Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles (21 page)

‘I must say,’ Cecily ventured, ‘you’ve made a fine job of this place.’

‘Oh?’

‘Turning a bleak tor into a little castle, I mean.’

Stryker shrugged. ‘The walls were already here, and most are thicker than anything you’d find built by man.’

She nodded. ‘Still, I’m a tad surprised you’ve kept the horses up on the hillside.’

Stryker frowned. ‘They can hardly be kept down there,’ he said, pointing to the flat heathland stretching endlessly in front of them. ‘Aside from the threat from the enemy, there’d be nowhere to tie them.’

It was Cecily’s turn to point, but her finger stretched slightly to their right, south-east of the tor. ‘But they might have been stabled in the village simply enough.’

Stryker followed the direction of her arm until his eye settled on a place some two hundred and fifty paces away, perhaps fifty strides beyond the glistening river. He had seen it before, of course, but paid no real attention, for it had appeared at first glance to be no more than a wild area of meshed gorse, tangling bilberry bushes, and boulders. But as he studied the messy outcrop shapes began to form. Clear lines were discernible within the rubble. The more he stared, the more he understood that it was all that remained of a settlement; ancient, certainly, and crumbled to near invisibility where nature had reclaimed it for her own, but a settlement all the same. As Cecily said, it had, at one time, been a village.

‘You’re right,’ Stryker muttered, still amazed that the place had lain hidden from them until now. ‘Those walls are waist height.’

‘Higher in places,’ Cecily added.

‘Aye, so they are. We could certainly keep the horses penned there.’ Immediately he stepped back from the brow and hailed the nearest man. ‘Gather a party of half a dozen lads. Get down to that patch of rubble and see what’s there.’

The soldier nodded, turning on his heel to carry out the order, and Stryker looked at the grinning Cecily. He stole a glance at her inviting lips, and felt the sudden impulse to kiss them.

‘Will you give me one of the horses?’ Cecily asked abruptly.

The question threw Stryker at first and he simply stared into her eyes as he absorbed her words. ‘I do not follow,’ he replied eventually.

She moved closer, her voice becoming a whisper. ‘I must leave here, Captain Stryker. It is important. I have given you the village. Now will you help me?’

Stryker half expected her to smirk then, admit that it was all in jest, but all he saw was the rigid set of her jaw as determination shadowed her expression. ‘Leave? I understand it is frightening up here, and I know you wished to reach your father’s estates, but you saw what happened. I had no choice.’ He looked down at the river. ‘We’ll fight our way out of here before long.’

Cecily laughed bitterly. ‘I am not stupid, Captain. You spin your brave tale, but cannot look me in the eye when you do it.’ She bit her upper lip, moving a hand to grip his elbow. He noticed she was trembling slightly. ‘I
must
be away from here, sir. Please, I beg you, there is precious little time—’

‘For what?’ Stryker cut across her. He held her gaze. ‘Time for what, Miss Cade?’

‘Captain!’ The voice of William Skellen jolted them like the crack of a pistol.

‘This isn’t over,’ Stryker whispered, before looking up at the sergeant. ‘What is it?’

Skellen scratched his stubbly chin. ‘Not really sure, if truth be told, sir.’

‘Spit it out man!’ Stryker snapped.

‘Apologies, sir,’ Skellen replied, ‘but seein’s believin’, ain’t it?’

The sergeant was not given to unnecessary dramatics. ‘Very well,’ Stryker sighed, turning back to Cecily, but she was gone.

Stryker’s first impression was of a vagrant. A man probably in his sixties, skinny as a weasel, with filthy, matted grey hair and a beard, also grey, that stretched all the way to his concave belly. His breeches were brown, though they might have begun life a lighter colour, and his shirt and doeskin singlet were darkened by a network of old stains.

‘Found ’im sniffin’ around one o’ the stone piles to the sou’west,’ Sergeant William Skellen said.

Stryker turned back to the newcomer, who was standing between a pair of burly redcoats. ‘Who are you?’

The bearded man, whose dishevelled appearance was exacerbated by a slight stoop, glared up at him with eyes that were a surprisingly clear shade of blue. ‘The Lord God Almighty’s representative in this shit stinkin’ country,’ he said in an accent that reminded Stryker of the soldiers from Sir Thomas Salusbury’s regiment he had encountered at Brentford Fight.

‘A Welshman?’

The man did not shift his eyes from Stryker, or blink even once. ‘You don’t call a man from Wales Welsh, my boy!’ he exclaimed in a shrill cry. ‘You calls him
sir
!’

On another day Stryker might have been amused, but he was still irked by the strange conversation with Cecily, and the newcomer’s antics irritated him further. ‘I’ve no time for this.’ He glanced at Skellen. ‘Get rid of him, Sergeant.’

‘
Ha
!’ the old man shrieked, blue eyes darting like some feral creature. ‘You’d have me killed off here and now, would you?’ He craned his head up to the wispy clouds. ‘You hear that, Almighty? Have me sent to meet you before my time, he would! Can you fathom it?’

Stryker shook his head in bewilderment. ‘Of course not, you old fool. See that he is fed and watered, Sergeant Skellen, then take him across the river and get yourselves back here.’

‘Across my river?’ the old man exclaimed. He looked heavenward again. ‘Now why would he want me to cross my own river, eh, when it is he who sits pretty in my home?’

Stryker ground his jaw. ‘Your home?’

The Welshman grinned, exposing little stubs of blackened teeth, and seemed to dance from side to side as though his bare feet were touching hot coals. ‘This here hill’s my house, isn’t it, boy? My house and my home and my fucking castle all in one. Gardner’s Tor, the good Lord calls it. God-given, it is.’

‘This is Gardner’s Tor?’

The old man nodded violently, twisting the point of his beard about a talon-tipped forefinger. ‘That’s me, it is. An’ this is my house. So it is Gardner’s Tor.’

‘You’re this Gardner?’ Stryker asked incredulously.

The man ran a flickering tongue over cracked lips and suddenly bent into a low bow. ‘You have it, my boy. Seek Wisdom and Fear the Lord Gardner, to be precise and exact!’

‘Christ, that’s a mouthful,’ Skellen muttered.

Gardner rounded on the tall soldier, seemingly unconcerned with the formidable halberd in Skellen’s hand. ‘Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain, you fucking English moldwarp!’ He reached up to thrust a bony finger into Skellen’s chest. ‘I’ll not have it in my castle, no, no, no, I shan’t!’ Then, as suddenly as his anger had boiled up, Gardner’s face creased into a broad grin and he cackled madly once more.

Skellen whistled softly. ‘He’s crazed, sir. Frantic as a tyke in a rat’s nest.’

‘Frantic?’ Gardner hissed, gently slapping his own cheeks. ‘You call a man frantic when it is you who scuttle up here like a fistful o’ frightened beetles?’ He licked his lips again, like a frog catching a fly. ‘Your guns could best those feather-headed bastards.’

That piqued Stryker’s interest, and he waved a hand so that Gardner would acknowledge him. ‘What do you know of Colonel Wild’s troop?’

‘That’s him, is it, boy?’ Gardner asked, piercing eyes seemingly frozen open. ‘The black-feathered bugger with a badger’s hair? He lurks around my castle like a virgin outside a bawdy-house.’

‘You what?’ Skellen asked, nonplussed.

Stryker held up a staying hand. ‘Aye, that’s him. Colonel Gabriel Wild has a silver stripe running through his hair, like a badger. You’ve seen them?’

Gardner nodded. ‘I’ve watched ’em gallop about like they own the place, aye.’ He glanced skywards. ‘But they don’t, do they, God, eh?’ Looking back to Stryker, he winked. ‘They’re camped out to the west, so as you little beetles don’t make a run for it. The badger’s based himself in the big barn.’

‘The barn?’ Stryker said in surprise, glad he had not sent a reconnaissance party to check what was inside.

‘As God is my witness,’ the old man replied, ‘and He is, boy, He is! The badger makes plans. He wants to capture a fat stash o’ powder, so they say, and he wants to skin the man who stole it from him. A fellow with only one eye. Any idea who that might be, boy?’

‘How can you possibly know this?’

Gardner smirked. ‘I come and go. Been into the badger’s set, haven’t I, boy!’

‘Bollocks,’ said Skellen.

Gardner looked up at him. ‘They don’t notice me, see. You didn’t till I bloody let you!’

Skellen made to protest, but Stryker interjected, ‘You’ve been to Wild’s camp?’

Gardner tilted back his grimy head and beamed at the clouds. ‘He can be taught, Lord, you were right!’ Looking back at Stryker, he added, ‘As ever, eh?’

‘Master Gardner—’

‘Seek Wisdom.’

‘Very well,’ replied Stryker. ‘Seek Wisdom, you claim to have been into their camp. Tell me more, I ask you.’ He rubbed a hand across his ever-lengthening stubble. ‘If you assist me now, sir, you will be free to remain here, on the tor.’

‘You hear that, God?’ Gardner yelled. ‘He thought to keep Gardner away from Gardner’s Tor! Have you ever heard the like?’

‘Get this man vittles,’ Stryker ordered one of his men, before turning back to Gardner and pulling an apologetic grimace. ‘We have only dried meat and biscuits, but there is plenty.’

Gardner grinned. ‘You’re a good sort, boy. God told me.’ His voice dropped conspiratorially. ‘Though he hadn’t warned me how bloody ugly you were.’

Stryker cracked a smile. ‘I need to know of Colonel Wild,’ he pressed. ‘What say you?’

Seek Wisdom and Fear the Lord Gardner leaned close, so that Stryker could smell the foul stench of decay wafting from his gums. ‘Your feather-headed badger.’ His blue eyes seemed to glint with mischief as he spoke. ‘He’ll come tonight.’

Torrington, Devon,
2
May
1643

Terrence Richardson paced quickly along the corridors of the mazelike town house until he approached a large studded door, paused for a moment to flick some of the more conspicuous specks of mud from his russet coat, and rapped loudly on the thick timbers.

‘Come!’ boomed the order from inside.

Richardson twisted the black hoop of iron, gave the door a gentle nudge with his shoulder, and strode in. The room was large but dingy, its windows too few and too small to allow in enough light to make an impact; walls, furnishings, and faces appearing greyer than he had expected. But then these were grey men, he supposed. The abstemious, dour, sober-headed Parliamentarians he had always loathed. The very reason he had enlisted with the king’s men down at Liskeard back in the autumn. As he gazed upon them, four sour-looking gentlemen poring over a long, deep table scattered with paper, he found it hard to reconcile his change of heart. Indeed, men such as these littered the warren-like building’s many chambers. He had already been made to endure the suspicious glares of those familiar with his background, glares he might have expected had he brandished a pair of horns and a trident. But then it was not for these people he had turned his coat.

‘Hopton’s portmanteau,’ said one of the four men. The only man seated, he was soberly attired in a suit of black, with a large white collar and orange sash. The vein of silver thread zigzagging down the front of his doublet gave a suggestion of his status, though Richardson did not require the hint.

‘Aye, my lord Stamford,’ Richardson replied respectfully, snatching the grey hat from his head, ‘he lamented its loss at Sourton Down.’

Henry Grey, First Earl of Stamford, leader of the Parliamentarian faction in the south-west, was a short, slim-faced man in his mid forties, with brown eyes and straight, black hair that fell in lank strands about his shoulders. He worried at the fibres of his neat black beard and allowed himself a smirk. ‘I bet he did. When first I laid eyes upon this veritable treasure trove,’ he nodded at the assortment of papers on the table, ‘I was trapped down in Exeter.’

‘Trapped, my lord?’

‘By the gout, d’you see?’ There was a walking cane on the table, and Stamford grasped it, tapping it gently against his ankle. ‘Excruciating, I can tell you. But I verily leapt from my chair when first I read the Somerset communiqué.’

Richardson nodded. ‘I do not doubt it, my lord.’ He had been party to Hopton’s angry tirade when the Royalist general had discovered that his portmanteau – carrying scores of vital items of correspondence – had been captured. That cache of intelligence had included a letter from the king’s secretary of state ordering Sir Ralph to march into Somerset in order to link up with the forces of the Marquis of Hertford. ‘And that is why you muster here, my lord? To cut him off before he makes his move?’

‘Indeed it is,’ Stamford replied triumphantly. ‘This is to be the deciding contest for the war in the south-west, and I have assumed personal command.’

‘He knows you gather here, my lord,’ Richardson said, letting a note of caution colour his words.