Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (18 page)

She knew Major General Erasmus Collings to be a fragile little man with porcelain-delicate features and skin as white as chalk. He dressed in dandyish fashion, more like a courtly cockerel than one of the chief architects of the rebellion, and, though Lisette had never met him, she had been told his voice was as soft as a child’s. Not, then, a typical power broker in these ever more bloody days, especially for the Parliamentarians, who seemed to be increasingly in favour of forthright, muscular kinds of leaders such as Cromwell in the east and Fairfax to the north. Collings was different; special. The Royalist high command had dispatched Lisette on this mission with warnings of his infamy ringing in her ears. He was a spymaster, one of Parliament’s best, and a man who neither forgot a slight, nor forgave one. A major general with as much influence as the Earl of Essex or Sir William Waller, but one whose power was wielded in secret. In short, Erasmus Collings was a dangerous enemy for whom politics and treachery were to be embraced, and it was he who commanded the guards here.

Lisette had been sent to rescue Cecily Cade from the rebels after she had been taken from Stryker’s company in a Roundhead ambush just before the unlikely Royalist victory in a corner of north Cornwall she had never heard of. The girl was by all accounts the spoiled daughter of a Royalist sympathizer who happened to be filthy rich, but those riches made Miss Cade important to Lisette’s superiors, and that in turn made her important to Lisette. The early days of the task had been relatively positive, for Lisette had been promised that Captain Stryker would be joining her to rescue the girl – quite rightly, to Lisette’s mind, seeing as it was from under his not so watchful gaze that she had been kidnapped – and that thought had filled her with excitement. But he had not come, and from there on things seemed to worsen. Major General Erasmus Collings, it transpired, was Cecily Cade’s gaoler here in London, and he was proving a difficult adversary. His personal squad of musketeers had been an ever-present barrier, preventing her from getting close to Cecily, and his penchant for moving the imprisoned girl ensured that Lisette spent a great deal of wasted time staring at empty buildings across the breadth of the city. The problems had been compounded by the sickness that kept Lisette in her bed for so long, which meant she lost all contact with her superiors back in Oxford. Indeed, at her lowest point she had truly wondered if this mission would prove to be the death of her. But, by the grace of God, she had gradually recovered, and made contact with Quigg, who, for all his faults, had managed to locate the prize again. And now, as she stared out from the copse to look at the stone-built compound, she offered a silent prayer of thanks to the Holy Mother. The game was not yet up.

Quigg was pointing to the small door positioned in the nearest wall. ‘She is in there.’

‘How can you know which building holds her?’

‘I saw them enter through that very door. Why would they use the back entrance if it were not the quickest route to her cell?’

‘Maybe he saw you following,’ Lisette mused aloud.

‘Impossible,’ Quigg retorted hotly. ‘There are little rooms beyond that entrance, my people tell me. That is where they will be keeping her.’ He rubbed at his disease-pitted neck. ‘To think, that grand place used to be home to all those lazy bloody monks.’

Lisette was inclined to stab her companion then and there for such a comment, but instead she chose to bite the inside of her mouth hard, the metallic tang of blood crawling across her tongue. The Protestants continued to crow about the decline of the monasteries, even though a century had passed since their fall. Establishments such as this once beautiful one had been plundered, dismantled and sold to the highest bidder, raped and robbed by Fat Henry and his vile lackeys, and the thought hurt her deeply. The suppression, she felt sure, had ruined Britain. Crushed its spirit, and left it akin to an open wound, festering and destined for a juddering, painful end. But Quigg was, after all, just another misguided Englishman, and she had grown accustomed to them, despite her antipathy. ‘Bloody heretics,’ she muttered.

‘Heretics?’

Christopher Quigg’s bulbous eyes had swivelled like a pair of spinning plums to search Lisette’s face.

Lisette shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

Quigg’s eyeballs rolled back to the hospital buildings. ‘Like a damned fortress with those guards always on the lookout.’

Lisette looked up at the pale facade. ‘Even Magdeburg fell eventually.’

‘Pray God your pamphlets prove a tad more expedient than the emperor’s guns.’ Quigg produced a handkerchief and mopped his temples. ‘Magdeburg held out for six months.’

Lisette chose to ignore him. ‘The Peace Party is emboldened, you said.’

Quigg nodded. ‘Aye, that is what I hear. The lords Holland, Bedford and Clare sue for negotiation at Westminster, while their supporters are out in the streets. The voices of dissent grow with every passing hour. They want the war over, finished.’

‘Then my pamphlets are working.’

‘They are certainly doing us no harm. The common folk would have it ended by any means.’

Lisette looked at him. ‘And you have every agent assigned?’

Quigg placed a pudgy hand across his heart. ‘By my honour, madame, I have every available contact whispering doom for the rebellion, stirring trouble where they may.’

She returned her stare to the compound. Its pale stone walls and gargoyle-fringed roofs shone in the afternoon sun, making the old place appear as though it had a veneer of solid gold. She imagined the clergymen bustling along its corridors, in and out of elaborate cloisters and across green courtyards full of vegetables and beehives. A truly wondrous place, built amid worship and contemplation, designed to help the needy, back in a time when England knew its true place in the world. But for all its beauty, the hospital remained a formidable place. The walls were thick and the intricate carvings peered down from heights too lofty to scale. There were not many guards – Lisette had counted twenty in all – but there were only four or five visible entrances for them to protect, and each man appeared to be well armed and vigilant.

She needed a distraction, a disturbance big enough that the guards would be compelled to investigate. She doubted that anything, save an assault on the capital by the Oxford Army itself, would make them abandon their posts, but the Peace Party and their increasingly vocal supporters might, she had hoped, cause enough of a furore to draw the guards’ collective attention elsewhere. And that was where Henry Greetham and his printing press had come in.

One of the guards, black-coated, with a white kerchief fastened around his hat and armed with a halberd that was propped against his shoulder, paced across the walkway in front of them. His face was almost entirely obscured by a thick beard the colour of fox fur, but Lisette could see the tiny pin-pricks of light dance across his eyes as he checked the area with a worrying level of care. He paused by the small door, almost as though he sensed the eyes watching it.

‘Bastard whoreson,’ she hissed bitterly, a sudden feeling of dread washing through her. ‘It will never work. He does not give a damn for the protests.’

‘Your major general?’ asked Quigg. ‘He will.’

Lisette breathed deeply, embarrassed at her show of concern. She found herself wishing it was Stryker at her side, and the thought made her angrier still. ‘How can you be so sure?’

‘The mood is darkening,’ Quigg said confidently. ‘I have told you our people are in the streets. They are in the taverns, in every tannery and wharf and shambles. They whisper what we tell them to whisper. They ensure the pamphlets are seen, passed around. The protests will only grow. Eventually the guards here will be unable to ignore them.’

Lisette rose from her crouching position, feeling the burning pain in her cramped knees, and backed away into the trees. ‘I pray you are right, monsieur.’ She sketched an invisible cross in front of her chest. ‘I pray you are right.’

Alveston, Gloucestershire, 8 August 1643

Captain Lancelot Forrester watched the fire spit and hiss from the fat that pattered the lurid embers; it was like watching raindrops falling on leaves. He stared hard as the flesh around the blackened ribs curled back, those charred bones, like a row of tarred twigs, pushing out beyond the bronzed carcass of the sow. She, together with her squealing brood, had been taken by the regiment’s foraging party to feed the swarm of men flooding north along the Severn Valley. They were officially commandeered in the name of the king, of course, but the few shillings that found their way into the farmer’s bony palm had not served to mollify him one bit. Forrester guessed the poor man would be throwing in his meagre lot with the Clubmen before winter.

A man cleared his throat suddenly, and Forrester glanced up to see his colonel beyond the flames. Sir Edmund Mowbray was not in the habit of sharing victuals with his men, preferring to maintain the dignified distance required for command, but this evening was clearly different. Forrester wondered what news was about to be imparted.

One of the regiment’s pikemen had been summoned to tend to the pork, and Mowbray shot the young, sallow-cheeked lad a quick nod to indicate that the flesh should be carved. ‘Not the least pleasant way to end one’s day,’ the colonel said as he waited until a large wooden bowl had been filled with thin strips of the greasy meat. As soon as the food was offered to him, he dismissed the pikeman, ensuring that the soldier was well out of earshot before he spoke again. ‘As you’re no doubt aware, Aston and Gerard are already at Painswick, just six miles short of the city. For our part, we will be at Gloucester’s south-west fringe in a day or two.’

The gathering was exclusively made up of Mowbray’s most senior officers. Lieutenant Colonel Baxter sat at his colonel’s right hand, with Goodayle, the gruff sergeant major, to his left. Across the sumptuously fragrant smoke squatted Kinshott the quartermaster, Humfrey Patience, the regiment’s provost marshal, and his three highest-ranked captains, Aad Kuyt, Job Bottomley and, in Stryker’s conspicuous absence, Forrester.

The latter received the bowl in turn, picked out the fattest strip he could find, and lifted it to hover before his lips. ‘I hear Vavasour,’ Forrester said, waving the meat as he spoke like a conductor before an orchestra, ‘diverts horse and foot from his siege at Brampton Bryan.’

Mowbray nodded. ‘And we have more reinforcements coming from Banbury, Worcester and Oxford.’

Forrester popped the food into his mouth, chewing as he spoke. ‘A veritable horde, sir.’

‘Aye,’ Goodayle agreed, his deep tone rumbling through the grey dusk. ‘And His Majesty rides across the Cotswolds.’

Forrester smirked. ‘Didn’t fancy slogging with us, then?’

Goodayle’s eyelid twitched as though he fought to suppress his own amusement. ‘He feels it important to rendezvous with the reinforcements from Oxford.’

‘Or find a big house with a feather bed and a pretty view,’ Forrester replied sourly, before immediately regretting the barb. He felt himself colouring as his colonel leaned forward purposefully.

‘Have a care, Captain,’ Mowbray warned.

Forrester finished the meat, though it felt as though he gulped down thorns. ‘Sir.’

‘The decision is made, then, sir?’ Aad Kuyt said quickly, sensing his friend’s embarrassment. ‘We storm again?’

Mowbray screwed up his already shrewish face, lips disappearing behind his neat moustache. ‘Not as such. It is still wagered the governor, one Massie, will surrender the town with little ceremony.’

Kuyt scratched his crooked nose thoughtfully. ‘
Still
wagered, sir? Something has changed?’

‘As you know, Colonel Legge’s message was officially rebuffed,’ Mowbray confirmed, ‘but not privately.’

‘It is the talk of the camp, sir,’ Kuyt said. ‘There was a second message. A secret reply from Massie that hinted at his willingness to surrender.’

‘If the King himself appears before the walls,’ Goodayle rumbled.

Mowbray nodded. ‘That is so. But—’ He stared up at the darkening sky. ‘Matters have been complicated this day.’ The colonel pulled at his moustache for a moment as he chose his words. ‘Massie is suspected of double dealing, of saying one thing and whispering another. The mixed messages received by Legge have only served to confuse. For that reason, another man was sent into the city to see for himself. Get a feel for the preparations, and the morale of the place.’

‘And we have received word from him?’ Forrester asked.

‘We have,’ Mowbray said with a grimace. ‘He advises Massie will not surrender.’

It was Forrester’s turn to stare at the sky as he attempted to unravel the absurdity of the situation. ‘So we have his official response to Legge, stating that he will not surrender, followed by a secret message suggesting the opposite, and yet another contradicting that.’

Mowbray offered a pained smile. ‘I fear you are correct, Captain.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning the King is unsure as to how we must proceed. We will nevertheless appear in strength, His Majesty himself at our head, and allow Massie to throw open his gates.’

Kuyt offered a rueful laugh. ‘And that is our plan?’ he said, not bothering to conceal his disbelief. ‘His Majesty will stride up to the walls and call upon Gloucester to surrender, all the while knowing our agent has given information to the contrary?’