Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (19 page)

Mowbray’s little head flinched in a nod. ‘Aye.’

Kuyt shook his head. ‘So we will not attack, but nor will we leave them be?’

‘The losses at Bristol,’ Mowbray answered the Dutchman tentatively, ‘were adjudged too great to risk again while there is a chance of a peaceful resolution. But the King would nevertheless capture the city before he considers a move upon London.’

‘Jesu,’ Kuyt muttered incredulously.

Beside Mowbray, his second in command, Francis Baxter, let out a heavy sigh. ‘Politicking is a curious thing, is it not?’ The lieutenant colonel had a thick head of gunmetal-grey hair from beneath which a pair of abnormally large ears jutted. His eyes were bright blue, but the lines at their corners betrayed his world-weariness. ‘We have Rupert’s faction advising the King to take Gloucester, the Queen’s toadies arguing for an assault on London, and in the end, he chooses to satisfy neither party.’ He offered a tired smile, arching his back to crack broad shoulders. ‘I wonder who was architect for this middle way. I would not wish to be in his boots.’

‘Sir John Colepeper,’ Colonel Mowbray replied. ‘And yes, he seems to have earned the enmity of almost everyone at Council.’

Baxter smiled. ‘In an effort not to offend, the King offends all.’ He glanced around the circle of officers. ‘So we must hope this Massie fellow proves our agent wrong, and will indeed sympathize with our esteemed cause.’

Mowbray lifted a hand to stroke his compact beard, his face pensive. ‘We must pray that is the case, aye.’

Baxter cast a wry glance at his colonel. ‘You believe the agent is correct, sir?’

Mowbray paused, seemed to consider his response carefully, but eventually spoke in a low voice, ‘This Massie has already shown himself to be a duplicitous rogue. The man in Gloucester is not.’

Lancelot Forrester had been eyeing the bowl that was rapidly becoming depleted of pork, but he jerked his head up at the comment, staring hard at his commander. ‘It’s Stryker, isn’t it, sir?’

‘Captain?’

‘The agent in Gloucester, sir,’ Forrester persisted. ‘With the utmost respect, Colonel, I do not believe for a single moment that he has deserted.’ It had been a difficult few days. His friend had gone one morning, simply vanished along with Sergeant Skellen. At first he had suspected foul play, a quiet murder by Crow’s dragoons in the middle of the night, but somehow he found that unlikely, given the fact that the pair had not, he was told, strayed from their company for so much as a minute. And then it had emerged that their belongings and weapons had gone too, and it became clear that Stryker and his sergeant had ridden away from Hartcliffe of their own volition. Tales of treachery had been whispered after that, naturally. Stryker had been offered a fortune, it was said, to take his skills to London. Or perhaps he had gone through some religious enlightenment. Maybe it was simply fear of retribution from Colonel Crow. The dragoon was a powerful man, and his enmity was no secret. But Forrester had not bought any of it. He felt sure that another reason would present itself in time, and now, it seemed, it had.

Mowbray was shaking his head firmly. ‘He has turned his coat. He is a mercenary, when all is said and done.’

‘As am I, sir.’ Forrester glanced at his Dutch comrade. ‘And Captain Kuyt. And most of us here. But that does not make us traitors.’

Without warning, Mowbray smacked a fist against the earth beside his thigh. ‘Enough, Captain Forrester!’

There was silence, a cloud of tension swirling about the party like the smoke from their fire. But as Mowbray looked from face to questioning face, his own taut features seemed to soften, and he bit his lower lip as though he wrestled with his own mind. Eventually he spoke, his voice barely audible. ‘Stryker’s loyalty is not in question. And I believe Gloucester will
not
surrender.’

‘
Ha
!’ Forrester beamed. ‘I knew it!’

Mowbray threw the captain a menacing stare. ‘Breathe a word to anyone, Lancelot, and I shall make a new scabbard out of your hide.’

Forrester swallowed hard, though his smile lingered. ‘My lips are sealed.’

It was with a sense of unmitigated relief that Lancelot Forrester joined lieutenants Thomas Hood and Reginald Jays an hour later. Helping himself to a generous portion of the junior officers’ meal, he went to perch on the stump of a long-felled tree and crammed a hefty slice of bacon between his lips.

‘What news, sir?’ Jays asked. He had been a Parliamentarian up until the late spring, when his small unit of infantrymen had stumbled into Forrester’s company on the western edge of Dartmoor. He had possessed the advantage of surprise, and had launched a direct assault upon the small Royalist force, holed up as they were in an isolated tavern. But his ambition had been undermined by his inexperience, and a bloody and ignominious defeat had been his only prize. Fortunately for the lieutenant, who had not yet reached fifteen years, his conqueror had taken pity on him, seen some spark of promise in his youthful naivety, and taken him on as his second in command.

‘The hope,’ Forrester replied, a jet of bacon-laced saliva pulsing from his mouth as he spoke, ‘is that Gloucester will give up without a fight.’

‘And will they?’

‘No.’

Lieutenant Hood had been crouching over a narrow stream that bisected the woodland against which the tents of Mowbray’s regiment nestled. He straightened now, pacing back towards their little fire, his face and hair glistening with water droplets. ‘Pray the buggers want a fight.’

Forrester twisted to look at him. ‘You would storm the city?’

Hood took his new red coat from where it hung limp on a gnarled branch and swung it like a cloak across his shoulders. ‘Aye, sir.’

‘Even after what you saw at Bristol?’

‘I am a soldier, sir.’ Hood set his jaw indignantly. ‘Every man here knows I am green as goddamned grass.’

The captain regarded Hood wryly. ‘And you would remedy that situation.’

‘Aye, sir, I would,’ Hood replied, his voice a touch strained. ‘I need battle experience.’

‘It has been a bloody summer, Lieutenant.’

‘And I regret that I did not play a part.’

Forrester sighed heavily, removing his hat to scratch at a spot on his sandy-haired scalp. ‘Then you’re a damned fool. The man who regrets not fighting a battle, proves he has never seen one.’

‘But I must show Capt—’ Hood began, strangling his own words with a look of embarrassment.

‘Captain Stryker?’ Forrester asked, suddenly understanding. ‘You feel you will earn his respect?’

For a while Hood was silent, but eventually he offered a barely perceptible nod. ‘Aye, sir. If ever he returns to us.’

‘He will return,’ Forrester said firmly. He considered Hood’s words. ‘You had hoped he might treat you a little differently if you had faced the enemy in battle.’ He shook his head, genuinely sorry for the lieutenant’s plight. ‘Your experience in the field, Tom, is not the captain’s foremost concern.’

‘I asked him—’

‘Asked him what?’ Forrester said sharply.

‘To tell me of Stratton Fight. I heard it was hard. Terrible.’

‘And he was not best pleased with the inquiry?’

‘No, sir,’ Hood muttered weakly.

Forrester replaced his hat and stood, arching his spine with a deep groan. ‘Stratton Fight was indeed hard. We marched up a bloody great hill, and fought a bloody great army that outnumbered our own by three to one. It was at once both horrific and glorious. But we lost a friend there. A young officer who had become like a brother to many. Like a son to Stryker.’

The light of understanding seemed to come into Hood’s eyes then. ‘And I am his replacement.’

‘You have it. He took Burton’s death to heart. It was as though the very world had taken up some vendetta against him. He has not been the same since.’ Forrester approached Hood, slapping him on the shoulder. ‘He does not needle you for your lack of soldierly experience, but for the memories you conjure.’

Hood closed his eyes, tilting his head back to study the clouds that appeared as inky blotches on a grey canvas. ‘Christ, but how am I to proceed here, knowing my own captain harbours such resentment?’

‘But not for you, Lieutenant,’ Forrester replied gently. ‘He is angry at the world. At the man who murdered his friend, at the armies of Parliament, and most of all at himself. He will return to us soon enough, and you, my lad, will bear the brunt of his ire to begin with, I dare say. But give it time, Tom. Stryker is not the easiest officer to impress on any given day, that is assured, but you will find him of sound advice and good judgement, despite that scowl. And once you have fought beside him, you will thank God that he is simply on your side, let alone at your very shoulder.’

‘I hear he is an accomplished fighter, sir.’

‘With sword in hand, young Tom,’ Forrester replied with a wolfish expression that made Hood shudder, ‘he is the very devil incarnate.’

CHAPTER 8

Gloucester, 9 August 1643

Stryker regained consciousness over the course of what seemed like several hours, though it might have been less for all he could tell. It was simply a period of darkness and light, intermingled, melding from one to the other like clouds drifting across a bright sun. With those clouds came images. Faces of people he knew and those he had long forgotten. Lisette’s narrow features peered at him angrily from their frame of tousled gold hair, berating him for abandoning her in London. Forrester would drive her off suddenly, his own round face creased in an expression of hurt, silently asking why Stryker had turned traitor. And then Burton would appear. Young Andrew Burton, shot through the skull by a witch-finder whose real hatred had been for Stryker. Burton’s face had no animation at all, his eyes staring lifelessly up at the sky, as they had on the blood-stained hill where he had died, yet Stryker could still see the pain in them; the accusation of betrayal. He heard himself sob.

The dreams ceased for a while, replaced by blackness and the stench of mouldy straw and piss, and Stryker found that he was able to force open his eye. It took a while to prize the lids apart, for they felt as though they had been slapped with a tar brush, and he knew that it was glued with dried blood. Eventually it came free, burning at the skin of the eye socket, and he explored the area with his fingertips, noting the familiar stickiness of a fresh scab. As he strained to see, chinks of blurry light seared through him like a thousand wasp stings, and he slammed the eye shut, terrified that he had been blinded. But when he tried again, the pain had lessened, his eye gradually adjusting, and he realized that he was in a small, gloomy room, lit by a tiny square window through which daylight and a balmy breeze streamed.

He tried to sit up, but a hideous pounding reverberated inside his head and he was forced to slump back on the cold stone floor. He felt wetness at his crotch, touched fingers to his breeches, and knew that the smell of urine came from him.

‘Jesu,’ he rasped, feeling his lips peel reluctantly from his teeth, the agony in his throat nearly matching that in his head. The thirst was unbearable, and he resolved not to swallow or speak. He became aware of his empty baldric, and a quick, wincing glance to the room’s four corners told him that his sword was not near by. Indeed, the chamber was empty, save a large pile of rags dumped just to the side of the door. He slid a tentative hand to his waist, but could not find the hilt of his dirk. He groped, despite the pain, at his boot; again, no dagger. He realized then that he had no weapons at all.

‘What,’ a deep voice echoed suddenly in the enclosed space, ‘in the name of Lucifer’s ballocks happened to us?’

Despite the pain, Stryker smiled, for, though he could see nothing, the voice was one he knew as well as his own. ‘Your brazen assailant has done for us again, Sergeant Skellen.’ He tried again to ease himself up on to his elbow, and was relieved this time when the wave of nausea subsided without flattening him. He took a moment, steadied himself, and opened his eye. ‘You are wounded?’

The rag pile shifted in the darkness as though it concealed a nest of rats, before the entire form seemed to levitate. From amid the formless shape, a wan face with deep-set eyes appeared. ‘No,’ Skellen grunted, thrusting his legs out straight and letting his back slump against the wall. ‘Brains smart like buggery, though. That big brag clubbed me right after he got you.’

More confident now that the pounding in his head was bearable, Stryker quickly gave each of his limbs a tentative shake to check for any other injuries, but was happy to find none.

‘Musketeer Port,’ Skellen growled bitterly, voice echoing in the grey half-light. ‘First he stabs me, now this. Me and him are due a serious chat.’

Stryker felt his face again, gritting his teeth as the wound throbbed at his touch. Thankfully the cut – though he could tell it had bled profusely from the caking that had formed past his ear and down as far as his neck – seemed superficial. ‘I confess, I did not think we would see him again. He scampered off into the woods at Hartcliffe like a terrified doe. I imagined he would go back to his home, his family. Not enlist here.’

Skellen hawked up a mouthful of phlegm and ejected it loudly. ‘And now he has us caged. Must have seen us give Dodd the slip.’