woozy from a battering, saying over and over again, 'I had no match! I had been issued with no match!'
Rainborough had terrible sword thrusts through his torso, with defensive wounds on his arms. Gideon counted up: he had been slashed at least eight times. Under his jaw, his throat was cut.
The only witness to everything was a maid from the house.
'Get her story!' Major Wilkes ordered Gideon in an undertone. He was a hardened soldier, normally matter-of-fact but now badly shaken. Gideon saw the man's eyes darting as he assessed how much danger, if any, still threatened. Wilkes set about ordering a search of the town and drumming up the rest of the soldiers.
Gideon led the weeping woman back indoors where he seated her on a rush-bottomed chair. His heart pounded. He had witnessed terrible sights in the war, but Colonel Rainborough's savaged corpse would haunt his dreams for ever. He wanted to yell, but forced himself to address the maid reassuringly. 'Just say what happened.'
In their agitation, neither could well understand the other's accent, but Gideon had learned how to listen to a strange brogue and any northern woman knew how to tell a story. Up with the light, the maid had gone out for something — water? coal? She admitted she had temporarily left the door ajar. 'Three men came, dressed like gentry; they told the sentinel, proper like, they had brought a packet and letters from Oliver Cromwell. The lieutenant was there and he let them go up. The colonel was in his chamber — in his waistcoat, drawers and slippers!' whimpered the maid.
The image of those slippers would haunt Gideon. He had seen one in the gutter outside, completely drenched in blood. The other, moulded by long use to the exact shape of sole, toes and bunion, had stayed wedged on his colonel's foot. It was embroidered. A wife — Margaret Rainborough — would have bought those slippers as a loving gift, or even worked the tapestry herself. They were personal items, easy to pack, which Rainborough had carried with him everywhere, as soldiers did: a little piece of home, however far he travelled; comforting at the end of a hard day.
Gideon reddened and tersely corrected the maid: 'Say in his shirt. More decorous than drawers.'
She accepted the demure alteration. 'They claimed to have brought letters, but when he looked it was but a packet of blank paper. They made him come downstairs, dragged him in his shirt!'
'How do you know all this, if you had gone for water?'
'I was only gone with the pail a minute. I would not have left the door open, else.'
'All right. So you saw these men? Did you recognise them?'
'I never saw them before.'
'Did they sound local? Northerners?'
'Aye, they were not strangers.'
'Go on.'
Rainborough had been overpowered in his room before he could reach his sword and pistols. Ordering him to keep silent, the raiders forced him down to the hall. Unarmed, but thinking his sentinel would assist, Rainborough suddenly shook them off. The sentinel had no match for his musket and could do nothing to raise the alarm. (Truly? wondered Gideon, already alert for discrepancies and treachery. Why did he not club them with his musket butt?) The cavaliers then pushed Colonel Rainborough out to the street and tried to force him on to horseback. They had taken his lieutenant prisoner too but when Rainborough saw there were only four assailants, one of whom was holding the cavaliers' horses, he paused with his foot in the stirrup and roared a call to arms. He and his lieutenant put up a vigorous resistance. Rainborough snatched one man's sword, the lieutenant grabbed another's pistol. Rainborough was thrown down and thrust through the throat, his lieutenant was run through the body and killed.
'Are you telling me they wanted to carry off the colonel alive?'
'It seemed so. He refused to go.'
Gideon thought rapidly. This was a bungled kidnap? Perhaps the intention had been to make Rainborough a hostage, maybe exchange him for some prominent Royalist prisoner — Sir Marmaduke Langdale would be a prime candidate. After the battle of Preston, Cromwell's pursuing men had captured Langdale at an alehouse near Northampton, though in fact he had just escaped.
The struggle lasted, the maid thought, a quarter of an hour. (And nobody else heard anything?)
The maid kept going over it. The choreography seemed confused, but the picture was vivid enough. 'The colonel demanded a sword so he could die like a man. But they refused, then stabbed him through the body several times more. He nonetheless seized an assailant's sword, struggling for it with his bare hands, bending it right back on its pommel. I heard one man cry out to another to shoot him, but the pistol misfired. The shooter hurled the weapon, causing a great bruise on Rainborough's head that made him stagger.'
The lieutenant lay dead, the sentinel was out of action. No soldiers had answered the colonel's call to arms. The raiders began to move off. Rainborough staggered along the street after them.
'They noticed him, and cried out "The dog follows!" They turned back, even though the colonel had fainted. Then they ran him through again and again, and at last rode away crying "Farewell, Rainborough!" I heard him groan, before that, "I am betrayed! Oh I am betrayed!" Those were his last words on earth — ' The maid collapsed.
Gideon slumped briefly in a country chair, covering his face.
Leaving the maid, he explored the house.
In the kitchen, he found the owner, sitting with other occupants, amazed and deeply shocked. There was a full water pail, abandoned. Gideon grew up in a house where working women were sternly controlled by his mother, but he had seen that other servants had their own ways. Some maids constantly vanished on little errands they dreamed up, to fetch water, wood, shopping, eggs from the henhouse, to borrow flour, to visit friends for gossip, to help at births. In some houses they took it as their right to come and go.