About some deaths

[I'll start this post with a trigger warning, both for death, and also for horse lovers, plus a spoiler alert for readers of Ann Cleeves' Shetland novels.]

In my reading recently I've come across some deaths which have affected me.

The first was from “The Folio Book of Days” by Roger Hudson which I've written about before. This is the entry from 2nd July and it's Oliver Cromwell writing to his brother-in-law Colonel Valentine Walton immediately after the Battle of Marston Moor, in 1644.

Sir, God hath taken away your eldest son by a cannon-shot. It broke his leg. We were necessitated to have it cut off, whereof he died.
Sir, you know my own trials this way [one of Cromwell's sons had recently been killed]: but the Lord supported me with this, that the Lord took him into the happiness we all pant for and live for. There is your precious child full of glory, never to know sin or sorrow any more. He was a gallant young man, exceedingly gracious. God give you His comfort. Before his death he was so full of comfort that to Frank Russel and myself he could not express it, 'It was so great above his pain', This he said to us. Indeed it was admirable. A little after, he said, one thing lay upon his spirit. I asked him, what that was? He told me it was, that God had not suffered him to be any more the executioner of His enemies. At his fall, his horse being killed with the bullet, and as I am informed three horses more, I am told he bid them, open to the right and left, that he might see the knew rogues run. Truly he was exceedingly beloved in the Army, of all that knew him. But few knew him; for he as a precious young man, fit for God.

There's a lot to unpack here. Officers writing to the parents of the fallen is nothing new but this is personal: this is Cromwell writing to his wife's brother about his nephew, having only recently lost his own son. What a letter to have to write.

Also a field amputation, in 1644, so that's going to have been agonising and gory and I was struck by the son's relief, as he lay dying, that he didn't have to kill anyone else.

You may have also noted the deaths of four horses used by the one man. As a species we've long been guilty of expecting horses in particular to take part in our wars. There's another entry in the “The Folio Book of Days” for the following day, 3rd July, from the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 where Samuel Wilkinson writes his despatch beside the body of his son, killed in the first day's fighting. He talks of the appalling artillery barrage and says:

Through the midst of the storm and screaming and exploding shells an ambulance, driven by its frenzied conductor at full speed, presented to all of us the marvellous spectacle of a horse going on three legs. A hinder one having been shot off at the hock ...

Interesting use of the word "marvellous" but given the circumstances he was in (the rest of the entry is equally gory) I think he can be forgiven but dreadful all the same.

So my readings for the start of July did leave me thinking about the appalling nature of conflict.

Which bring me on to the another death in a book I've read recently which affected me more than I expected. The nature of the beast is that in detective fiction death is a common thing and in general there it's treated pretty lightly: it's a plot point, not a tragedy for those involved.

Not so here. The book is "Blue Lightning" by Ann Cleeves and it's book four in her Shetland series. It's a dark tale where our hero DI Jimmy Perez finds himself stranded by the weather on his home island of Fair Isle and where over the course of the book three murders take place, the last of which is his fiancée Fran ... which was a shock to me let alone him.

In the final chapters Cleeves writes well of the consequences of this for Perez and the people around him. To give you one small example just this short paragraph left me with something in my eye and even transcribing it again now was hard:

The [ferry to Fair Isle] was already at the jetty when they arrived. The crew were loading sacks of mail from the post van, and boxes of vegetables for the shop. They stopped when they saw Perez and one by one, put their arms around him. No words were needed.

In my head I can see that scene happening, and feel the men's pain. That's what good writing is about.

I was surprised by how much this book affected me, films sometimes make me well up (I cried like a baby the first time I saw the funeral scene in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" in a cinema somewhere in Edinburgh) but books, not so much ... until now.