Traitor's Blood (Civil War Chronicles) (19 page)

For a moment the assembled group froze, horses drawing to a standstill, the clang and jangle of horses and men and kit ceasing simultaneously. Burton’s companions tensed, their hands falling instinctively to waiting sword hilts.

Stryker cleared his throat. ‘Apologize, Andrew,’ he said.

Burton seemed to shrink beneath his captain’s stare. ‘I . . . I’m sorry, Major Lawrence. My curiosity overcomes me at times and—’

‘No,’ Lawrence interrupted before the ensign could complete his stammering apology. ‘You must forgive
me
.’ When the muscles of his face had regained composure, Lawrence grinned in sudden return of his former cordiality. ‘In these times one becomes defensive, too much so perhaps.’

The major turned to face the road again and, gathering up the limp reins, urged his horse onwards. The rest of the group followed suit.

‘My sensibilities’, Lawrence said once the animals had reached their requisite trotting pace, ‘tend towards the Puritan persuasion, ’tis true. But Puritan does not equal rebel. You are all men of the world . . . well, most of you.’ He glanced, mischievously this time, at Burton, the flicker in his eyelid perhaps a wink. ‘So you must know that God has not chosen to daub this earth in black and white. There is no distinct camp into which a man should fall by dint of his faith. I am a minimalist in religion. I abhor the trappings and baubles of the Church, and I despise the excesses of the Papacy with every ounce of my being. But I am no Parliamentarian, nor one of those confounded dissenters, springing up from the dark like toadstools. My religious taste is for reform, yes, but my conscience dictates that I am foremost loyal to the Crown. If King Charles were to turn papist, I would pray for his immortal soul, but I would not take up arms against him.’

‘There are many of your persuasion, Major,’ replied Forrester. ‘Fortunately for our side.’

Lawrence nodded. ‘Aye, many. And the enemy’s ranks are swollen with those who would gladly bow to their king should he acknowledge Parliament’s place in the world. It is a matter of conscience, my friends. A man must think upon it. Plumb the depths of his soul. Choose his allegiance and be able to sleep sound at night.’

‘My family are for the king in the main, sir,’ Ensign Burton said with careful deference, ‘though my cousin William took a commission with Balfour.’

Stryker frowned. ‘We faced Balfour’s cavalry at Edgehill. Was your cousin on the field?’

Burton shrugged. ‘I don’t know, sir, truth be told. Though I pray not.’

Lawrence blinked, and nodded sagely. ‘Aye, it is a common tale. Families are split like wood on an axe. Brother fights brother. Father fights son. It is the end of things. The end of life in this land, even.’

Stryker pondered those words as he watched the ridges and furrows of the sucking road pass beneath him. How many times had he foreseen the end of his own life? They were beyond calculation. But there was one moment he would never forget. He did not remember much detail. He recalled the burning, searing flame and the blinding whiteness. He remembered vividly the laughter, the high, almost shrill chuckle of Eli Makepeace.

But Stryker had not died. His face might have been disfigured into a grotesque mask, his eye gone, but his life force remained. There were times, as the agony pulsed in his head, when he had yearned to die and prayed that God would grant him the sweet release of death. But then she was there. She had brought him – no, carried him – through to safety. Bandaging and cleaning and soothing. Loving. He did not die, because she would not allow it.

She had saved him, but she had not saved herself.

Stryker concentrated on the ground moving below him. But he still saw her face. Her hair and her eyes and her slender neck.

When she had died, the world ended for Stryker. He lived on, but all around him was ruins. That was why he no longer feared man nor beast, nor the devil himself.

They rode into a night obscured by gentle snowfall. The temperature dropped rapidly, turning the stagnant water in the road’s furrows to brown ice. The horses found it difficult to pick their way between the treacherous potholes, especially
while carrying two riders. When they came across a deserted tithe barn, Lawrence announced it was time to rest.

‘I’m sorry, Major,’ Stryker said, ‘but I cannot afford further delay. With your leave, we’ll forge on.’

Lawrence’s face reddened and twitched as he jumped down from his mount. ‘Hold your tongue, sir! The horses require rest. I hold seniority here, and I say that’s the end of the discussion.’

Stryker gritted his teeth. ‘You hold the rank, sir, but I am about the business of a prince.’

The mention of Prince Rupert calmed Lawrence’s irritation immediately. ‘An hour then. Enough for the animals to draw breath. What say you?’

Stryker nodded. ‘Thank you, sir. I’m sorry to argue with you, but I am eager to make haste.’

‘You’ll find no argument from me,’ replied the major. ‘This road is haunted by as many Roundheads as Royalists. The sooner we’re behind Basing’s walls the better.’

At midnight the fort was a blackish, ominous mass rising from the land amid a sky of an even deeper hue.

Along a narrow animal track skirting the fort’s forested base, a figure moved, silent and watchful, its outline glinting momentarily. Progress was slow as it halted at every rustle from the bowels of the labyrinthine wood that swallowed the whole valley with looming density, but no shouts of alarm split the night to turn wariness to alarm.

Lisette picked her way between ancient boughs and wizened branches, the grasping hands of a hundred skeletal giants. In twenty paces or so, her target would be reached. The point she had identified during the daylight hours where the southern slope was at its most steep. It would be difficult to scale, but the sharp angle rendered it near impossible for men on the hill’s summit to see directly down on to the grassy incline. She could ascend the slope undetected.

‘Mary, Mother of God,’ Lisette whispered, and breached the tree line, taking her first steps on to the cleared earth. It was steep, even here at its lowest point, and she fell forward, wrenching herself up the springy turf with fingernails as well as feet.

Without the protection of the branches, Lisette felt exposed, her heart thundering against her ribcage and blood roaring in her ears. But she kept going, crawling, holding breath, tensing muscles, praying, praying, praying.

Above her, the outline of formidable Iron Age ramparts could be seen, gently lit by countless stars, but those earthworks were so high, they gave the impression of being man-made clouds in an otherwise clear sky.

‘You must move in darkness,’ Benjamin had said. ‘Strike while the fort sleeps.’

Lisette had been trained in the use of diverse weapons by the French army, and she had the stealth and guile required by a spy, but she knew well that she lacked patience. She had first scorned Father Benjamin’s words of counsel, reluctant to leave the fort once they were inside, but the priest had eventually convinced her. Of course, there would still be guards on the crest, patrolling the high perimeter, and the panoramic views afforded during daylight would render even the cleverest approach futile. A night-time assault was the only way.

The peninsula’s single inland-facing side, while choked with woodland, was heavily guarded, and there was simply no chance of entering the fort unseen from this direction. The assault would have to come from the south, from the deep valley over which the fort loomed. In summer, an approach from here might have been safe, for the forest in that valley would be thick and verdant, but it was November, and the branches were bare. The merest flicker of movement would be spotted from the soaring ramparts. Moreover, Lisette had not been able to gauge the frequency and strength of the men on
the hill’s periphery. She needed an opportunity to watch them. To gauge what she faced.

‘You need to draw them away, Father,’ she had said.

Benjamin thought for a moment, rubbing his spectacles on the hem of his cloak. Eventually he nodded. ‘A sermon for the whole garrison. Hunter told us the cavalry troop ride out every morning. We do not know if their captain would welcome my ministrations, but the sergeant-major will. We will wait until the cavalry are gone, leaving Hunter in charge. From what we have seen of him, he’ll think a sermon important enough for everyone to hear.’

Once again, the priest had been right. Lisette had not witnessed Benjamin resume the part of Father Benedict, for she had been heading down into the valley while he led the sentries in worship, but she knew he must have succeeded, for her dawn dash through the wood to the hill’s foot had not been impeded. By the time the patrols resumed, and, she fervently prayed, Benjamin was on his way back to the safety of Petersfield, Lisette was ensconced behind a thick tangle of scrub that would conceal her well but allow her to watch the hill. Sure enough, she spent the remainder of the day staring up at the high crest, watching patrols come and go, observing that a guard, three-strong, paced along the southernmost edge every ten minutes or so. After two hours there was a break of an extra ten minutes while the personnel changed. And that was the information she needed, for Lisette calculated that at midnight no guard would patrol the rampart for a full twenty minutes. Time enough for her to scale the slope.

Now, as Lisette pressed on towards a summit eerily illuminated by the clear night, she silently thanked the Holy Mother because the going was not as difficult as she had feared. It was steep, certainly, but dread and excitement energized her tired legs and sore hands, and she was able to keep up a reasonable pace. Gradually the angular shape of the rampart came into focus ahead, sharp against the natural irregularity of the hill.

Suddenly a grey blur raced across the grass a few feet away, and Lisette stumbled back, drawing a dirk from within the folds of her cloak, heart pounding loud and terrible in her head. The shape was gone in an instant, and she realized it had been a hare. Lisette sheathed the knife with shaking hands and a sick stomach, and swore viciously. She took a moment to steady her frayed nerves, breathing deeply, waiting for the prickly sweat on her brow to abate.

Lisette reached the first rampart, climbing over the jutting earthwork and rolling into the deep fissure beyond. She stayed on her back, looking up at the sparkling stars, listening for the sound of approaching soldiers. Nothing. Gradually she eased herself up and darted across the man-made ditch to the bottom of the next battlement. It was steeper than the first, and she found herself imagining the torrid hailstorm of spears and slingshots that would have greeted the Roman legionaries caught in this trench so many hundreds of years earlier.

Up the second ridge she went, scrabbling at the slick grass for purchase, propelling herself up to its sharp peak. She reached it quickly and silently, peering above the brow with care. The fort spread out before her. In the darkness she could discern cartloads of barrels and weaponry, and beyond them the row of mounds where kings of the past had been laid to rest. Beyond those mounds, to the north of the fort, she could see rows of pale smears, the tents of her enemy, and she prayed she would not stir them awake. She glanced left and right. No sentries here. The southern slope was virtually unprotected because an attack up the steep incline was so unlikely, and Lisette thanked God that her gamble was going to be justified. She still had a few minutes left before the regular three-man picket would reappear.

Lisette broke cover, holding her breath and dashing to the hill’s artificially flattened crest. She reached the relative safety of the nearest wagon and pressed herself tight against it. The only sound was that of her teeth as they ground together. Edging
out from beyond a broad wheel, Lisette studied the flat plain. Her eyes scanned from the right, taking in the tents again, and the far-off trees, sweeping to the left until they rested upon the westernmost burial mound. The Great Barrow, Benjamin had called it. At its base, just as she remembered from the previous day’s tour, a small tent sat grey and still. She thought back to the first time she had seen it. The way Sergeant-Major Hunter had skirted around it without explanation of its purpose. It was too small to be the billet of a soldier, and too heavily guarded to be a common storage area.

But now Lisette Gaillard’s heart sank, for there, at its entrance, at first indistinct amid the gloom, but gradually gaining clarity as she studied the area with keen eyes, were two guards.

‘God damn them,’ she whispered. ‘Or move them.’

‘Well, if I don’t I’ll soil me fuckin’ britches,’ one of the soldiers was saying as he rose from a small stool.

His seated comrade sighed. ‘Go then. Be quick, mind. They’ll string you up if they catch you.’

The standing sentry spread his arms confidently as he strolled away. ‘Don’t fret, Billy. I’ll be back to hold your hand in a moment.’

Lisette’s heart seemed to smash its way into her mouth as she realized the man was headed toward her. She ducked down, scuttling under the cart on all fours. She clamped her mouth shut, forced the air to stay in her lungs, and kept every muscle rigid.