Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (48 page)

‘Yes, you bloody were,’ Forrester replied, the guttering candle flame throwing crazed shapes on his round face. They were in a corner, nestled away in the muggy building’s inner sanctum, as night turned the encampment dark. Captains Kuyt and Bottomley had joined them, casually playing dice on the circular table’s far side, while some of the more junior of Mowbray’s officers milled out in the adjoining corridor, laughing and swilling claret and beer. Lieutenant Thomas Hood was with the latter group, chatting loudly, and both men watched him. Forrester dragged at his pipe, blowing smoke rings around Stryker. When the last had drifted lazily away, collapsing into a score of ghostly tendrils, he leaned in. ‘’Tis one thing to harangue a young buck in order to keep him from killing his men through stupidity,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Quite another when that poor bastard has done nothing but replace a lost comrade.’

‘I know,’ Stryker said weakly, still looking at the men in the passageway. He had hoped to speak to Hood since the lieutenant had returned empty-handed from his errand to Kingsholm, but duties had not provided the opportunity. ‘And I will speak with him.’

‘Two fives, Aad, my old feodary!’ Job Bottomley exclaimed suddenly, juddering the table with a chubby fist.

Aad Kuyt’s blue eyes narrowed. ‘We shall play again. Give me chance to win back my stake, yes?’

Bottomley, the regiment’s third captain, peered at the Dutchman through the miasma. His eyes were saddled with heavy yellow bags, sagging like plague boils on his milky skin, and he blinked rapidly as he considered the request. He pushed a greasy strand of coke-black hair from his ear and sat back, patting his vast belly with both palms. ‘I suppose I can afford another pie if I take more of your money, Captain. Let’s play.’

As Kuyt scooped up the bone pieces, Stryker looked back at his friend. ‘I have seen much of grief, Forry.’

‘Haven’t we all?’

‘These last weeks,’ Stryker said. ‘In there. The best of it, and the worst.’

Forrester nodded. ‘It can poison the hardiest chap if allowed to take hold.’

Stryker thought of Skaithlocke’s mind, once so unruffled, now melted by white-hot grief. When he had seen Hood in Gloucester’s shattered suburbs, he had realized that he too dallied with that path. It terrified him. ‘That it can.’

‘What happened in there, old man?’ Forrester asked abruptly.

They had not had time to speak properly since Stryker and Skellen stumbled into the skirmish outside the south wall, and he had known his friend’s interrogation would come. Even so, it was difficult to know where to begin. ‘Too much to tell all at once.’

Forrester rolled his eyes. ‘What’s he like, young Massie? We are told he forces his men to imbibe strong drink before they fight.’

Stryker laughed. ‘Is that what they’re putting about?’ He shook his head as he lit his own pipe. ‘No, he is clever. A good soldier.’

Through the newly billowing sotweed cloud, he saw Forrester’s round face crease suspiciously. ‘You sound rather like you admire him.’

‘I do,’ Stryker said, deciding there was little point in denying it. ‘But there is something else.’ He took another pull on the clay stem, letting the fragrant smoke warm his lungs, and exhaled slowly. ‘Skaithlocke is in Gloucester.’

As he expected, Forrester’s eyes bulged. ‘Skaithlocke?
Colonel
Skaithlocke?’ He sat back blowing a gust of air out through pursed lips. Eventually he shook his head. ‘Well, I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. If the Parliament could pay him more than us, then he was bound to throw in his lot with the rebels.’

‘No, Forry, that’s just it. He’s with them for conviction.’

Forrester paused, carefully examining Stryker’s face, before the corners of his mouth curled upwards. ‘
Ha
!’ He slapped Stryker’s shoulder. ‘A fine jest. Almost had me.’

‘I’m serious, Forry.’

This time Forrester could see that Stryker meant it, and he rubbed his tired eyes in bewilderment. ‘Turned Puritan, has he? Well I never thought I’d see the day.’

‘John died,’ Stryker continued. He felt bad for the way in which he broke the news, for Forrester had known the younger Skaithlocke just as well as he had, but he could think of no kinder way than the simple telling of it.

‘Jesu,’ Forrester said, the redness flushing from his sweaty jowls.

‘He was killed by imperial forces some time ago.’ Stryker leaned in. ‘They tortured him first, Forry. Horribly so. It has—’ He had removed his hat when they sat down, and now he stared at its mangled feathers, for he could not meet Forrester’s drilling gaze. ‘It has changed the colonel. Christ, the Dutch call him Slager now!’

Forrester scrunched up his face as his brain considered the foreign tongue. ‘Baker?’

Captain Kuyt’s head snapped up from his game. ‘Butcher.’

Forrester’s eyes widened. ‘Butcher? They call him the
Butcher
? Now that doesn’t sound too chirpy, does it?’

Stryker shook his head as Forrester took a lingering draught of claret, which spilled in tiny trickles down his chin. ‘He is not in Gloucester to fight for the rebels per se, but because he thought it would give him the greatest chance of killing the King.’

‘Killing—’ Forrester echoed, almost spitting out his wine. He looked around furtively, dropping his voice to an earnest whimper. ‘Killing the King? Is he mad? Even the most ardent bloody Roundheads don’t want that! Christ on His Cross, Stryker, but the Parliament would have him jigging the morris just as we would.’

‘But it won’t be him directly,’ said Stryker.

‘Zounds, man,’ Forrester said suddenly, the light of understanding appearing across his face. ‘I know you’d warned Sir Edmund there was an assassin on the loose, but not that he was working for my old commanding bloody officer. What does the King say?’

‘Mowbray spoke with him, but he thinks it a hoax.’

Forrester nodded. ‘And things have gone too far awry here, I suppose. He won’t abandon the siege and risk the criticism. Not for mere conjecture, leastwise. But you’re quite sure? Skaithlocke is really behind this?’

‘He means to plunge England into war with the Papists.’

‘And it is worth the murder of his king?’

‘
Exitus acta probat
,’ Stryker repeated Skaithlocke’s declaration. ‘That’s what he said.’

‘The end justifies the deed,’ Forrester said softly. He began to gnaw at his bottom lip.

‘Remember Ezekiel Nobbs?’ Stryker said.

‘How could I not? A vile rodent, if ever there was one. Skaithlocke’s toadying aide. Foul and fawning, if I recall.’

‘I watched the colonel strangle him when he thought his grand plan might be at risk.’ Stryker’s face was grim. ‘Wrung his neck like a chicken.’

‘God’s most precious and holy blood,’ Lancelot Forrester muttered, before knocking back the remainder of his wine with an audible gulp. He slammed the battered goblet on the table. ‘Grief really did send him mad.’

‘It can happen easily enough,’ Stryker said as he pushed himself to his feet. ‘And that is why I must speak with Lieutenant Hood forthwith.’

He found Hood outside talking merrily with one of the taphouse’s serving-girls. He smiled to himself as he approached, but felt instantly bad as the young man shooed her away, evidently fearing another tongue-lashing from his irascible commander.

‘Hell, Tom, am I that fearsome?’ he said, keeping his voice light.

‘S-sorry, sir,’ Hood muttered, glaring at the flagstones of the courtyard. Above them the inn’s sign swung back and forth, its crude painting of a small horse screeching on rusty hinges like some night-time banshee.

Stryker crammed his hat back atop his head and rested his left hand on the garnet-set pommel of his sword. ‘Captain Forrester informs me of your good work in commanding the company, Lieutenant.’

Hood’s neck convulsed as though he swallowed a ball of feathers. ‘He flatters me, sir.’

‘He gives you praise, Tom, and that is not idly given. Well done.’

‘Sir.’

There passed a moment of extreme awkwardness as captain fumbled for something to say and lieutenant stared at the rail where their horses had been tethered, as though he considered whether to make a run for it. Stryker finally cleared his throat. ‘I would apologize to you, Mister Hood.’

Hood seemed even more embarrassed. ‘Come now, sir, I—’

‘Let me speak,’ interrupted Stryker. He sighed deeply, forcing himself to think upon events he would rather have let rest. ‘You once asked me about Stratton Fight.’

Hood looked up with a pained expression. ‘A childish question, sir. Nothing more. I have learned much of late, not least the ability to keep my peace.’

‘It was a bitter one, that is for certain,’ Stryker said, determining that he would tell the story regardless, now that it had bubbled to the surface of his memories. ‘The men of Cornwall and Devon are not friendly in peacetime, let alone war.’

‘But you won, sir,’ Hood said. ‘Cut your way to the summit and put the rebels to the sword.’

Stryker nodded. ‘True enough, Lieutenant, but it was a terrible sight, believe me. It was not the dead that stuck with me, so much as the living.’

‘Sir?’

Stryker remembered the carpet of mangled corpses atop the flat summit of the ancient hill fort. Interspersed between the twisted, shocked faces were the pitiful bodies of those unfortunate enough to be left alive. He could not suppress a slight shudder. ‘There were so many wounded that the whole ground looked as though it crawled. Like a nest of maggots.’ He stared hard at Hood. ‘There is nothing noble in killing. Nothing.’ He saw the haunting image again; a young man’s face, obliterated by a tiny sphere of lead. ‘It was there that your predecessor died.’

‘Captain Forrester told me, sir.’

‘He was my officer, and I should have protected him,’ said Stryker. ‘I failed, and he died.’

‘You blame yourself ?’

‘I always will,’ Stryker said, and felt as though it was the only solid truth he had told for many days. He forced a smile, wondering if the gesture looked more demon than human in the orange glow of the tavern’s windows. ‘But that does not mean I should punish you for my failures. Burton was a good man, an excellent soldier, and he was my friend. I have no doubt you will do him proud, Mister Hood.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Hood said, offering a slight bow that Stryker waved quickly away.

‘Now will my second in command allow me to buy him a drink?’

Hood beamed. ‘I will, sir.’

By Little Mead, Gloucester, 24 August 1643

The cattle had been coaxed back into the city by a team of nervous musketeers, whose match-tips danced like the eyes of nocturnal beasts as they slapped and prodded the braying animals over the ramshackle bridge of ladders spanning the ditch.

Nikolas Robbens had watched from the Royalist lines on the northern side of the meadow as the Welsh and Worcester men of Vavasour’s brigade took a few lacklustre pot shots at the plaintiff cows, but, though there were nearly two hundred to choose from, they apparently hit nothing. Quickly they abandoned their sport, laying back to look up at the scudding smears of charcoal-grey that were smothering the stars, apparently not considering the harassment of the garrison to be worth the minute or two it took to load a musket. Robbens was astounded by their attitude; ten-score cattle and at least thirty unprotected rebels had been well within musket range, and yet the men had not been bothered to make any concerted attempt to rustle or injure either. But then this was his overriding impression of the sprawling Royalist army. One of low morale and steadily creeping lethargy. The king’s men were relatively disease free, had plentiful supplies of food, and new consignments of powder and ammunition had been trundling in from mills and foundries at regular intervals. But still the men were not happy. It was simply taking too long, Robbens supposed. The siege had settled into a rhythm of attrition, and, while common sense dictated that eventually Gloucester would fall, the men gathered outside the city had grown bored.

This kind of inept lassitude would never have been permitted on the Continent, Robbens thought, as he paced the well-trodden grass between two of the besiegers’ wicker breastworks. The Royalist commanders would have been marched out of their pampered quarters at dawn and served lead for breakfast if they had been accountable to any of the grand European chiefs. But this kind of thing, he had quickly learned, seemed to be the English way. A nation of hard, disagreeable scrappers, the common sort made undeniably excellent soldiers, but they were so often led by bungling fops or doddering old palliards, and as a result their good intentions would rapidly descend into farce. Still, at least the incompetent machinations of this grim island’s politicians and warriors would not be his concern for much longer. He patted his new snapsack, issued to him with a new set of clothes at Llanthony Priory. Inside, along with a plug of tobacco, a pipe, tinderbox, wooden bowl and spoon, there was a square of folded paper. It was signed and sealed by Major Alexander Beak, and gave him leave to recuperate in peace for five days. He had used the pass to secure lodgings in a small house on the Kingsholm road, and, though he shared the space with fifteen truculent and barely intelligible Welsh pikemen, it had served him well. He simply had to remember to cough occasionally, so that the fever-fearing soldiers would steer a wide berth.