Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (29 page)

‘I told him you were no good to us behind these bloody walls, Stryker,’ Skaithlocke said happily. ‘Told him you’d be rocking like a bear in a cage if he cooped you up too long.’ He shook his head, patting Stryker’s shoulder with his great paw. ‘No, sir. It is the saps for you, where you can go kill me some fucking Cavaliers!’

St Mary without Bishopsgate, London, 12 August 1643

Major General Erasmus Collings slapped the quill down on the paper as he stood. His chair shot backwards, screeching all the way to the wall. The table juddered against his knees, ink sputtered in all directions, and the cowed soldier stared at the tiled floor.

Collings knew he had hard eyes. His mother had told him so. She was not a kind woman. But a sharp mind and a hard gaze, he had learned, achieved much for a man who was built little sturdier than a young girl, and that, he admitted, was something he could thank the bitch for. It had frightened great and meek men alike, and now it reduced this gruff soldier to ruin.

‘You have failed me, Wallis.’

The red-bearded chin seemed to shrink into the soldier’s collar, putting Collings in mind of a turtle he had once seen. ‘I am sorry, General. Give me more time.’

Collings’ glare did not falter. ‘You are a disgrace to your coat, sir.’

Wallis let his eyes flicker to his black sleeve. ‘I am ever honoured to wear it, sir.’

‘And that is a great shame, since you will not be wearing it much longer.’ Collings moved from behind the table to pace slowly round its edge and into the room. He kept his steps sharp and hard, so that the crack of his heels sounded loud against the cold tiles, making the soldier flinch. He stopped a pace from Wallis. It was unpleasant, for the fellow’s breath stank enough to render a horse unconscious, but the effect of such close proximity was immediate, and Wallis seemed to shrink further into his shirt. ‘I fund this regiment.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Wallis muttered meekly.

‘From my own pocket. Your coats and breeches, the shirts on your lice-ridden backs, and the hats on your empty skulls. I pay for your vittles and weapons, your shoes, your ale and your damned powder ration.’

‘Aye, sir, and we are grateful for such generous—’

‘And in return,’ Collings continued unabated, ‘I expect my men to do their duty.’ He reached out and flicked a speck of dust from the black wool at Wallis’ otherwise pristine breast. The soldier almost stepped back at the touch, which was most gratifying. ‘You lost my prisoner.’

‘But the riots, sir—’

Collings slapped the bearded cheek as hard as he could. Wallis’ head jerked to the side, his skin below the left eye glowing as red as his wiry hair. ‘I will hear no more of the damnable riots!’ He spun away, seething, voice coarse through gritted teeth. ‘Curse me, I will not. Your attention faltered, and that is the nub of it. You lost a valuable asset to the rebellion, and you have failed to retrieve her.’

‘It is impossible, General, I swear!’ Wallis bleated in sudden desperation. ‘The roads are full of soldiers and provisions. Of folk fleeing one town, and others rushing to another. Carts full of supplies clog the highways, brigands infest the fields and ditches. My men know not where to look.’

Collings turned on his heel. He felt his breathing surge with the growing rage, and fought hard to control it. He stalked back to his desk, battling to push every muscle in his face back into a neutral position that would present the cold expression he had taken so many years to cultivate. Christ, but he needed to find Cecily Cade. She had been whisked away from under his nose, and he would be a laughing stock if the news reached Westminster. Worse: he might be accused of incompetence, or even collusion. Tried for treason by the dour grey-faces of the Commons. His blackcoats were loyal as any soldiers in the land, and they were sworn to secrecy, but these things, he knew, had a way of getting out, and it was only a matter of time before his error was made public.

He stared at Wallis, narrowing his beady eyes to black slits. ‘It is imperative you find the girl. No blunders.’

‘But, sir—’

‘Two women were seen heading north on the Barnet road.’

Wallis wrinkled his flat nose. ‘Two women does not mean—’

‘Two women on horseback, one fair of hair, the other dark. One dressed all in black, the other in blue.’

Wallis’ eyes widened. ‘When were they seen, sir?’

‘Days ago. They will be long gone by now.’ Perhaps, he thought with a wave of dread, they were already supping claret with the king in Oxford. But he could not entertain that thought. Not yet. ‘But it is a start, is it not? Take your men and find the King’s whores, Mister Wallis. Bring them back to me.’

Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, 12 August 1643

The cart rumbled gently over the compacted earth of the road. The cracks were deep, dark wounds cleaved into the mud by relentless heat and feeble rain, but the wheels negotiated them with admirable robustness. The narrow track had proven a blessing since they had elected to plunge along the canopy-smothered route, for it had been empty of both soldiers and bandits, and now, mercifully in time for dusk, they could see the first buildings of civilization.

Lisette Gaillard twisted in her hard seat, feeling her buttocks sear against the wooden slats, but forced a smile on to her lips. ‘How fare you, Goody Hulme?’

From back in the cart, the old woman wafted a hand that was as airy and translucent as goose down. ‘Well, thank you.’ She was leaning against the rearmost upright timbers, shoulders bouncing gently against the wood as the wagon traversed the uneven ground. The vehicle was empty save her skeletal frame. Her face betrayed a deep sorrow. ‘But now that I am away from that place, I cannot wrest my thoughts from Robert.’ A tear tumbled across the wrinkles of her cheek like a waterfall over a craggy cliff face. ‘Those murderous—’

‘Times force men to unholy acts,’ Lisette responded. She had seen far worse as a child in France, and she had quickly learned that to dwell upon grief was to let it devour you.

‘And they were not soldiers? You’re certain?’

‘Not soldiers any longer, though perhaps they were at one time.’ She shrugged. ‘Deserters most probably. Broke camp in the dead of night for fear of battle or plague.’

‘And now fallen to evil,’ Goodwife Hulme said bitterly.

‘Hunger will drive any person to dark places.’

‘As will lust,’ Cecily Cade added from her seat beside Lisette. She was more sensibly clothed now, having been free to choose from whatever garments she could find in the Hulme house. Like Lisette, she was dressed in the garments of a man, with breeches and hose, a simple shirt and brown coat. She had taken a long, grey riding coat that had been Robert Hulme’s prized possession, for his elderly wife claimed she had no use of it any longer.

Lisette nodded. ‘Lust too.’ She tried to brighten. ‘But they are well behind us, and well forgotten.’

Their elderly cargo worried at her coif with calloused fingertips. ‘I am a burden.’

‘Aye,’ Cecily said cheerfully. ‘But a welcome one.’

Lisette could not help but smile. Stryker had warned her to expect a pompous, outspoken example of the most irritating woman imaginable. He had been angry with the girl when he had told Lisette of the horrifying ordeal on the summit of a bleak Dartmoor tor. Freely admitted that the vengeful cavalryman, Gabriel Wild, and his witch-hunting lackey, Osmyn Hogg, had laid siege to the place in order to flay the skin from Stryker’s bones. But he had also told of a second design. Erasmus Collings’ determination to capture Cecily Cade and learn the whereabouts of her dead father’s fortune. The torments to which Stryker’s loyal men had been subjected were, in no small part, the fault of Miss Cade. Moreover, and worse still, the beautiful heiress had seduced young Andrew Burton in order to escape Stryker’s protection and make her own way through the moor. She had failed, of course, but it was her eventual spurning of Burton that had led him to his demise.

Yet now, as she looked across at the gaunt face beside her, she felt only admiration. Cecily Cade might have trifled with poor Burton’s naive emotions, but she had proven her worth time and again since London. Her own trials at the hands of Erasmus Collings would have been hard for any woman – or man – to bear, and the manner of the escape from the capital had taken a great deal of courage. The journey since had hardly been a Sunday stroll, and she had shown no fear at all. And then there was the lonely house in the woods, where they had almost been raped. How could Lisette resent one who had saved her life, crushing her attacker’s skull with a rock? This was no ordinary young woman.

‘Look there,’ Cecily said, causing Lisette to follow her outstretched finger. ‘Houses. See? Through the trees.’

Lisette squinted to discern the pale shapes of whitewashed walls and flint beyond the greens and browns that danced to obscure them. ‘You’re right, praise God.’

Lisette had insisted they leave the Hulme smallholding immediately, for they had neither the time nor the fortitude to bury two more souls in that blood-soaked turf, and that meant the pair of craven thieves would doubtless return to find their fedaries stinking in the sun. Such a sight could only breed a hunger for vengeance, however timid the men were by nature, and they would not be so easily bested a second time. Thus the women had released their own horses, for they were tired and one was already holding its hoof gingerly on the root-rutted paths, and taken the two mares ridden by the unfortunate Dan and Cal instead. Those beasts were ill-fed and skinny, but they were big and seemed robust enough. The sticking point had been the old woman. They had initially agreed to leave her, but that was before the brigands had waylaid their journey, and now, Cecily had argued, they would surely vent their anger upon poor Goodwife Hulme upon their return. Lisette had protested, but Cecily refused to move without their new companion. Goody Hulme could not ride, of course, so the mares were harnessed to the only road-worthy vehicle her late husband had owned, and then they had set off northwards. The younger women still failed to agree on a final destination, for Lisette saw Oxford as the only viable target, while Cecily yet clung to the notion of meeting General Hopton at one of the West Country garrisons. But the westward road was fraught with danger, making either plan unworkable. The Thames Valley divided the two capitals – rebel London and Royalist Oxford – and it seethed with Parliamentarian troops, and so it was agreed that they would strike north initially, only turning west once they had crossed the chalk heights of the Chilterns. Any uncertainty was laid to rest when the old woman mentioned that she had family at one of the settlements on their circuitous route.

It had taken the rest of the previous day, and all of this, to reach their destination: Leighton Buzzard. A dusty-faced, shoeless lad driving a herd of goats along the road during the first hours since dawn had told them that the bridleway would take them down into the small town, and that, so far as he knew, no soldiers of either persuasion held sway there. They could not know whether to trust him, but Lisette had decided they would trundle down from the hills and put their fate in the Lord.

The Black Sheep was the first inn they reached. On the town’s outskirts, its gable end facing out on to the surrounding fields that formed an arable buffer between civilization and the wilderness of the Chiltern Hills, it was a substantial building of timber frame and steeply pitched roof.

Lisette glanced up at the dark thatch as she and Cecily left the cart out on the road with its grieving passenger, and carefully eased open the door. The interior was better kept than she had expected, with clean floors of compacted chalk and straw, and a brick hearth painted with red and yellow stripes.

‘Ladies,’ a surprised voice greeted them from further into the chamber, which smelled strongly of wood smoke.

Lisette laid eyes on a man of middling height and frame, with long, black hair and a beard that fell all the way to his sternum in a sharp point. ‘You are—’

Cecily’s hand went out to grasp Lisette’s elbow, cutting her off. ‘You are master here?’

Lisette glared at Cecily, but she gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head.

‘Aye, tapster in this fair place,’ the man said. He sounded gruff, as though he had not used his voice for a while, but not impolite. He waited in the shadows, regarding the newcomers with glinting eyes. ‘Two pretty women alone.’ He clicked his tongue softly. ‘These are dangerous times.’

Cecily stepped forward, rounding her shoulders. ‘Listen to me, Master Tapster. We have money, and will pay you well if you agree to let us rest our heads here for the night. But be sure that we work for the highest authority in the land, and will not suffer any kind of hindrance lightly. Do I make myself clear?’

Lisette looked from the innkeeper to Cecily and back again, and for the first time she saw the real quality in the girl. Now, though, as the man casually stroked his pointed beard, she could see that he heard the same streak of authority ring like the clash of steel in her patrician tone.

Eventually he nodded. ‘Aye, mistress, and I think I have a room that’ll serve.’ As he walked across the room, Lisette heard the sound of straw rustling and glanced down to see that the tapster dragged his right leg awkwardly. He patted it with a vein-threaded hand. ‘Shot through the thigh at Newburn.’

‘You fought the Scots?’ Cecily asked.