Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (13 page)

‘I was thinking,’ Skellen grumbled as they urged their mounts, three abreast, along a sunken track that seemed to plunge endlessly into one such valley, ‘it’d be nice to have a sign.’

‘A sign?’ Stryker echoed incredulously above the trill of a thousand hidden grasshoppers. His horse’s ear twitched and he reached out to stroke it. ‘Gone religious on me, Will? I shall ask Seek Wisdom to minister to you.’

Skellen wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘Do that, and I really will turn my coat. I meant a field sign, sir.’

‘But we don’t know it, Sergeant, and a guess would be yet more hazardous. Wear a black feather in your hat, and they’ll all be wearing white. Plump for a sprig of oak leaves, and it’ll turn out to be beech, like as not.’

Skellen sniffed. ‘Just a bit o’ tawny rag, then.’

‘We’re deserters, Sergeant. Why would we have anything of that sort to hand?’ he shook his head. ‘We’re safer with nothing, and we’ll have to plead our case.’

‘Well I hope you’re right, sir,’ the languorous sergeant muttered, his tone strangely absent. His steed had stopped her casual stride, her reins twisted taut about Skellen’s knuckles. He was staring along the track, his hooded eyes transfixed. ‘Cos I reckon we’re about to do some o’ that pleadin’.’

Stryker glanced across and followed Skellen’s gaze.

The cry split the night like an axe through rotten timber. It was a human voice, the tone hard, urgent, lancing up from the place where the track vanished into night. All three men lurched forwards in their saddles, squinting hard at the inky depths. Skellen’s keen eyes had already seen something, and his face was rigid. ‘Cavalry,’ he said sharply. ‘Dozen, maybe more.’

Stryker forced his eye to strain into the abyss, desperate to gauge the threat for himself. It was not often that he felt the lack of an eye, for his mind had adjusted to the disability in almost every way over the years, but at times like this, when failure to pierce the impenetrable darkness might result in death, brought reality starkly home.

And then, in one more aching heartbeat, he saw them too. Horsemen exploding from the low-lying darkness to the north. They were still a good way off – perhaps as much as half a mile – but even from this distance it was easy enough to catch the dull gleam of the russetted armour that encased their chests. These were fighting men, right enough. Well-equipped harquebusiers, doubtless brandishing pistols, blades and carbines.

‘Trees, sir?’ Buck asked, though the way he was already moving to the roadside made it clear that he expected only one answer.

Stryker shook his head. ‘Wait.’

Buck’s eyeballs looked as though they might pop from his skull. ‘For protection, sir, surely?’

‘If we run, they’ll make assumptions we cannot afford. I’ll not have them taking pot shots before they ask questions.’

‘God ’elp us,’ Skellen droned, for the riders were closing the ground between them with thunderous efficiency. They were competent horsemen, galloping hard, and already the whites of the animals’ eyes could be seen like dancing sparks.

Stryker kicked ahead of his companions, thankful for his horse’s calm courage, and positioned himself as conspicuously as he could in the centre of the road. He was careful not to appear threatening, leaving his sword in its scabbard and doffing his hat. But the riders did not slow their charge, and the foremost of them drew his long cavalry blade, held it stretched at arm’s length as though it were a lance, and stood high in his stirrups.

‘Jesu,’ Stryker whispered. It was too late to run, and a fight would be bloody, rapid and futile.

The cavalrymen sped along the sunken road like floodwater through a drain, the iron shoes of their mounts rumbling despite the soft earth. More swords were drawn, and Stryker could see the faces of the riders now, taut and ferocious. Their eyes were narrowed to slits against the rushing air and their lips were drawn back to expose teeth gritted for battle.

‘Oh God!’ Buck wailed somewhere behind. ‘We’ll be slaughtered like piglets!’

‘Captain?’ Skellen said evenly enough, though Stryker could hear the anxiety in his tone.

‘Hold,’ he replied, not looking back. With one hand he patted the horse’s neck. He let the other slip to the hilt of his sword.

They were just yards away. Stryker still gripped his sword, squeezing the shark-skin handle, but with his free hand he waved frantically, deciding to take a chance on the allegiance of the cavalrymen. ‘Friends!’ he bellowed. ‘God and Parliament!’

‘Parliament!’ Buck and Skellen echoed somewhere behind.

One of the riders kicked ahead of the rest. Stryker noticed that he wielded a wicked-looking pole-axe rather than a sword, and he held it at his shoulder, poised to sweep it across in a short, murderous arc. Stryker drew his sword as a matter of instinct, levelling it in front to parry the blow, but even in that moment he knew that the axe-man’s comrades would make a swift end of him nonetheless.

And then the rider was past him, the wind pulsing at his flank in the wake of the snorting destrier. Stryker twisted hard, watching the cavalryman rush beyond Buck and Skellen and wheel his mount round to face them. The rest of the harquebusiers followed suit, sliding swords back into scabbards in high-speed manoeuvres that were evidently meant to impress, and in moments they had encircled their quarry.

The man wielding the pole-axe, evidently the group’s leader, let his heaving mount trot forwards. He glared down at Stryker, perhaps deciding whether to split his skull there and then. Through the vertical bars that obscured his face, Stryker could see that the man might have been around thirty, with a small, triangular beard and beautifully waxed moustache. The man nodded. ‘Captain Robert Backhouse. Army of Parliament, Gloucester garrison.’

Stryker returned the gesture. ‘Stryker. Hitherto army of King Charles.’

Backhouse’s eyes narrowed. ‘No longer?’

Stryker shook his head firmly, glancing at William Skellen and James Buck in turn. ‘Nor these fellows.’

‘Rank?’

‘Captain, as was.’

Backhouse seemed dubious. He licked cracked lips slowly. ‘You would join our cause, sir?’

‘I would, sir,’ Stryker said enthusiastically, sheathing his sword as he spoke. ‘I am disillusioned with the King. There is talk of Popery in our ranks. The Queen brings more and more Romish gold and men to this land, and I will not be party to something that so offends our Lord.’

Backhouse gave an almost imperceptible nod. ‘I am glad you see reason, sir.’

‘Besides,’ Stryker ventured with the hint of a conspiratorial smile, ‘I have heard tell of great reward for men of ambition in Parliament’s ranks.’

‘That is often possible, Mister Stryker. We lack professional fighting men, and are keen to enlist them where we may.’

Stryker forced a grin. ‘Then I’ll fight for King Jesus and His brave men of Gloucester, Captain.’

Backhouse spurred forward suddenly, calling for his troop to follow with their three captives in tow. Stryker did not know whether to be relieved or terrified They were heading northwards. To Gloucester. To the enemy.

Captain Stryker had turned his coat. He was a Roundhead.

London, 6 August 1643

Lisette Gaillard held the fresh paper sheet up to the light that streamed relentlessly through the window. They were in Henry Greetham’s house-cum-workshop off Little East Cheap, she and Christopher Quigg having made the hazardous journey from their safe house before dawn, and now, in the stifling little room, she was inspecting the newsmonger’s handiwork. The characters were strong and stark, blocks of authoritative blackness against the pale paper, and she scanned each line with a growing sense of triumph.

‘
Dread news from Bristol
,’ Lisette read aloud.

The tall, cadaverous presence of Greetham loomed behind her, though she sensed by the constant shuffle of his feet that he was tentative. The hastily commissioned pamphlets had been produced during the night, the printer and his son churning out the various reports with remarkable speed, but clearly he was keen to attain her approval. ‘You like that one? My wife’s idea, truth be told.’

Lisette nodded. She placed the sheet on the table beneath the window, and picked up the rest of the thick stack. It was the only pile worth reading, Greetham had told her, for the rest of the table was full of the pro-Parliamentarian sheets he was obliged to print. She inspected the top leaf, again reading the largest print aloud: ‘
A true account of the destruction of Sir William Waller’s army beneath Roundway Down
.’ She cast her gaze down the rest of the report. It spoke of death and devastation on a grand scale, painting the Parliamentarian troops as craven rogues and incompetent buffoons. At the foot of the page, the news-sheet made a strongly worded plea to the leaders of the rebellion, beseeching them to spare London from the coming tide of Royalist retribution. She noted that the plea made particular reference to a feared onslaught of men from the despised Welsh and Cornish regiments, and went on to hint at an imminent arrival of Catholic soldiers from Ireland.

She slid her thumb down the side of the ream so that the papers sprung forth like a fan. As they moved, she caught sight of new revelations. More easy victories for Prince Rupert and his demonic dog, Boye. A likely assault on the Thames Valley by the Marquis of Newcastle’s northern Royalists. Tales of desertion and chaos amongst the Roundhead ranks. In short, the pamphlets and news-sheets were designed to strike terror into the hearts of Londoners. It was as though Greetham had distilled every nightmare and paranoia held by the capital’s jittery populace and printed them all in this one, beautifully horrific stack of paper.

Lisette looked up from the sheets, staring into the anxious newsmonger’s crater-like eyes. ‘
Parfait
, Monsieur.’

Henry Greetham swallowed hard, his skeletal head bobbing happily. ‘All is well, then.’ He looked back to one of the room’s dingy corners, where his wife and son loitered, offering the ink-stained pair a warm smile.

‘Now let us be away.’

It was Quigg who spoke, and Lisette turned to him. ‘You have the names?’

The top half of Quigg’s coarse face had been caught in the beam of light, and his huge eyes glistened. ‘A score of contacts, aye. Ready to distribute our . . .
information
. . . at a moment’s notice.’ His amphibian gaze narrowed suddenly. ‘We shall give the Peace Party something to shout about, eh?’

Gloucester, 6 August 1643

Stryker could see Gloucester’s defences from two miles away. Even from this distance, it was clear that the city was a hive of activity, with a range of large-scale earthworks being thrown up across the whole of its north-eastern fringe.

‘You see?’ Captain Robert Backhouse, trotting out front, pointed at the tiny figures moving across a vast hill of soil that dominated the horizon. ‘They raise walls from God’s very earth. Bastions too, so that our guns will wreak havoc upon your former allies.’

Backhouse had proven a pleasant enough captor. He had been suspicious of Stryker’s claims of desertion, but Gloucester’s cause was not one overwhelmed with competent soldiery, and he had evidently decided to give the three strangers the benefit of the doubt. As such, he had been happy to chat with the newcomers in the hours before dawn, explaining that the city’s defences were partly made up of an ancient stone wall, but that the said wall only extended as far to the east as a place called Whitefriars Barn. From that place, where the wall thrust abruptly west towards Gloucester’s epicentre leaving the northern half of the modern city unprotected, a new work of earth and ditch had been constructed. Commissioned by the city’s common council and supported wholeheartedly by Massie, the military commander, it enclosed the entire northern part of Gloucester, snaking around the line of the River Twyver until it reached the natural protection of the mighty Severn to the west.

Captain Backhouse had chosen to approach the city from the north. The simpler route might have been to use the better-laid southern road, but Backhouse had stopped to speak to a local farmhand when they had come within five or so miles of Gloucester, and that man had warned him of a large body of horse and foot massing on Tredworth Field, an area of open ground immediately south of the city limits. Deciding upon a path of caution, Backhouse had chosen to give the southern road a wide berth, for it seemed likely that the unknown army were members of a Royalist advance party, and he had taken his men – and their three guests – across the hilly terrain to the north.

Now, as noon approached, that decision appeared vindicated, for the guards at the road’s turnpike barrier were full of the news.

‘’Tis Gerard,’ one of the sentries, a sergeant with cheeks blotched crimson from some disease, said as he doffed his montero in acknowledgement of Backhouse.

Backhouse squinted away to the south-west, evidently hoping to spy this force, but the sprawling mass of Gloucester’s suburbs obscured his line of sight. ‘An attack?’

The sergeant shook his head. ‘No gunfire as yet, sir. Talk says they mean to trade captured nags.’

Stryker had reined in directly behind Backhouse so that he could hear the exchange. He followed the captain’s gaze, staring at the patches of colour that were the wooden-framed dwellings of the city suburbs, which spread out beyond the old walls like the tentacles of a giant octopus. He could see the pale line of the wall itself rising above those homes and imagined the colours of Gerard’s Northern Brigade hanging limp in the weak breeze in the fields beyond. Captured horses. It seemed an incongruous thing at so tense a moment, and he recalled Prince Rupert’s mention of a clandestine parley with Governor Massie. Perhaps this was the excuse. He wondered if, even at this very moment, Massie was considering whether to hand the city to the king.