Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (9 page)

‘Was not Captain Fantom sent that way only recently, sir?’ one of the dragoons replied.

Crow glanced back at him. ‘Aye, Samuel, that he was.’ He looked at Stryker. ‘Did you ever meet Carlo Fantom, Captain?’ When Stryker nodded mutely, the colonel went on. ‘He was a superior cavalryman, none could deny it. A Croat, I believe. Veteran of the Low Countries, like yourself, and a notorious killer. Again, like yourself.’

‘Sir, I—’ Stryker began.

‘But,’ Crow cut him off sharply, ‘he overreached himself, didn’t he? A devil in a man’s clothing. A beast who fed on slaughter and rape. His own army –
this
army, Stryker – had him dancing the noose-jig for his evil ways.’

Stryker shook his head defiantly. ‘Fantom was a ravisher, sir.’

‘And you are a murderer, sir,’ Crow replied slowly.

Stryker’s first instinct was to dive at the ruddy-cheeked colonel, beat him to a pulp with his fists alone. His mood of late had been volcanic, and he was inclined to let it erupt. But the exaggerated clearing of Forrester’s throat somewhere at his back made him think twice, and he managed to rein in his temper. Reluctantly, he snatched off his hat and dismounted, fixing his gaze on an invisible point just beyond Crow’s shoulder. ‘I had hoped,’ he stammered, his heart thumping each word up to his mouth.

Crow’s blue eyes, small and malevolent, searched Stryker’s face for what felt like an age. ‘Hoped?’ he echoed the word with a malicious grin, stepping closer so that Stryker could smell his acrid breath. ‘Hoped, you say? And what had you hoped, Captain? That I had forgotten you? Forgotten your arrogance, your smug smirk? Forgiven you the casual murder of my sons?’

The mention of that fateful night in Cirencester brought whirling memories to the fore. A pair of yellow-coated brothers had died in a makeshift stable, one at the end of Stryker’s sword, the other impaled on a pitchfork wielded by Sergeant Skellen. Stryker remembered their eyes, glinting with such malevolence. Like their father. ‘Saul and Caleb Potts were—’

‘Were mine!’ Colonel Artemas Crow erupted in sudden, spittle-drenched rage. He took a pace forward, as though he would lash out. Instead, he levelled a quavering finger in Stryker’s face. ‘They were mine, you cur,’ he hissed so that only Stryker might hear. ‘Not my heirs, certainly, but my flesh. My blood. And you stole them from me.’ He turned back, raising his voice. ‘Here, my lads, is the murderer of poor Saul and Caleb! The killer of brave Major Edberg. Look upon him as you would Satan himself.’

‘Colonel,’ one of the dragoons, still mounted, kicked forward, drawing his carbine in the same movement. He said nothing more, but Stryker saw the look on his face, and unsheathed his sword.

Crow smirked as more of his men brought weapons to bear, urging their horses on until they formed a rough crescent around colonel and captain.

Stryker lifted his blade, letting the tip dance in the air in front of the animals’ faces. He knew it was a feeble gesture, for the dragoons were seated high and hefting muskets and pistols, but he would be damned before showing his apprehension to Artemas Crow. ‘One at a time,’ he said, feeling reassurance in the arrival of Skellen and Forrester at his back, ‘or must you hold hands?’

To his surprise, Crow began to laugh. It was a sound he had not heard before, and its screeching tones were even more penetrating than his speaking voice. ‘Hold!’ he ordered, raising an arm to curtail the ambition of his yellow-clad disciples. ‘Not here, my lads. Not now.’ Crow threw Stryker a derisive sneer. ‘Put that little hanger away, Captain.’

Stryker hesitated at first, but the evident cessation in hostilities gave him pause for thought. To be seen holding a blade before a senior officer was not wise, and he gradually lowered the point to the throat of his waiting scabbard.

Colonel Crow spun abruptly on his heels and stalked back to his horse. ‘No, sir,’ he declared when he had clambered back into the saddle, ‘I have neither forgotten nor forgiven, and your time will come. By God it will.’ A thought seemed to come to him then, for his amphibious lips parted in a sudden grin. ‘
Captain
Stryker. The title is a disgrace. This courageous swash-and-buckler man, they say. How can he not be a major in our grand army, or higher still?
Pah
!’ Crow rocked back as though his chest had been hit by a pistol ball. ‘Well I know, Stryker. You are no gentleman. No leader of men. You are a peasant.’ He jabbed the air with an accusatory finger. ‘You are a common brawler. A
murderer
. The Prince cannot protect you forever.’

‘I’ll be waiting, sir,’ Stryker said, instilling his tone with a confidence he did not feel.

Colonel Artemas Crow hawked up a sticky gobbet of phlegm and spat it on the road a few feet from Stryker. ‘Of course you will,’ he said simply, and pulled hard on his mount’s reins.

CHAPTER 4

Hartcliffe, near Bristol, 4 August, 1643

The tip of the match-cord glowed bright orange in the murky dawn. It wavered at chest height like a flaming wasp, swaying left and right in small arcs, menacing in its promise of instant death.

The little man approached it steadily, pacing along the road with his arms held aloft in a show of supplication so that the man carrying the weapon would not shoot. The picket stepped forth, musket still levelled, his features resolving from behind the bright match, but the object of his suspicion merely swept back his hood and muttered a single word. ‘Killigrew.’

The picket nodded, suddenly at ease. He closed the long-arm’s pan cover and averted the menacing gaze of the muzzle. ‘On your way, sir,’ he said, lifting the musket a touch to blow on the match, careful to keep it ready should a shot be required.

Ezra Killigrew offered a nod of thanks as the match-tip raged fiercely, and replaced his hood, moving on into the village. He smiled to himself. He was not a large man. Indeed, his short stature and dumpy torso had been the object of ridicule as a child. He was no rake-hell or dashing
cavaliero
like his master. But he had power. Strangers did not know it, would never believe it, but Ezra knew it, felt it, wielded it. Those, like the picket, who knew his name, quaked in fear. And that was enough. As aide to a great man, he would arrange things, would speak to people at court, would whisper in the appropriate ears and hiss the necessary threats. He smiled again.

Killigrew skirted the row of tawdry, sagging buildings as quickly possible, keeping to the dark crevices of the new dawn. He might have been in the army, but he was no soldier. He hated the rank and file, old soaks intent only on brawling and rutting, men born for this life and who God had doubtless chosen to perish in battle or of the pestis. No, Ezra Killigrew was not one of them, and his goal in life was to have as little to do with the low-born sort as possible. On occasion, however, business forced him to brush up against society’s underbelly. He gritted his teeth, pulled his cloak tighter and prayed none of the worst kind were yet out of their beds.

He had been told Hartcliffe was the place and, sure enough, the red ensigns of the regiment could be seen leaning up against the window panes of homes at regular intervals. The colonel’s plain colour was not here, of course, for Sir Edmund and his company had remained in Bristol, but the rest were all present. The lieutenant colonel’s standard, a copy of his colonel’s with the added cross of St George in the corner beside the staff, was the first he identified, and he snaked past it quietly. The next was the sergeant major’s flag, which carried the added device of a pile wavy, a tongue of white flame issuing forth from the St George canton. He knew he was getting close when he saw the colour of the regiment’s sixth captain; half a dozen white diamonds filling the red field. He peered down the street, brown eyes straining in their puffy sockets, looking for the colour that carried just a pair of diamonds at its centre.

‘There you are,’ Killigrew whispered, spying the object of his search just a little way down the road. ‘Now, Mister Stryker. I do hope you are not abed, for this day will prove a busy one.’

Malmesbury, Wiltshire, 4 August 1643

The building was a substantial affair of small red bricks. It was a storehouse, with large lower chambers crammed with hogshead casks and two airy rooms above. The upper windows were unglazed, split by vertical mullions of moulded brick, and the roof beams were black with soot, the telltale sign of life before the stout chimney had been added.

The large man stared up at the beams as he reclined in a high-backed chair that creaked at his every movement, his pudgy fingers laced across his vast belly in the manner of the iron rings fastened around the barrels in the chamber below. ‘Fetch me some of that beer.’

At once, another man shifted. He pushed himself away from the mullion against which he had been leaning and went to a low table that held three battered blackjacks. He lifted the first, weighing it in his hand before selecting the second, which was evidently more full, and decanted some of the rusty liquid into a goblet of crumpled pewter. He moved slowly across the room, careful that his pronounced limp and crooked back would not cause him to spill the ale, and handed it to the fat man. ‘Why here?’

The fat fellow leaned forward and yawned, scratching at his beard as he did so. It was a rich chestnut colour, matching the curls on his head, which were still thick, though they were beginning to abandon his forehead and temples. He jerked his head to the side, so that his oxlike neck cracked loudly, and took the cup. He sipped, closing his eyes contentedly. ‘They say,’ he replied when he had taken his fill, ‘the malignants will march upon either Gloucester or London. From here we may react to whichever course they choose.’

The crookback winced, his right eye flickering uncontrollably. ‘What if he don’t go wiv ’em?’

‘An acceptable risk, Nobbs,’ the fat man said. He picked a small hair from the rim of the cup. ‘What else would you have me do?’

Nobbs offered a slanted shrug. ‘Buggered if I know, sir.’

‘And that is why you do as I say.’ The fat man set the goblet on the floor, careful that it balanced evenly on the worn timber slats. ‘Of course, if you wish to question my authority, you may do so.’

Judging by the grimace, it hurt Nobbs to shake his head, but he did so anyway. ‘No, sir. Not a bit of it.’

‘Good. A shame Jonas did not share your wits.’

Nobbs swallowed hard. ‘Sh-shame indeed, Mister Slager, sir. Stupid bastard, he was, sir. Brains of beef and the heart of a mouse.’

Slager simply grunted in reply. ‘How about we take a look at the piece, eh?’

Nobbs scuttled in his crablike manner across the boards, stopping when he reached a stout hogshead beside the closed door. He had dragged it up from the storeroom upon their arrival, just one of threescore such barrels in the building’s inner sanctum, but his master had been quite specific about which one it had to be. He glanced down at the small cross that was chalked on its side before taking the dirk from his waist and prizing open the already loosened lid. ‘I thought—’ he began, peering into the musty interior.

‘You thought it was a musket?’ Slager interrupted correctly, jerking wobbling chins towards the barrel.

Nobbs took the prompt, and dipped his hand into the hogshead. What he drew out was a metallic stock, etched with intricate swirls and images of prancing stags. It was small, not even the length of his forearm from elbow to wrist, and set into its far end were a pair of neat limbs of polished steel. Between them, crossing the stock horizontally, was a thick cord of twisted hemp.

Nobbs turned. ‘A crossbow.’

‘A balestrino. The assassin’s bow. It is favoured in the Italian states. Guns are too risky for our needs.’

‘Risky, sir? I heard some cur put a ball through Lord Brooke’s eye from atop Lichfield Cathedral.’

‘A lucky shot, Nobbs,’ the big man said dismissively. ‘He could not have repeated it had he tried a hundred times. And besides, a matchlock would be too awkward for our mission, not to mention too large.’

‘Pistol, then?’

‘Too unreliable. Even if we were to get close enough, it could well misfire, and our chance would be gone. This,’ he said, gazing at the weapon still held in Nobbs’ hands, ‘gives us the best opportunity. Small enough to bring close to the target, but accurate enough to make the shot. And no flash in the pan.’

Footsteps sounded from the corner of the room behind Nobbs, and he turned sharply. Before him was a handsome but painfully thin man, with a mop of straw-coloured hair, shining brightly against his suit of all black, and a square chin so cleanly shaven that it looked as though no beard grew there at all.

‘Christ, Robbens,’ Nobbs hissed, ‘must you lurk so? I almost shat m’ britches!’

‘She is a beauty,’ the newcomer, Robbens, said in heavily accented English, as he moved closer. He lifted a hand to fiddle with the strands of silk that had been threaded through a piercing in his earlobe. The ear-string was his only flourish of colour in an otherwise sober ensemble, and he pulled the threads together, laying them in a bright bunch across his shoulder.

‘That she is,’ Slager, still leaning back in his chair as though it were a throne, agreed. ‘Cost a pretty penny, I can tell you.’

‘The Union were happy to fund,’ Robbens replied, his ice-blue eyes never leaving the crossbow.