Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (53 page)

‘His Majesty is through here?’ Lisette asked as they left the room through a far door and filed along a dark passageway hung with tapestries.

The servant’s white eyebrows lifted in surprise. ‘His Majesty?’ His face cracked in a half-smile, but he said nothing more until they turned a corner into a warmly lit reception area, at the centre of which stood a tall, willowy man with wiry copper hair and a severe squint.

‘Delighted, I’m sure,’ the tall man said after the servant introduced him as Enoch Ferre. He turned quickly on his heels, his brown cloak swirling in his wake. ‘Walk with me?’

‘French?’ Lisette said as they followed.

Ferre glanced back as he led the way. ‘I was born in Wallingford, I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘but the name is Protestant Huguenot in origin, yes.’

Lisette wrinkled her nose in distaste but chose to leave the subject well alone. ‘Who are we going to see now? The King’s bloody farrier? The Queen’s dressmaker?’

‘I am sorry to say,’ Ferre replied, seemingly amused by her irritability, ‘that you are here to see me.’

Lisette stopped, causing the others to halt too. ‘A clerk?’ She looked at Cecily. ‘Another bloody clerk?’

Ferre smiled benevolently. ‘I am sorry to disappoint, Mademoiselle Gaillard, but I assure you that I am, dare I say it, a rather influential clerk. If you’ll follow me?’

Lisette muttered angrily as they walked the last few yards to a studded door flanked by a pair of menacing sentries bearing crossed halberds. The weapons sang of their sharpness as they were pulled smartly aside at the merest nod from Enoch Ferre, and he strode into the room beyond.

‘You’ve enjoyed your stay so far, I trust?’ Ferre asked as he went to a huge table at the back of the room. It was strewn with maps and papers, which he now loomed over to shuffle with inky fingers. ‘It is a strange sort of place to the outsider, I grant you that. As if some great leviathan had swallowed up Whitehall and vomited it all over Oxford University!’ He guffawed, and sat down in a large, comfortable-looking chair, indicating that his guests should take the seats on the table’s far side. ‘Now let me see. We have the King’s residence at Christ Church, along with the new Parliament, of course.’ He counted the elements on his fingers. ‘Privy Council convene at Oriel College. Members of His Majesty’s inner circle, officers of state, senior soldiers and the like, are quartered here at Jesus College, and at Pembroke and St John’s too. The arsenal is kept at All Souls, the powder magazine at New College.’

‘Everything a capital city needs,’ Cecily said graciously.

‘Oh, very much so,’ Ferre agreed with an extra-narrow squint. ‘And that’s not all. We have a mint running here, a newspaper, and everything else you’d have found in that hive of villainy, London.’

‘Impressive,’ Lisette said.

Ferre smiled wickedly. ‘Just do not approach any person with a wet-sounding cough. It is more than likely
morbus campestris
, a nasty fever that strikes us now and again.’ He shrugged, his sharp collarbones protruding like twin hillocks from beneath his cloak. ‘The lot of garrison life, I’m afraid. We must content ourselves with what we have.’

Lisette looked around the room. It was tastefully furnished, with deep rugs softening the floorboards and an exquisitely crafted lantern clock on the wall behind the copper-haired official. Clearly Enoch Ferre was no mere clerk. ‘Mister Ferre,’ she said, shifting her seat forwards a fraction, ‘I would speak with the King urgently.’

Ferre responded with a tight smile. ‘I am well aware of your
situation
, please be assured of that. And would do what I can to help, naturally.’

‘Then?’

He crossed his hands, the long, stained fingers weaving together on the desk in front. ‘My apologies, mademoiselle. He is not here.’

‘Not here?’ Lisette repeated incredulously as Cecily shut her eyes in despair. ‘What do you mean? We were conveyed to our lodgings by a sergeant-at-arms who told us His Majesty had returned to Oxford.’

‘And indeed he had,’ Ferre said calmly. ‘But he has already gone; returned to Gloucester with the Prince.’

Lisette considered the implication, the snide bragging of Erasmus Collings pounding inside her skull like cannon fire. ‘The King himself is at Gloucester?’

‘That is what I said. Rode thither yesterday.’

‘But there is an army on its way,’ Lisette said, hearing the urgency inflect her tone. ‘I must warn him.’

Ferre leaned back nonchalantly. ‘He knows, Mistress. Our scouts watch them day and night. Why do you think he came back to his capital? Feared my lord Essex had designs upon Oxford.’

‘Does he?’ Cecily asked.

Ferre gnawed at the inside of his mouth as he considered the question. ‘It does not appear that way. Though nothing is certain. You’ll have noticed the rather dense hedge of soldiers we have out beyond the bastions.’

‘They seemed anxious,’ Cecily said.

‘As well they might,’ replied Ferre. ‘The current belief is that Essex will strike at Gloucester, for the siege there nears its fourth week, and pressure grows in Parliamentarian circles for it to be lifted. But Oxford remains a very ripe apple for His Grace to try and pluck. Wine?’

The women watched as Ferre reached for a crystal bottle perching at the edge of the table. He filled three delicate glasses with the dark liquid, sliding them over the polished surface.

‘The enemy horde,’ he went on after he had taken a sip, ‘has been sighted around Wokingham, Colnbrook and Chesham these past days. They move north, avoiding our garrison, it seems. His Majesty’s Council believes it is Gloucester for which they are bound, and thus he has returned to his siege.’ Ferre set down his glass with a gentle clink. ‘It does not go well, I am sorry to report. He wishes to take the city before Essex arrives. The clock ticks for our brave boys.’

Lisette looked across at Cecily. ‘We must go there.’

‘Gloucester?’ Ferre asked before Cecily could answer. ‘Perhaps not.’

Lisette gave him a baleful stare. ‘Perhaps not? Miss Cade has suffered much to bring His Majesty this information.’

Ferre’s face was suddenly stiff and implacable. ‘I am aware of that, which is why I think it best that she does not die on the road before she may impart it.’

‘You speak to me like I am a child, sir,’ Lisette hissed.

Ferre grunted. ‘I speak to you as though you are a woman.’ He leaned back casually, studying the women through eyes that were black slits. ‘I cannot, in all conscience, let you gallop off to Gloucester when the land between here and there is teeming with rebel regiments.’ He looked straight at Cecily. ‘Especially if what you say about your inheritance is true, Miss Cade.’

‘Of course it is true, sir,’ Cecily replied vehemently.

Lisette stood. ‘Come, Cecily, we will take horses. We do not need his permission.’

‘You have money, then?’ Ferre said in a firm but inquisitive tone. ‘To buy these mounts?’ He grinned. ‘Or are you intent on stealing them? It seems a trifle ironic that you should be strung up by your own side after surmounting such obstacles to get this far.’

The women glanced at one another and sat down in tandem.

Ferre’s pleasantly benevolent expression returned. ‘Here’s what I will do for you, ladies. Lord Wilmot has—’ he paused to snatch up a scrap of vellum from the table, scrutinizing a column of numbers running down one side, ‘two thousand horse to the north of here, protecting us lest Essex change his mind and swoop down upon our virgin capital.’ He tossed the vellum back on the untidy pile. ‘A further detachment of harquebusiers leaves here the day after the morrow, destined to reinforce him. You may travel with them. I will see to it that Wilmot arranges safe passage from there to Gloucester. How does that serve?’

Lisette drained her glass. ‘It serves very well, Mister Ferre.’ And it did, for they were going to see the king.

Greyfriars, Gloucester, 29 August 1643

Night brought some semblance of comfort to Edward Massie. The bigger cannon ceased their murderous ministrations when it became too dark to see, and the musketeers in the vile Royalist rat-runs tended to filter back along their watery gullies to drink and whore, or whatever else the malignants did of an evening.

For the weary governor, there was no rest. He had returned, as ever, to his command post in the medieval friary, for it was ideally, if dangerously, positioned in the vulnerable sector of land between the South Gate and the East Gate. The building was strong, a muscular edifice of thick stone, but it had taken a pounding at the hands of the enemy batteries on Gaudy Green, and gaping holes had opened like black mouths in the roof and walls.

Massie cast a furtive glance at the ceiling directly above his head, checking for loose masonry. He allowed himself a rueful smile as he imagined what macabre fun the printers of
Mercurius Aulicus
would have with the news that Gloucester’s chief rebel had been brained by a falling stone as he sat at his desk to plot against the king. It would be seen as divine retribution of the most poetic kind, and he wondered whether it was time to move his operation deeper into the city.

Comfortable that such a comical demise would not happen this night, he took his seat, tucking his long legs beneath the table and turning his attention to the never-ending pile of paper that greeted him each evening. There were inventories of powder and shot, of swords and tools captured during sorties and of food stocks. One report named the day’s dead, while another described the progress being made on the twin countermines at the East Gate. The author complained of almost impossible working conditions, of mud so saturated that the task was proving futile. Massie thanked God aloud, his voice echoing about the high chamber, for if the city’s countermines had run into difficulties, then so too would the Royalist works.

He leafed through the freshly inked ream. It appeared morale remained strong, while the secret gun port facing the wooden gallery over the eastern moat had nearly been completed. Soon they would be able to reveal the saker positioned within and blast the bullet-proof shield to splinters. The thought encouraged him, though it was tempered with concern as he returned with trepidation to the munitions inventory. Three barrels of powder was all they had left. He had used some of the precious commodity to mount a bombardment of the eastern trenches during the day, firing out from cannon placed at Friar’s Barn, and, while he stood by that decision, it left their stocks woefully depleted. Would they even be able to fire the saker when the port was finally revealed?

A heavy knock at the door caused Massie to look round with a start. ‘
Come
.’

In walked three men. One was a sergeant who commanded this evening’s guard at the entrance to Greyfriars. ‘Sir,’ he said, in the snappy manner of Stamford’s blue-coated veterans. The volunteers of the Town Regiment were a little less staccato in their movements, not that Massie minded a jot.

‘Well,’ he said, setting down the papers and rising to his feet, ‘what is it?’

The sergeant had an almost perfectly round face, with heavy, stubble-shadowed jowls and a wobbling set of chins. He reminded Massie of a fighting dog, all humourless brawn, yet now, in the guttering glow of the candles placed around the inner sanctum of Gloucester’s war effort, his expression seemed almost to shiver with excitement. ‘The messengers, sir,’ he intoned, and Massie could have sworn he caught the hint of a smile. ‘From Warwick.’

Warwick. The word had been so unexpected that Massie took a second to process it, and then he almost collapsed back in his chair. ‘Praise be to God,’ he whispered, a hand to his mouth. ‘You made it through.’

The messengers grinned. One was young-looking, perhaps in his late teens, with lank sandy hair and a clean-shaven face. The other was probably in his mid forties, with thick, gunmetal-grey locks that fell in curls to his shoulders. The older of the two stepped forward a touch. ‘All the way to Warwick and back again, sir.’

‘And?’ Massie reached to steady himself on the high back of the chair. He took a breath and clasped his hands tightly behind his back. ‘What news?’

The older messenger cleared his throat ostentatiously, revelling in the moment. ‘His Excellency marches to our aid, sir.’

Massie hardly dare utter the name. ‘Essex?’

‘The very same, sir.’

‘You are certain?’ Massie said, thinking of the trickery his opponents had used in the past. ‘
Certain
?’

The grey-haired man nodded solemnly. ‘Aye, Governor, certain as God made the heavens.’

‘Jesu,’ Massie whispered. ‘We are saved.’ He noticed the unease on the second messenger’s face. ‘What is it, boy?’

The lad swallowed thickly. ‘There is great consternation at His Excellency’s strength, sir. His army bein’ struck down with the plague so recently an’ all. Some say he has ten thousand souls with him, sir. Others say two thousand.’

Massie nodded to show that he listened, but in truth his mind felt as though it danced in the thick beams above their heads. A relief force. Real hope for Gloucester’s survival. If they could just hold out a little longer. ‘Ten or two, it is something. Bless my soul, it is something.’ He set his brown eyes on the men, darting between them, unwilling to let them break the gaze. ‘Can you get through their lines again? I know it is asking much of you, but I will see that you are rewarded for the risk you take.’