Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (31 page)

Stryker ignored him.

‘Christ above!’ someone exclaimed from further towards the rampart. They looked to where he was standing just as the wall began to sag. The smooth blocks were crumbling away, caving outwards into the moat, and in their wake slid the earth that had been nestled against them.

‘They’ve done it! Jesus save us, they’ve done it!’ another shouted, peering over the rampart so that he could see the lower face of the wall. The man, a corporal, twisted back, his face distraught. ‘Fetch the Governor!’

Gaudy Green, Gloucester, 14 August 1643

Captain Lancelot Forrester climbed out of the trench and kicked the mud from his boots against the solid wheel of a filth-spattered dog cart. An engineer, encased from head to foot in thick, unwieldy metal, gave him a shout of warning as he strode past, a long shovel resting across his shoulder, but he waved the man away. He judged himself far enough out of range that only the very best shot might hope to reach him. He had been inspecting the work some of his musketeers had been about this past day. They had dug in, made themselves as comfortable as possible behind the wicker screens, and set about exchanging fire with the jeering rebels on the wall. Similar rivalries would be going on all around the city, Royalist sharpshooters trying to pick off the defenders, while the motley assortment of Parliamentarians within the city would spit as much lead back at the saps as they could muster. Now, though, something had changed. The huge barrage from the Gaudy Green battery had shaken the very base of the trench, which in itself was nothing new, but the cheer that spread through the king’s lines like wildfire had compelled him to take a look.

Forrester leaned on a damaged gabion at the edge of a trench that had been abandoned after a Parliamentarian raid had reduced it to a fuming ruin. Much of the basket’s stone innards had been pilfered for use elsewhere, but it still retained enough solidity to hold him as he let it take his weight while he packed his pipe. He stared across at the pair of still smoking demi-cannon. He watched the smoke drift lazily away from the battery and drew heavily on the smouldering sotweed, gnawing the worn pipe stem between his front teeth and adding his own pungent smog to the evil air. He peered through it with bleary eyes, from exultant gunners to the mud-caked sappers in the trenches that now touched the flooded ditch, and up to the men who had reappeared on their confounded rampart. ‘Stuck a hole in it, Reginald, see there.’

Lieutenant Jays clambered out of the trench and came to stand beside his commanding officer. He followed Forrester’s outstretched arm, the pipe used as a smoking pointer. ‘Praise God, sir.’

Forrester nodded, and removed his hat. ‘And praise Prince Rupert, for he spent the night out here, sighting the damned cannon himself.’ He stared at the small breach that had opened at this beleaguered corner of the wall. The larger stone blocks from the ancient construction had collapsed outwards into the ditch, followed from within the city by a miniature landslide of soil that formed a small glacis on the outer face. ‘My God, they’ve done well. That’s a lot of turf to lug. The Prince wagered they’d bolstered the inner face, for our lads at the Vineyard watch them cut the turfs. But I think even he would be impressed. No wonder our damned artillery have struggled so.’

‘When will we attack, sir?’

A musket-shot interrupted Forrester, and both officers were startled to see a ball thump into the gabion against which they stood. It bounced off like a pebble shied at a tree-trunk, for much of its power had dissipated over the distance, but Forrester beckoned Jays to retreat all the same. ‘I cannot say,’ he said as they moved to a safer distance. ‘Now that our saps have reached their blasted moat, the engineers’ll drain it and, God willing, we’ll be unleashed to do our work.’ He turned back to assess the dark tongue of crumbled stone and fallen earth. ‘It is not a large breach, by any standard, but if we might fill the ditch enough for us to cross quickly, we have plenty of good men to force a way through.’

Jays swallowed hard. ‘I hope they do not stand, sir.’

‘You and me both, Reginald,’ Forrester said, turning away to stare at the black clouds gathering to the east. ‘You and me both.’

Near Oxford, 14 August 1643

The droplets were fat and strangely warm. They bounced mercilessly on the surface of the hardened road and in amongst the green canopy overhead, causing a fine spray to obscure everything in Lisette’s vision.

She dipped her head against the rain, pressing her chin into her chest, and whispered encouragement to her bony mare. They were close now – she recognized this part of the county from her time in Oxford – and Lisette thanked the Holy Mother for it. Progress had been slow indeed since leaving Leighton Buzzard the previous morning. Though they had donated the wagon to the tapster at the Black Sheep in thanks for his discretion, their speed on the two horses had not been as good as she had hoped. The road teemed with soldiers. She had expected as much, but presumed that, this close to the new Royalist capital, any martial forces would be loyal to the king. Not so. She had bitten her lip and held her breath more than once as they waited in the forest for roving Parliamentarian patrols to pass. To make matters worse, most of the troops seemed to carry field signs with which she was not familiar, forcing her to hide from even those men she suspected of being allies.

And then it had rained. It started with grey skies and a few desultory gusts of wind, but quickly developed into a full-scale storm that compelled them to slow to a pathetic walk rather than the glorious, homecoming gallop she had envisaged.

‘Bloody English summer,’ she mumbled.

‘You miss France?’ Cecily Cade asked as she drew her black horse alongside Lisette’s bay.

‘Sometimes,’ Lisette admitted. ‘The weather.’ She shrugged. ‘The hills, and the forests and the rivers and mountains. But France was not kind to me. Now I go where I am told to go. You? Do you miss your home?’

Cecily sighed. ‘We had many homes, always travelling from one to the next as my father looked in on his interests. Now the memory of each place is like a knife to my heart. Though I suppose there was one place.’ She looked across at the Frenchwoman. ‘You know the Isles of Scilly?’

Lisette nodded. ‘In the ocean off Cornwall?’

‘That’s right. We had a place there, a small place, built in thick stone against the wind. I would play outside, gaze out to sea.’ She smiled. ‘Father would shout if I strayed too near the cliffs.’

‘It sounds nice.’

‘It was. I miss it.’ Cecily gritted her teeth in sudden anger. ‘I still cannot believe it. Hopton burnt, blinded?’

Lisette shrugged. They had been through this discussion many times, and she was beginning to tire of it. ‘Believe it.’

‘Perhaps it is mere rumour,’ Cecily continued unabated, ‘spread by the Parliament to frighten us.’

Lisette reflected again on the news-sheet and its claim that, despite a Royalist victory at Lansdown Fight, the king’s men had lost two of their foremost leaders. ‘
One great Cavalier dead, the other barely alive
.’ According to the exultant report, Sir Bevil Grenville had been slain during the battle itself, while General Hopton had been caught in an explosion later in the day. ‘I fear it is too easily proven to be false.’

‘I had thought—’ Cecily went on unhappily.

‘You had thought to speak with Hopton,’ Lisette said, feeling irritation rise. ‘I know, Cecily.’ She looked across at her companion. ‘But he might have perished by now, for all we know. His injuries were severe by that paper’s account. We must go direct for the King and Queen. I am known to Her Majesty. She will grant me an audience.’

Cecily eased her mount to a halt, the rain dashing against the grey hood of the riding coat given to her by Widow Hulme. ‘What if she does not? I have spent too long keeping this knowledge to myself. Resisted those who would claim to pass it direct to the King. Hopton and Grenville were the only men I could trust, and now they are gone.’

Lisette turned her mount to face Cecily. She peered into the girl’s eyes, so dark in that sepulchral hood. ‘Trust me.’

‘But I—’

‘Not with the gold, Cecily. I do not wish to know where your cursed treasure is.’ It had already cost too many lives. Lisette ran a hand along the horse’s pricked ear, wringing water from the tip. ‘And you are right, you have suffered too much to give it up to just any fool. Trust me to bring you safe to King Charles.’

Cecily’s almost translucent face smiled from within its sodden cave. ‘King Charles.’

‘King Charles,’ echoed Lisette, turning the horse back to face the road.

The men blocking their path wore grey coats and breeches. They had emerged from the bend about fifty paces ahead, mud caking their legs from shoes to knees, and marched behind a huge square of grey taffeta, hoisted high at the end of a long pole. Lisette and Cecily stared open-mouthed. Perhaps the drums had been smothered by the roar of the rain, or perhaps there were no drums at all, but that mattered little. They were facing an entire company of foot, arrayed in alternating blocks of pike and musket, and the foremost dozen men were already running towards them.

Cecily turned to Lisette. ‘Do we run?’

‘No.’

‘But they have no horses. We can get away!’

‘They have muskets.’

‘It is raining,’ Cecily protested.

‘Stay where you are!’ Lisette stared at the flapping colour.

Cecily shook her head. ‘Then it is over? After we have come so far? How could you give up so easily?’

Lisette spurred forwards suddenly, twisting back to wink. ‘Because they’re king’s men! We’ve made it!’

‘Down, Waller! Down, I say! Now where was I?’

Lisette shot Cecily a quick smirk as they watched the little mongrel, Waller, run rings round its master’s horse. The hooves slid frantically in the sticky terrain as the liver-chestnut gelding tried to kick out at the yapping canine, but the dog simply skipped out of range. ‘You were explaining your business here, sir,’ Lisette prompted, trying not to laugh.

Major Titus Greening, company commander in Colonel Thomas Pinchbeck’s Regiment of Foot, leaned across the saddle and shook his fist at the dog. In reply, the wire-haired, pot-bellied creature scampered over to the nearest tree, cocked its leg at the exposed roots for a few moments, and scuttled off down the line of marching infantrymen. Greening straightened with a long-suffering sigh. ‘Yes indeed! We are – that is to say – we
were
en route to Aylesbury. Patrol, you understand. Checking for rebels. Got to keep the lice off the coat, eh?’

The women had been welcomed heartily by the Royalist officer. Lisette suspected he would have swallowed any tale that meant he could turn his rain-lashed recruits about and go home to the warm fires of Oxford. Now they were making steady, if slow, time in the ankle-deep morass that would lead them to the king’s new capital. The women rode at the head of the column either side of Major Greening, but the sixty or so men at the rear trudged in sour-faced silence through the mire.

Cecily cleared her throat as they filed past a gap in the thick trees that signified the mouth of an ancient bridleway. ‘Thank you again for your assistance, Major,’ she said sweetly.

Titus Greening was a plump fellow in his mid thirties, with long hair that had already turned as grey as his coat, and a clean-shaven complexion. His eyes were kind, his nose long and pointed, and his lips full. He wore a broad grey hat topped with a red feather and a voluminous crimson scarf tied diagonally about his torso. ‘Not a bit of it, madam. Glad to be of help.’ The dog raced past them again, and this time its shrill barking made Cecily’s horse shake its head irritably. Greening screwed up his face in embarrassment. ‘My apologies. Waller is a great nuisance.’

‘Why do you not give him away?’ Cecily asked.

‘Or shoot him,’ Lisette added mischievously.

‘Shoot him?’ Greening repeated with unconcealed shock. ‘He is our talisman, madam. Joined us shortly after our first taste of a brabble, and followed our ranks ever since.’

‘Waller?’ Cecily said.

‘After the dastardly rebel general, of course,’ Greening said impishly. ‘Short, fat and ugly.’

Lisette watched the dog splash through a water-filled rut, mud splattering up its scruffy flanks. ‘I am surprised he can follow so well on the march, Major, for his legs seem so short.’

Greening guffawed. ‘Aye, well he’d surprise you, I’m certain. Besides, it has been a while since we campaigned, so to speak.’

‘Oh?’

‘We are part of the Oxford garrison. We stay in the city and guard it.’ He swept his hand back at the men. ‘Save for the odd patrol, naturally. And these lads are raw. They’re new recruits in the main, not the hardy scrappers we’ve sent down to Gloucester.’

Lisette looked across at him. ‘Gloucester?’

Greening nodded. ‘Why, surely you are aware of the great siege now undertaken there? The King has gone himself to see our brave forces reduce that crucible of revolution to dust.’

‘The King?’ Lisette echoed. She glanced at Cecily. ‘In person?’

‘It is the last great stronghold in those parts,’ Greening said. ‘He would see it smashed before he looks to London.’