Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles (18 page)

Wild dipped his chin, locked his eyes on the foremost pikemen, and prepared to slam home. His horse would be reluctant to charge the waiting pikes, for those bloody spears could skewer it with ease, but he was a skilled horseman and would refuse to allow the beast its way. He would veer to the side of the great ash lance, knock down its point with his blade, and slash the neck of its handler wide open.

‘Parliament!’ he screamed. ‘Parliament!’

‘Compliments of Lieutenant Burton, sir!’

Stryker turned, seeing Barkworth approach with the fresh musketeers. ‘Put them straight into the front rank and give fire when the bastards reach us, Mister Barkworth.’

‘Wi’ pleasure, sir!’ Barkworth croaked as loud as his noose-crushed windpipe would allow. He flashed Stryker a sharp-toothed grin, eyes twinkling, and went to work.

The little Scot gave the order as soon as the horsemen were within range, and the men released by Lieutenant Burton snapped back their triggers as one, the volley rippling unevenly across this part of the circle, leaving powder smoke to drift sideways over the open moor.

Stryker took a couple of throat-singeing gulps of air to steady his nerves. The moor stank of blood and sulphur. He peered through the acrid cloud, braced for the terrible sight of horsemen emerging from the miasma. But none came. Nothing. Hooves still sounded, still rumbled on the heather and gorse, but their sound was fading with each moment. The second volley, comparatively weak though it was, had been more than the Roundheads were willing to bear. It had driven them back down the slope to count losses and lick wounds.

Stryker scanned the sooty faces of his musketeers, seeing that the first rank were virtually ready to fire again, and a palpable sense of relief hit him, because he knew Wild had been beaten.

‘Sir?’

Stryker turned to see Lieutenant Burton approach. ‘Aye.’

‘They’ll be back, sir. We can’t stay out here.’

Stryker wholeheartedly agreed. To remain on the open moor with paltry supplies and no shelter would simply invite the Parliamentarian cavalrymen to keep harrying them, blocking the western road, and chipping away at the company with impunity until the Royalists had no choice but to surrender. But surrender was not an option, for Stryker remembered Wild’s vengeful oaths back at Bovey Tracey. He felt a sharp stab of guilt for bringing this fate upon them, and he stared up at the sky as if the clouds could provide the answer.

‘There,’ he said suddenly.

Burton’s brow rose. ‘Sir?’

Stryker was staring at the northern horizon, or rather the stone-cluttered hill that dominated the near distance. It was the tor he had seen earlier. The flat-topped promontory that was lower than its cousins to the west, with shallower slopes and a summit crowded with sheltering clumps of granite. ‘Make ready the men, Andrew. Load the dead in the cart as best you can. That’s where we’re going.’

CHAPTER 7

Okehampton, Devon,
1
May
1643

Witch-finder Osmyn Hogg stared about the chamber with satisfaction. ‘You’ve done well, José. Very well indeed.’

José Ventura, Hogg’s Spanish assistant, peered back at him through the gloom, dark eyes twinkling like polished orbs of jet in the firelight. ‘The Lord wish everything to be just so, sir. The right cond—condish?’

‘Conditions. And He has guided your hand perfectly.’

Ventura bowed and moved to warm his hands above the burning brazier at the centre of the dusty floor. ‘As only He can, of course.’

Indeed, thought Hogg, the gracious Lord had certainly provided great inspiration for Ventura this time. When Hogg’s request for private quarters had been met with the suggestion that they use some derelict outbuildings in the fields to the rear of the White Horse, it had seemed as though the dead-eyed Major-General Collings had once again been mocking them. But the buildings – a pair of musty old storage huts with rotten doors and sagging roof beams – were certainly well positioned, far enough away from prying eyes and ears, and, after a day of clearing out the cobwebbed debris, Ventura had transformed the place into the perfect examination room.

‘Should I fetch them?’

Hogg limped to the brazier, pulled one of the iron rods from the grill’s red-white bowels, and held his free hand a few inches from its glowing tip. The air between the rod and his skin became fiercely hot in the time it took for his heart to beat but twice. ‘Aye, bring them to me.’

As Ventura disappeared into the pre-dawn darkness, Hogg stared at the fire, losing himself in the searing, pulsating embers.

Stryker. That name. How long had it been?

Stryker. A word that made Osmyn Hogg both enraged and sickened.

‘Stryker,’ he said aloud, thrusting the iron savagely back into the brazier’s depths, frantic sparks spewing out to shower the floor.

Osmyn Hogg considered himself to be a rational man. Educated, principled, and above all righteous. God’s representative on Earth. He had little time for petty squabbles or the base need for revenge. And yet when he had heard that name uttered across Major-General Collings’s dinner table, it was as though a lightning bolt had travelled straight through his chest. He had wanted to leave then and there. Run – no,
limp
, he corrected himself ruefully – from the room, saddle the nearest horse and ride for Colonel Wild’s troop. He had said as much to Collings, pleaded with the slightly bemused – and doubtless
amused
– Parliamentarian to grant him his leave. But Collings had refused, on the grounds that he did not know where exactly Wild would be. Whether that was truly the case, or whether it had more to do with Hogg’s refusal to explain his reasoning, he did not know. But ultimately, it did not matter. He had remained in Okehampton. Stuck here, in this vile little town, when Stryker –
Stryker –
was so near. The very idea made his heart ache.

The door swung open revealing three figures silhouetted against the moon.

‘Welcome to the Lord’s house,’ said Hogg quietly. ‘A place for you to cleanse your corrupt souls.’

‘
In
.’ The speaker was José Ventura. Hogg saw that he was standing at the rear of the trio, a round, black shape in the darkness, his chubby hands shoving at his companions’ backs.

The two prisoners – a man and a woman – shuffled slowly in. Hogg glanced beyond them to Ventura. ‘Are we protected?’

The Spaniard nodded, sweaty jowls shaking. ‘Collings give two guards, sir. They at the door.’

‘All is ready, then.’ Hogg turned his attention to the subjects of the morning’s work. The accused. They were of late middle age, dressed in the threadbare clothes of common folk. He met the frightened gaze of the man. ‘Master Merriman?’

The man, tall and wiry with a narrow jaw and deeply pitted cheeks, nodded at the woman beside him. ‘An’ this is m’ goodwife, Elspeth, sir.’

Hogg looked at the woman. She was a head shorter than her husband, with a stout frame and warty complexion. ‘Eve to our Adam.’

‘M’lord?’ Elspeth replied.

Hogg smiled unpleasantly. ‘No matter.’ He turned, limping back towards the centre of the room, where the brazier waited. Only when he had reached a place where he knew the firelight would cast suitably sinister shadows across his features did he look back at the Merrimans. He was pleased to see the fear dance in their eyes. He stood as tall as his pains would allow, attempting not to lean on his stick, and withdrew a sheet of crinkled paper from the folds of his black cloak. ‘John and Elspeth Merriman. You are accused of witchcraft.’

‘That’s a lie, sir,’ Merriman bleated immediately.

Ventura stood on tiptoes and slapped him hard across the face. ‘Shut your mouth while Master Hogg speak!’ Too stunned to argue, Merriman fell silent. Elspeth began to sob.

‘A man known to you both,’ Hogg continued, glancing down at the paper, ‘one Michael Hood of Okehampton, has testified that he did see you both abroad under cover of darkness a month since. Suspicious for what your dark business might be, this Hood did follow you to an ancient grove beyond the town limits.’

‘How can this be?’ Elspeth suddenly shrieked. She gripped her husband’s arm. ‘Tell him, John! Tell him Hood lies!’

‘And there,’ Hogg continued, raising his voice above the woman’s shrill pleading, ‘you were seen consorting with the Devil, who came to you in the form of a young man. This man was heard to promise you all your worldly desires if you would deny God and wholly trust in him.’

‘Madness!’ Merriman interrupted, finally finding his voice. ‘Michael Hood is a low, Godless knave. He hates us!’

Hogg glanced at Ventura, who immediately cracked a beefy fist into Merriman’s stomach, causing the prisoner to double over and vomit.

Wrinkling his long nose in distaste, Hogg examined the testimony again. ‘Hood claims that he heard you,’ he looked at them in turn, ‘
both
of you, make compact with the Devil, and that thereafter his newborn son did hasten to sickness and perish.’

Elspeth stepped forward a pace. Her wide, flat face was red, her little eyes puffy. ‘Please, sir, believe us when we say it is all falsehood.’ She held out her hands as if grasping the air between her and Hogg. ‘Michael Hood did lose his child, that is true, and it was a terrible sad time. But it turned his mind bad, I swear it. He wants rid of us, and would use that tragic thing for his own profit.’

‘We quarrelled, he and I,’ John Merriman wheezed, still crumpled over but craning his neck up to look into Hogg’s face. ‘He has let resentment brew ever since. And then his poor boy passed, and it was Elspeth and I he blamed.’

Hogg turned his attention to Elspeth. ‘Witchery is a grievous thing, Goodwife Merriman.’

‘But I—’ she blurted.

Without a word, Ventura stepped past the still gasping Merriman and took hold of his wife’s arm. She was evidently a tough woman, for she shook him free and it took the Spaniard several attempts to regain the grip. Eventually, though, he was able to snare her, the hem of her moss-green shawl bunching within his stubby fingers, and he dragged her across the room.

‘No!’ Merriman had straightened now, concern for his wife stiffening his resolve. But Hogg knew he would not move to her aid. He’d have seen the armed guards at the door, after all.

‘Book of Micah,’ Hogg intoned in his deepest, most reverential voice as Elspeth was thrust violently against the crumbling cell wall. ‘Chapter
5
, verses
12
and
13
: “And I will cut off witchcrafts out of thine hand”.’

Elspeth shrieked. Ventura belted her round the side of the skull, and drew a long, thin dirk.

‘No!’ Merriman screamed, terror still freezing him in place.

‘He will cut off witchcraft,’ Hogg went on. ‘Do you not see? To make compact with Belial is not only a symptom of evil, but one of its prime causes. It must be rooted out and destroyed.’ He saw Ventura look back at him, and nodded. ‘Search her.’

Now John Merriman moved. He lurched forward, quicker than Hogg had anticipated, and was beyond the central brazier in a heartbeat, but Hogg had been ready with his stick, and thrust it firmly between the taller man’s legs. Merriman collapsed in a tangled heap, clutching a sprained wrist and weeping for mercy.

Hogg ignored him. ‘I said,’ he addressed Ventura, ‘search her.’

In the blink of an eye the dirk swept down the back of Elspeth’s dress. The material tore easily, splitting from the nape of her broad neck to the small of her back. Ventura left the woman’s skirts in place, but tugged hard at the material at her shoulders, hauling it down over her arms and torso, so that her entire body was laid bare from the waist up. She had fallen silent now, trembling slightly. Her stricken husband sobbed into the dusty floor.

Hogg leaned close to the woman so the scent of her filthy flesh made him gag, and peered carefully at her skin. Nothing.

Unwilling to touch her, he used the end of his walking stick to compel her to turn. She resisted at first, but a little extra pressure soon made her comply, and Hogg leaned in again like a doctor examining a patient. ‘Usually,’ he said quietly, his long nose poised just inches from her ample breasts, ‘a mark will come here, near the bosom.’ His gaze lingered just a little longer than was necessary, before he gestured once more with the stick, compelling her to face the wall again. He studied the side of her ribcage. ‘Or here, on the flanks.’

‘You’ll find nothing, sir,’ murmured Elspeth, voice muffled by the wall. ‘This body is pure. You’ll see no mark.’

Hogg checked her other side, and, with his stick, lifted her arms to examine the pits. ‘So it appears. Of course, it is often the case that a witch may conjure foul spells to conceal her teat. Fortunately, Señor Ventura is rather adept at revealing them.’

Elspeth Merriman’s little eyes seemed to bulge out of her head when she looked across her shoulder to see Ventura’s dirk. ‘No, sir!’ she wailed. ‘You would not use such a thing on a defenceless woman!’

Ventura picked nonchalantly at his fingernails with the tip of the thin blade. ‘A witch will hide her imp-suckler beneath the skin. The place will not break. Will not bleed or cause pain.’

‘So it is simply a matter,’ Hogg added, not bothering to hide the relish in his voice, ‘of pricking the accused until such a place is discovered.’