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been a soldier long enough to know that some men bring a troop bad luck. They perhaps don’t mean to but that’s the truth of it.’
    ‘Never saw you as a superstitious sort, Captain,’ Trencher said. ‘Thought we left all that to the papists.’
    ‘Aye, and the old women,’ Weasel murmured.
    ‘Where there is slaughter and carrion there are ravens, Trencher,’ the captain said. ‘If it’s true it’s not superstition. I know men. And this one is a raven.’
    ‘But what will he do?’ Penn asked, looking from Clement to Tom.
    ‘It’s all right, Matt,’ Tom said, rubbing his mare’s cheek and muzzle, ‘I’ll find another troop.’ He felt the twist of a grimace. ‘I kill Cavaliers. There’ll be a captain hereabouts who’ll find that of some use.’ He clicked his tongue and the mare started forward.
    ‘Rivers,’ Captain Clement said, ‘seek out a man by the name of Crafte. Captain James Crafte. He’s with the foot, on the earl’s staff. Tell him I sent you.’
    ‘I am a harquebusier, not a pikeman or a damned musketeer,’ Tom said, ‘and I’ll outride any man in this regiment, you included, Captain.’
    Clement frowned. ‘Crafte doesn’t lead a troop. Truthfully, I have no idea what the man does besides attend Essex like a damned shadow.’ He rubbed a palm against his stained cheek. ‘But find him, Thomas Rivers, and you may get your chance to kill Cavaliers.’ Then Clement turned and walked off to join a knot of officers who were standing smoking pipes by a pollarded oak, and Tom’s friends swarmed in on him again, slapping his back and shoulders and bombarding him with questions.
    ‘This Captain Crafte can wait till tomorrow,’ Will Trencher said, taking the mare’s reins off Tom and handing them to a young trooper with a curt order to take the horse to the picket. He was grinning savagely, the smile at odds with the carved granite of his face. ‘It’s not every day a ghost joins our fire.’
    ‘I didn’t think you were superstitious, Will.’
    ‘And I thought you were dead, lad, so it looks like we were both wrong,’ Trencher said, and together they all walked back towards the flames around which the rest of the troop sat huddled.
    ‘Weasel,’ Trencher rumbled, ‘we’ve all of us heard General Balfour bemoaning the theft of his personal stash of brandywine. Now would be a good time to chance upon a drop.’
    Weasel grinned and broke away, heading for his tent, and Tom went with the tide, enjoying the fire’s heat on his face and the company of men he had presumed he’d never see again.
    And in the morning he found Captain James Crafte.
    ‘And this Captain Clement rides with Sir William Balfour’s Regiment of Horse?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’ Tom glanced over at the three men sitting behind tables, busily scratching away with their quills, only pausing to dip them into ink pots or scatter sand across the paper.
    ‘And yet I barely know the man, have perhaps been in his company twice – if as much as that. Certainly to my knowledge he owes me no favours.’
    ‘Perhaps he intends for you to owe him one,’ Tom suggested.
    Captain Crafte was frowning, though Tom suspected that was as much down to poor eyesight as to curiosity. ‘Thomas, was it?’
    ‘Yes, sir,’ Tom said.
    Crafte’s eyebrows furrowed and then released. ‘Whatever the man’s motive, I must assume that he does not have need of you,’ he tilted his head to one side, ‘or indeed want you, in his own troop.’ His neat little nose wrinkled. ‘Forgive me for saying so but, given that most troops are coming up short on the preferred muster, that does not speak well for you, young man.’
    Tom could not argue with that and so he said nothing, at a loss to determine what he was doing in a room with a captain who did not lead men in battle and three secretaries who were so intent on their writing that they had not so much as glanced at him since he arrived.
    ‘Interesting,’ the captain said, finger and thumb