Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles (40 page)

‘Especially for Lisette,’ Forrester said, ‘Stryker’s woman.’

Payne’s brown eyes swivelled down to peer at Stryker. ‘She was to die, sir?’

‘Aye,’ Forrester answered for his friend, ‘though she really
was
a spy!’

Payne rubbed one of his great paws across his face. ‘Zounds, sirs, but this war is a thing to tie a fellow in knots. I am glad to be a man of Kernow, where we may tell our friends and enemies apart.’

Stryker was not so sure things were that simple, even amid the Royalist fervour of the extreme south-west, but decided to let the matter rest. ‘Suffice it to say, I wagered our best chance of survival would be to undermine the enemy.’

‘Risky, though,’ Forrester replied. ‘You still had to funnel the buggers on top of the charge.’

‘Aye,’ Stryker agreed, ‘but I knew Wild’s men would not charge directly at our pikes. We left the musketeers as bait, and they took the easy route. Besides, we had no other course to take. With the cannon and dragooners, Wild had us beaten. In the event, the mine did not win the day. They’d have overwhelmed us, were it not for your timely arrival. I understand that you cannot speak of your own mission, but I’m grateful you were still on the moor.’

Forrester smiled, twisting suddenly to look back at the wagon. ‘Hopton will be pleased. You’ve plucked him a juicy apple.’

‘Though we have a deal less powder and ammunition now,’ Stryker tempered his friend’s optimism.

‘Aye, that’s true.’

‘And we’ve lost most of the bloody horses.’

Forrester frowned. ‘Well something is better than nothing, old man.’

Stryker thought about all the bodies they had committed to the Dartmoor soil. All the good men – on both sides – who had died because of his ambition. He did not know if Forrester was right. Was all that blood worth a wagon of powder and shot and a pair of small cannon?

The bare heathland fell away to a shallow valley following the course of a trickling waterway and quickly choked with trees and bracken. The column plunged into the forest, heavily laden boughs meeting overhead to dim the world, lichen and fungi adding splashes of colour to the overriding greens and browns.

‘The Roundheads are truly invading?’ Stryker asked eventually.

Forrester’s face was sullen. ‘Aye, so we hear.’

‘How many did we lose at Sourton?’

Forrester’s blue gaze met the grey of Stryker’s, and the latter saw a deep sorrow in their depths. ‘Too many, old man. Too damned many. It was a bad business, Stryker. We were overconfident after Launceston. Arrogant. Thought we could thrust right into Devon and chase the Parliament men all the way to London. But they were ready for us. Jumped us on that bleak down just west of Okehampton.’

He shook his head at the memory. ‘Jesu, but the darkness and the rain and the lightning. I began to think we were in purgatory, truly I did.’

‘I’m sorry I was not there.’

Forrester offered a wan smile. ‘The sentiment is appreciated, old man, but trust me when I tell you we’d have taken a beating regardless of your admittedly talismanic presence.’

Stryker ignored his friend’s chiding. ‘And you mentioned Mister Payne will head north?’

‘Aye, as soon as we reach the high road up to the north coast.’

‘I am manservant to Sir Bevil Grenville, sir,’ Anthony Payne intoned. ‘He defends his estates at Stratton, lest Stamford strike there. Stratton is my home too.’

‘We were on our way back to Cornwall, I to Launceston and Payne to Stratton, when Simeon appeared,’ Forrester explained. He chuckled suddenly, the melancholy of Sourton Down briefly alleviated. ‘I truly believe Mister Payne thought a demon puckrel had pounced from the wood.’

Payne looked over his shoulder at Barkworth, speaking loudly enough for the Scot to hear. ‘He is a remarkable sight.’

Barkworth glared back. ‘As are you, you oak-legged bastard.’

Payne gave a burst of thunderous laughter. ‘Have a care, little sir, for I would not wish to imprison you in my pocket.’

Barkworth’s tiny hand slid to the bone handle of his dirk. ‘Ach, I’ll slice your gut open, sir, and you’ll have yourself a new pocket.’

Stryker stared from the dwarf to the giant and wondered how he was to calm this storm, but Grenville’s manservant boomed with a delighted chortle. ‘You are a grand man, sir!’ Payne slapped his thigh. ‘Why, you must have Cornish blood!’

Barkworth shared the grin, but shook his head. ‘Scots through and through, sir.’

‘Yet both Celts!’ Payne replied heartily.

‘A grand fellow, Mister Barkworth,’ Forrester agreed, ‘though I hear you were indeed one of Satan’s imps, according to your witch-finder.’

Barkworth’s feral gaze glinted dangerously at the memory. ‘Aye, he’d have seen me swing for certain, sir. And the captain and Miss Cecily.’

‘Osmyn Hogg,’ Stryker said. ‘A fiend if ever there was one.’

‘Twin fiends, he and Wild,’ Forrester replied.

‘In truth, no,’ Stryker corrected with a shake of his head. ‘Wild wanted his wagon back. And wanted me dead for its capture.’ He wondered what he might have done in the same situation. ‘I can understand that well enough.’

‘But did you not say you shot Hogg in the arse?’ Forrester retorted. ‘That seems motive enough for me!’

Stryker’s mind drifted back to that day in the forests of Saxony. ‘All was chaos in those dark days after Breitenfeld.’

Forrester plucked the hat from his head, using its wide rim to fan the flies from his sweaty face. ‘I remember it well, old man.’ He looked up at Payne. ‘What a victory that was. We hammered the Holy Romans, the Hungarians, the Croats, and the Catholic League. But at such a cost. Ten, perhaps fifteen thousand dead. It was anarchy for weeks afterward. Stinking corpses left out in the cold, looters swarming like these damnable flies, soldiers marauding. A paradise for wicked men.’

‘Hogg was one such man,’ Stryker cut in. ‘A blackguardly priest in those days. I shot him for the attempted hanging of the woman I loved.’

Forrester’s blond brow shot up. ‘Beth? She was a whore, Stryker.’

Stryker nodded. ‘She was a whore, aye. A good one. And I was besotted with her.’

Forrester’s thin lips twitched upwards. ‘Plenty were.’

‘Hogg’s priestly compatriots included. He claimed she bewitched them.’

‘She did,’ Forrester replied.

‘Aye, but she never needed Satan’s help. In truth, Hogg’s privy member grew hard when he clapped eyes on her. He could not reconcile the shame of it, and would happily have seen her die to salve his own conscience. I shot the bastard, and he deserved it.’ He shrugged. ‘I should have killed him then and there.’

William Skellen, for once not the tallest man present, had caught up with the leading group. He gargled a batch of dusty phlegm into his mouth and spat it into the tall grass at the roadside. ‘Bugger sounded sane enough when he condemned you at the hill, sir. Babbled plenty o’ Bible talk as poor Broom kicked ’is last.’

‘The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose, Sergeant,’ Anthony Payne replied. ‘That is from
The Merchant of Venice
, but it holds great truth.’

Lancelot Forrester clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘I was searching for that exact line, Anthony!’ He glanced across at Stryker, perhaps catching the intrigue in his friend’s face. ‘He is a scholar, Stryker. He might look like a bloody philistine,’ he shot Payne a mischievous wink, ‘but his mind is sharp as a Toledo hanger.’

The land sloped gently downwards as high moor gave way to the first patches of pastureland a couple of miles outside Tavistock. There they found the northbound track that had conveyed Forrester’s company cross-country from Peter Tavy, and it was agreed that that would be the safest route to take. The modest road took them between small copses, over pebble-banked streams, and beyond isolated farmsteads. As they marched Stryker began to feel a little more positive, his despair at the argument with Burton starting to erode as they neared the safety of Cornwall.

‘And what of your new fellows?’ he asked Forrester as the column drew up beside one of the narrow waterways that cut through the land.

Forrester followed his friend’s gaze to where his group of prisoners had gathered at the stream’s edge. ‘Had something of a brabble near Tavistock. This sorry lot staggered into our camp like a herd of cupshot blind men, and we bloodied their noses.’

When Forrester removed his hat, using it to fan his rosy cheeks, Stryker noticed a crusty brown smear across the top of his scalp. ‘Looks as though their noses weren’t all that was bloodied.’

‘Aye, well,’ Forrester muttered, his forefinger appearing through the crown of his hat like a worm from its hole, ‘I have informed Mister Jays that he owes me ten shillings.’

‘Ten?’ echoed Stryker. ‘That old thing cost, what, three at most?’

Forrester tapped the crusty scalp wound. ‘There is the matter of my injuries, old man. The indignity I have suffered in losing such a swathe of hair.’

To Stryker’s eye Forrester’s once lustrous locks had become so thin these past few years that the damage was not all that critical. He decided to keep quiet.

‘In truth,’ Forrester continued, waving the holed hat in the direction of the sombre-faced greycoats who now knelt to plunge cupped hands in the water, ‘Reginald Jays, there, ain’t a bad sort. He’s a stripling. Aged fourteen, fresh of face, and foolish as a virgin in a trugging den. Speaking of which,’ his gaze drifted casually to the rear of the column, where Lieutenant Burton was patting one of the falconets’ horses. ‘What happened between the two of you?’

Stryker stared at Burton for a long time, the feeling of despondency returning. He and the lieutenant had been through a great deal together, and he regarded Burton as something akin to a son. The wedge that had formed between them was near unbearable. ‘Cecily Cade tried to seduce me.’

Forrester regarded him askance. ‘Good Lord.’ His eyes shifted along the riverbank to the place where Cecily stooped, filling a small flask with water. ‘Good Lord.’

Stryker looked at the girl too. ‘It was strange,’ he said, thinking back to that dark night. ‘She didn’t even seem as though she wanted to.’

‘Well lock her up in Bedlam,’ Forrester exclaimed sarcastically, ‘for she must be positively frantic!’

‘Thank you, Forry,’ Stryker said glumly, before walking over to the stream, unfastening his scabbard, and taking a seat on the ground.

Forrester joined him. ‘Cecily Cade, the mysterious beauty.’ It was then that a great shadow crossed overhead. They both turned, expecting rain, only to see Anthony Payne. ‘Cade, Mister Payne,’ Forrester said. ‘What is that, a Cornish name?’

‘Cade?’ repeated Payne. His eyes narrowed suddenly beneath a deeply furrowed brow. ‘Cade, you say?’

‘Aye, sir,’ Forrester nodded. ‘Cecily Cade.’ He leaned forward to peer along the course of the meandering river, pointing at the only female in the company. She was still absently taking refreshment some fifty paces upstream. ‘The siren in our midst.’

Payne’s face seemed to blanch, the colour draining clear away, and his neck convulsed as though he was trying to swallow an entire egg. ‘
That
is Cecily Cade?’

Forrester sighed impatiently. ‘That is what I said, Mister Payne, yes. Stryker’s damsel in distress.’

But Payne did not seem to be listening. Already he had turned away and was stalking along the bank.

‘Mister Payne?’ Stryker called to him, clambering up from the ground when the big Cornishman failed to respond. ‘What is it?’

Forrester scrambled to his feet as well, disturbed by the giant’s sudden change in disposition. ‘Anthony?’

Now Payne seemed to register their voices, for he paused to glance round. ‘Sirs, I must speak with her.’ He fixed Stryker with a gaze that spoke of a man who would not be denied. ‘Please, Captain. It is a matter of the utmost import. I must speak with Miss Cade this very moment.’

Beaworthy, Devon,
9
May
1643

Terrence Richardson had made camp in fields just outside the village. Here, flanked by thick hedgerows and taunted by crows, his threescore cavalrymen had waited the best part of a week for the arrival of a Cornish giant, a foppish Cavalier, and their precious cargo. Yet none had come, Richardson’s men had become increasingly agitated, and the crows seemed to jeer his failure.

It was with great fuss, then, that the pickets first spotted the lone rider on the eastern horizon. Richardson had been examining a jagged notch on his backsword’s single cutting edge when the message was relayed to him. He forgot the irritating blemish all at once. Thrusting the blade back through the throat of his scabbard, he strode straight out of his tent and across the field to the tumbledown gate that served as the camp’s main entrance, not even taking pause to put on his coat.

The rider was an incongruous sight, for he wore the clothes of an infantryman, and was clearly uncomfortable on the exhausted nag that snorted and whinnied its way through the gate. Richardson knew at once that this must be one of Forrester’s men.

‘News from Mister Payne, one hopes,’ he said as casually as he could, though he sensed the tightness within his throat.