Traitor's Blood (Civil War Chronicles)

MICHAEL ARNOLD

www.johnmurray.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by John Murray (Publishers)

An Hachette UK Company

© Michael Arnold 2010

The right of Michael Arnold to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

All characters in this publication – other than obvious historical figures – are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Epub ISBN 978-1-84854-405-5
Book ISBN 978-1-84854-402-4

John Murray (Publishers)
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH

www.johnmurray.co.uk

To John, who always believed it would happen

L
isette Gaillard watched the skiff bob into view, waves buffeting its fragile hull. There were three men aboard, sailors who had come from a ship anchored out beyond the dangerous shallows. Three men to transport the most precious cargo imaginable.

‘Girl!’

A man and a woman, both wrapped in long, fur-trimmed cloaks, stood behind her. It was the shorter of the pair that had spoken. His fine shoulder-length hair flowed loosely in the wind, and his pinched, shrewish face was white against the elements. His companion was hooded, with only her face exposed to the inclement weather.

‘My horse.’ The man’s voice was querulous and pitched high.

Lisette looked past him, her gaze scanning the ridge beyond the beach where a crowd of mounted figures hovered, their dark forms spectral against the horizon’s dying light. She raised a hand and a single rider kicked away from the group, leading a large, white charger behind his own horse down the steep dune.

‘Jesu, but it’s cold!’ the man cursed through gritted teeth.

The woman dipped her chin, hunching against the wind’s bite and pulling the cloak’s warm ermine-fringed hood further down her brow. She stared at the swirling belts of sand around her feet, brought fleetingly to life by the salty breeze. At length, she looked up and rolled her eyes.

‘No matter,’ the man murmured quickly, catching her expression. ‘Greater trials lie ahead.’

The woman set her lips in a stern line. ‘They do, Husband. They should not. But they do.’ She sketched the sign of the cross in the space between them. ‘If God wills it.’

The man lifted a dainty hand to his chin, thin fingers worrying at the precisely trimmed russet beard. ‘God wills such things?’

‘Truly. England is a realm of heathens, Husband. Heathens and rebels. God placed you on His great earth to turn that tide. To crush rebellion and to lead the common man back to the true faith.’ Her upper lip quivered. ‘You did neither. Now you are punished. We,’ she hissed, ‘are punished.’

He turned abruptly to the sea. Lisette followed his gaze. Did he pray for the cold depths to lurch up and swallow him, she wondered? When he finally turned back, she saw that he kept his eyes fixed on the ivory buttons at the top of his wife’s cloak, never summoning the courage to rise beyond the tip of her proud chin.

‘I will redeem us, Hetty,’ he said quietly.

She nodded. ‘You must.’

The sailors were now wading in the shallows, dragging the bucking boat in their wake.

‘Your Majesties,’ Lisette said earnestly, ‘we must depart.’

The queen did not look round. Henrietta Maria, Princess of France and Queen Consort of England, would leave when it pleased her and not a moment before.

The boat would wait. So would Lisette.

‘Make haste to your kin,’ King Charles said, ‘and pray for your husband.’

‘Pray, sir?’ Henrietta Maria smiled fiercely. ‘I shall do more than pray. I will petition my brother and Pope Urban. By the year’s end you will have coin and men. Cannon. Horse.’ She reached out long fingers to touch the king’s cheek. ‘My family, the church, they will not abandon you. Nor shall I.’

Charles glanced beyond his queen’s shoulder, to where the sailors stood knee deep in the surf. ‘I fear for you.’

‘Do not, sir. Have strength. You are God’s appointed. Chosen by Him and no other. Parliament’s jackals cannot touch either of us. Be king, sir,’ she said, softly now, pleading. ‘For me, if for no other. Be king and lead your country. A monarch must command, my love. Others must follow.’ Her mouth twisted, as though tasting rotten meat. ‘Puritans. By God they would not thrive so in my brother’s land. He crushes them beneath his heel before they would grow in number. Before they infest his kingdom as they infest yours.’

The queen’s fingers tightened on Charles’s arm. ‘Do not fret. All is not lost. Gather your strength, Husband. Call your forces. Destroy the rebellion and prove, at last, that you are your people’s rightful liege lord. I will make haste in my mission, sir. And I will return to your side, as God is my witness.’

They kissed, and Lisette marvelled at the tenderness they were unashamed to show.

‘Come, Lisette,’ the queen snapped, as she pulled away.

Lisette bowed and waved to the group that still waited on the ridge. At once a dozen riders, the queen’s retinue and the royal children, began walking their mounts down the dusk-veiled beach towards them. At their head was a tall young man with broad shoulders and a perpetually amused gaze. ‘Let us reach the safety of the ship before dark, Aunt Henrietta,’ he said. His mouth twitched upwards. ‘Damned if I am to swim to Holland!’

‘Take my arm, Rupert,’ the queen commanded. She waded without hesitation into the chilling surf. Lisette followed tentatively, gasping as the water licked up to her knees. In less than a minute the party was aboard the vessel, crammed on to low benches, and the sailors had pushed off.

Lisette Gaillard screwed her eyes shut as a stinging ribbon of spray leapt from one of the oars. She glanced across to her queen. She had not flinched.

As the skiff rode the first choppy breakers, the queen shrugged off Prince Rupert’s restraining hands and stood, staggering slightly as her boots fought for purchase on the slick wood.

‘Be king!’ she cried back to the shore. King Charles raised a hand, then he leapt up on to his horse and urged the beast into a gallop. He headed towards the great cliffs that stood as sentinels, guarding this corner of England against sea-borne foe. Lisette guessed he would watch them until their ship had vanished on the horizon.

Long fingers fastened gently but firmly around Lisette’s wrist.

‘I am ready to do my duty. Are you ready to do yours?’

Lisette nodded. ‘Yes, Majesty.’

Queen Henrietta Maria’s eyes gleamed in the fading light. ‘Find it. Return it to me. Our lives depend on your success.’

When Lisette Gaillard replied, her voice was a whisper on the winter wind. ‘I will not fail you, Majesty.’

I
t had snowed the previous night; not heavily, but enough to dust the fair-meadow so that its surface crunched beneath latchet shoes and bucket-top boots.

The captain stamped his feet to beat some life back into deadened toes. He squinted across a chaotic scene littered with the debris of torn flesh and shattered weaponry, toward the distant village of Kineton, its thatched roofs obscured by dense rows of pike thrust high above the enemy units. He tried to count the iron-clad heads that gleamed in the wan sun like grey pearls, but the ranks were too deep, the army too vast.

‘Hot work!’ A voice suddenly split the captain’s thoughts like a warship’s broadside. ‘I said hot work, eh, Captain Stryker? Bloody chilly day, I grant you, but I’d wager Satan’s goddamned britches it’ll be scorching once the big guns cough!’

Lieutenant Colonel Sir Stanley Balham continued to bellow excitedly through his thin white whiskers as he drew his mare up alongside Stryker. The captain heaved himself up into his own saddle, the big sorrel-coloured beast twitching nervously beneath him, steam rising steadily from its flared nostrils into the cold evening air. ‘I was just telling Butterworth that you and the lads have been up to your armpits already.’

‘Aye, Sir Stanley, that we have,’ Stryker replied, though he had no clue who Butterworth was. The lieutenant colonel’s nose wrinkled as he studied Stryker’s less than savoury
appearance. The captain’s buff-coat and breeches were shabby and daubed with crimson patches that hinted at the deaths of several men, while his long hair jutted from beneath the wide brim of a tattered hat in great sweat-darkened clumps.

‘Nothing you ain’t seen before though, I’d wager,’ the older man said gruffly.

Stryker cast his gaze over the chaotic tableau stretching across the plain in front of them. ‘I have seen plenty as you’d say were similar, sir, yes. But . . .’ he paused.

‘But?’ the lieutenant colonel prompted. ‘Go on, man, you may speak plain.’

‘It is a rare and terrible thing to be facing one’s own countrymen.’ Stryker shrugged and looked back toward the battlefield. The push of pike he had been watching was dissolving in the deadly melee, and men were slaughtering one another in the packed ranks of bodies. It would be infernally hot in those ranks, and bloody. The air would stink of flesh and sweat and shit. Eventually it would turn sickly sweet. Blood and death. ‘I never thought I’d live to fight an army of Englishmen.’