Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (58 page)

‘Not infantry,’ Wilmot called back. ‘They have dragoons out in the trees.’ And that would be a problem, he inwardly conceded, for the enemy effectively possessed mounted infantry: men who could ride quickly to each deployment, but bring full musket-fire to bear.

Wilmot twisted in his saddle as he guided his horse through the narrow opening that took them back to where they had started. He saw that the cavalrymen of Middleton and Ramsey were now advancing. ‘Damn their brazen eyes!’ he bellowed, thumping a fist against his breastplate. ‘They attack me? The arrogant guttersnipes attack me?’

The Royalists watched as the rebel horsemen came on across the field. This would clearly be a hard day’s work. Silently, Lord Wilmot cursed his luck and desperately racked his mind for a solution. There was none, other than to keep battering the Roundheads with his larger force and eventually drive them back. He prayed he could succeed in time to prevent Essex’s advance across the Cherwell. Failure simply did not bear consideration.

Barton, Gloucester, 2 September 1643

Stryker’s billet was a tiny, windowless room on the upper floor of a stone building on Barton Street. It had been home to a young family, he guessed, for a rag doll had been left unceremoniously beside the downstairs hearth when first he arrived, and a battered pinwheel in a wooden chest that had since gone for kindling. There had been cooking pots too, and chairs and cups and jugs. But war had destroyed the once cosy place, chased the occupants away and left it as desolate as the saps a short way to the north. Now, as Stryker led Lisette Gaillard up the creaking staircase, he knew she would see little more than a stone box. There was just a rickety wooden bed frame, on which sat a straw palliasse that was grimy and uneven. Everything else had been stripped out by the Royalist army, looted or burned. Even so, Stryker had had to evict a pair of snot-nosed lieutenants to claim the dingy chamber for his own.

The sight of the place made him cringe as he drew Lisette inside, but she seemed not to notice. Instead she pushed the door shut behind her, the clunk of the lock sounding like a pistol shot in the silence, and they were plunged into gloom. They regarded one another wordlessly for what seemed an age, each letting their eyes grow accustomed to the dimness, each considering the weeks that had slipped by since last they met.

‘How?’ Stryker said when finally he found his voice.

‘Lord Wilmot’s men escorted us,’ Lisette said. ‘From Oxford.’

‘Us?’

Lisette’s stare hardened, just a touch, but he noticed it all the same. ‘I have Miss Cade.’

Stryker felt his eye widen. ‘You did it? You rescued her?’

‘She is with the King now,’ Lisette said, and her face was suddenly hostile. ‘No thanks to—’

But the words would not come, for her mouth was suddenly blocked by Stryker’s. He pressed against her, forcing her back against the door, and, though her hands were pushing at his chest, her tongue did not resist his. There they remained for a luxurious moment, fastened together in an embrace Stryker hoped would never end, but Lisette jerked violently back, breaking the trance.

She stared up at Stryker, still angry, and for a moment he thought she might slap him, but instead her hand reached out for his, squeezing his fingers and pulling them up to her face. He pressed his palm against her cheek; it was so warm in the chill afternoon. He lifted his free hand and threaded his fingers through the golden strands of her hair. She tilted her head, eyes closed, sighing at the touch. He leaned in to kiss her again, but this time she pushed him away so that he took a full pace back. She shrugged off her cloak, mud-spattered from the ride, and then the coat beneath, leaving them in a heap by the door as she stepped forth. She pushed him in the chest so that he staggered rearward, again and again, until the backs of his knees collided with the palliasse and he collapsed heavily on to its edge. And she was standing over him, tugging the string at the collar of her voluminous white shirt, glaring down at him. He took her thighs in his hands, let his palms snake up the brown wool and, with fingers that felt so out of practice, fumbled at the pewter discs holding her breeches in place.

Lisette was already pulling the shirt over her head. She tossed it casually away and stepped back so that he could see her. He swallowed thickly. She smiled down at him through the curtain of gold already tousled from his feverish attentions. Her skin was the colour of milk, her eyes like a cat’s in the darkness, twinkling and predatory. Her hands moved to her breeches, finishing what his hurried fingers had started, and soon they were a mere pile at her ankles.

Stryker stood as though a fire had been lit beneath him, and he tore at his own clothes like a madman. Lisette watched in silence, the corners of her mouth twitching in a sardonic smirk as he struggled to unfasten his scabbard. He cursed, lifting the whole baldric clean over his head, throwing it to the foot of the palliasse, and ripping off the rest of his garments. She came closer, kicking off her boots. He reached out, grasping her wrists more roughly than he meant, and she mewed softly as he dragged her to the bed. They crumpled side by side on to the compacted straw, kissing hungrily, tongues twining, teeth clinking, exploring the flesh that they knew so well but feared they had forgotten.

Lisette pulled back. ‘It is good to see you,
mon amour
,’ she murmured.

Stryker tried to kiss her again, but she pressed a finger to his lips, urging patience. She rotated her hips a touch, lifting a knee, and slid across his stomach so that she straddled him. He stared up at her, watching her breasts sway behind the long, tangled hair, their dark tips brushing his chest in the half-light. She slipped a hand between their bodies, pushing her fingers down until she found him. He bucked at her touch, desperate that she guide him into her, and she eased back, gasping at the ceiling beams. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her rump, while her nails carved red tracks from his chest to his shoulders. Nothing existed but the two of them. The siege, the rebels, the war. In that moment, nothing mattered.

‘Why did you abandon me?’ Lisette said later. She had told him of Cecily’s rescue, of the time under Erasmus Collings’ control, and of the huge army they had seen muster on Hounslow Heath. For his part, Stryker had listened with interest, though he knew that eventually she would bring matters back to this.

Stryker rolled on to his side to face her. He had no sheets in the Spartan billet, and they were naked together on the palliasse. Their skin was clammy where their bodies touched. ‘I did not. I was ordered to Bristol, Lisette, and then here. The Prince sent me into the city.’

‘You’ve turned spy now?’

Stryker ran a finger along her flank, over her hip and down the sweep of her buttock. Her skin was so smooth. It never failed to amaze him. ‘Aye. Or, at least, I was spying until a few days ago.’ He dragged his gaze back to her face, pushing the hair from her eyes with a delicate finger. ‘You have to believe me, Lisette. The high command lost their hunger for the mission when Hopton was injured.’

‘Injured?’ she said in surprise. ‘He lives still?’

Stryker nodded. ‘He was burned badly, but recovers well by all accounts. They put him in charge of Bristol after it fell.’

‘She will be happy to know that.’

‘She?’

‘Cecily.’

Stryker looked away. ‘You did well to rescue her.’

Lisette tapped his shoulder. ‘Christ, Stryker, do not look so bloody sheepish. I know what happened.’

‘You know?’ Stryker replied tentatively.

Lisette ran a hand gently over him, from the scab on his forehead, down past the fresh bruises of recent weeks and to his shoulders, arms and chest. She explored each scar as she had so many times before. There were new ones, and she paid them extra attention, as if committing every blemish to memory. ‘You should have told me it was you she seduced.’

‘She did not seduce me, Lisette,’ Stryker argued.

‘No? She is very beautiful.’

‘She tried,’ Stryker admitted, as something inside compelled him to speak the truth. It was as if all the lies he had told in Gloucester had been more than he could stomach any longer. ‘I confess I was tempted. But I refused her.’

Lisette’s probing fingers froze at a straight white scar along his abdomen. ‘Tempted.’

‘Tempted,’ he repeated. He pushed his fingers through the hair above her ear. ‘Nothing more.’

Lisette looked at him. ‘What if I were to tell you that she regrets what happened?’

To Stryker’s relief he felt Lisette’s hand move again. ‘I have thought about Gardner’s Tor many times. What I would say to her if ever I saw her again.’

‘And?’

‘And I suppose she did what she had to do,’ he said, thinking of his own duplicity in recent days. He flicked her earlobe tenderly. ‘She did no more than you’d have done.’

She chuckled at that. ‘True.’ She pressed herself into him suddenly. ‘She told me she had feelings for you,
mon amour
.’

‘Oh?’ Stryker said with a deliberately lascivious grin.

She reached down to grasp at his crotch, squeezing hard enough to make him bite his lip. ‘You go near her and I’ll chop off your bloody stones, understand?’

They both laughed, and as soon as Lisette loosened her grip, Stryker rolled her on to her back, moving between her legs and pinning her wrists beside her head. He slid down, pushing his face in the warm cleft between her breasts, and began to move his hips. Lisette moaned.

And someone knocked at the door.

Matson House, Gloucester, 2 September 1643

‘Won’t see me?’

The supercilious courtier, resplendent in a salmon suit that was decorated at every possible opportunity with brilliant white lace, shook his head with a condescending smile. ‘I’m afraid not, miss.’

Cecily Cade was standing in the stone porch of the king’s headquarters. She had parted company with Lisette as soon as they reached Gloucester, begging half the cavalry escort to see her safely to Matson. For her part, Lisette had wanted to find Mowbray’s regiment, and Cecily had actively encouraged her to go. But now, as she stared into the smug face of the man who denied her entry, she wondered if the Gallic firebrand might have had better luck. ‘Won’t see me?’ she spluttered with unconcealed incredulity. ‘You do not understand, sir. What I have to tell the King is of the utmost importance.’

The courtier folded his arms. ‘With all due respect, madam, you are not the first person to claim such import in order to gain audience with His Majesty.’

Cecily Cade stepped forwards, startling the courtier as she took the exquisite lace of his collar in her small fist. ‘Now listen to me, you jumped-up little peacock,’ she hissed, her face just an inch from his. ‘I have risked my life time and again to bring this information to His Majesty, and I’ll be damned if I’m to be denied an audience now.’ She released him and he stumbled back over the threshold. ‘Do we understand each other?’

The courtier stared at her from within the darkness of the house’s interior, eyes wide and white as though he were a frightened creature peering at a predator from the safety of its cave. ‘We do, madam,’ he muttered hurriedly. ‘That we do. But he cannot—he is not here.’

‘Well where is he?’

‘Inspecting the army, madam. He has ridden out to the north. We have brigades camped all around the city perimeter, and he would visit each one before the final push.’ He stepped closer again now that her aggression seemed to have abated. ‘Essex comes hither,’ he said, casting a furtive glance over Cecily’s shoulder as though the Roundhead earl would appear at Matson House at any moment. ‘We must take this vile city before he gets here.’

‘Which way did he go? I would ride after him.’

The courtier spread his palms to show that her guess was as good as his. ‘It is a big leaguer, madam. There are thousands of soldiers here.’ He moved aside, waving her in. ‘I think it best you await His Majesty here, at Matson. Where it is safe.’

Cecily Cade did not wish to wait. She had been through too much to get where she was. But then, she thought, her journey was at an end. Collings and his blackcoats could not reach her now, and the king was but a few hours away at most. She had succeeded. In the shade of the stone porch, Cecily Cade breathed a deep, lingering sigh of relief. ‘When will he return?’

‘This evening, so I understand.’

Cecily nodded, stepping past the salmon-clad fellow and into the king’s temporary court. ‘I will wait.’

Near Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, 2 September 1643

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and commander of Parliament’s forces, looked back along the huge train of man, beast, wagon and gun. Evening was drawing in, the murky light of dusk exacerbated by a new bank of heavy clouds, and he could not see the tail of his huge force.

‘Is everyone across?’ he asked, turning to an aide.

The man was panting, a sheen of sweat making his pink cheeks shimmer, and his mount stooped to drink thirstily from the small stream that ran beside them. ‘Aye, Your Grace. All across.’

‘Middleton?’

‘I have just ridden from there, Your Grace,’ the rider said. ‘He held the malignants back with few losses. They skirmish yet, for Wilmot would doubtless harry our rear, but the Cherwell has been successfully forded.’