Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles (46 page)

Cecily kept her head and shoulders straight, not deigning to follow the general as he paced. ‘What of it, sir?’

Chudleigh halted beside her. ‘That man,’ he spoke directly into her left ear, ‘was Sir Alfred Cade, your father.’

She did not flinch. ‘I know nothing of this wealth, General. It is make-believe. A peasant’s myth, conjured by poor men through green eyes.’

Chudleigh began to walk again. ‘Except Mister Richardson, here, intercepted a rider from the men you were with on Dartmoor. And that rider said, unequivocally, that you had been told the whereabouts of this treasure before your father breathed his last.’

‘It is true,’ Richardson spoke now. ‘Come now, Miss Cade, we have been through this time and again. We know you are privy to the location of the gold. Cease this game.’

‘Speak up, Miss Cade,’ Chudleigh continued smoothly. ‘Surely after the coin I have spent—’

That seemed to touch a nerve, for Cecily rounded angrily on the Parliamentarian commander. ‘You think a new coif and a fancy dress will buy a betrayal, sir?’

‘Betrayal?’ Chudleigh replied icily. ‘Whom would you betray, since you no longer have any kin?’

Cecily Cade’s green and hazel eyes narrowed to slits, her breaths thickening. ‘A pox on you, sir.’

Richardson stepped closer now. ‘Miss Cade,’ he said gently, ‘you must speak with us.’ He had attempted to lever the information from her enough times to know that personal insults would only serve to fasten her mouth shut. ‘Please, I ask you. Tell us the location of the gold. It is for your benefit.’

Chudleigh stepped abruptly between them, cutting across the intelligencer’s words. ‘I grow tired of this obstinacy, girl.’ He drew close to her, pausing to tug the gloves from his hands, and propping them under an armpit. Silence followed as he casually cracked each of his knuckles in turn. ‘I should not wish to make things—physical,’ he said eventually, slipping the gloves back on. ‘But I will if I am compelled, make no mistake.’

Richardson watched the pair eye one another. ‘Please, Miss Cade,’ he said quietly.

She stared ahead, focussing on some distant point, lips pressed together in a thin line. Chudleigh shook his head. ‘Such folly.’ He stooped briefly to pull up the tops of his boots, stretching the leather where it had bunched at his ankles. ‘I assure you, Miss Cade,’ he said when he had straightened, ‘Lord Stamford will not be as forgiving as I.’

Cecily’s eyes left their far-away focus then, flickering to meet the general’s. ‘A pox on him too.’

‘Where is Lord Stamford, sir?’ Richardson asked when Chudleigh turned his back on the prisoner in exasperation, cheek shivering manically.

‘Away to the east,’ he snapped irritably. ‘The gout ails him terribly. But he will arrive in time to deal with Hopton,’ he added, as much for Cecily’s benefit as Richardson’s. ‘Do not doubt it.’

‘Should I take her to him?’ the intelligencer asked.

Chudleigh considered the question for a moment, gnawing at the inside of his mouth. ‘No. I would not want our precious friend on the roads, crammed with soldiers as they are.’ He stared at Cecily, eyeing her rigid stance coldly. ‘No, Miss Cade, you will stay with me, where you can disclose your secrets in your own time. Perhaps you will be fortunate enough to witness the final destruction of Cavalier influence in the south-west. Then, of course, you will see that there is little point in this stubbornness.’

‘And if I do not?’

He smiled, the gesture unpleasant. ‘Then you
will
meet some of our soldiers. They will wish to celebrate our imminent victory, naturally. And they have been starved of female company for a very long time. Do we understand one another?’

Near Marhamchurch, Cornwall,
13
May
1643

Sir Bevil Grenville’s men might have marched behind a blue standard, but their coats reflected no uniform colour whatsoever. They were a rough-looking force, clad in a spectrum of shades as diverse as their weaponry, men who had enlisted to fight in whatever clothes they possessed.

‘The mighty men of Kernow,’ Anthony Payne’s rib-shaking tone jarred across Stryker’s thoughts as he watched the massed ranks advance. ‘They fight for their colonel, their county and their king.’ His wide mouth split in a wolfish grin. ‘In that order.’

Stryker twisted back to catch Payne’s dark eyes. ‘They look like a rabble.’

To his surprise, Payne’s beam widened. ‘The most formidable rabble in the land, Captain. Brutal, fearless, and ferocious.’

Looking at the dour expressions, the lean, hard physiques and the array of agrarian tools turned so convincingly to macabre employment, Stryker did not doubt it. He strode out to meet the larger force as the two groups converged in the misty field. As ever, the footfalls of his most trusted men sounded a short distance behind; Forrester, Skellen, Heel, and Barkworth. He guessed Payne would be there too. Further back, he imagined, was his own small force, waiting straight-backed and solemn, a wall of stoic redcoats in the face of more than a thousand grim Cornishmen.

‘You are with General Hopton, Sir Bevil?’ he asked of the only mounted man present as soon as formal introductions had been made.

Sir Bevil Grenville, resplendent in shimmering blue-green doublet, slid nimbly down from his big gelding and nonchalantly rolled his broad shoulders as he spoke. ‘Alas, no. But he travels hither.’

Stryker glanced back at Forrester. ‘Burton made it through.’

‘I haven’t the faintest notion of what you’re about, sir,’ Grenville said briskly as Forrester’s head bobbed, ‘but Hopton is on his way.’

‘All is well, then,’ a deep, guttural voice emanated suddenly from behind Stryker, causing Grenville’s twinkling gaze to lift as though he searched for clouds beyond the pallid haze.

‘Anthony,’ the knight said with genuine warmth.

Anthony Payne took a gigantic pace forward, bowing low, though his head remained above that of Stryker. ‘Sir Bevil. It is a grand thing to see you well.’

Grenville waved his manservant’s pleasantries away. ‘And you, sir, though I’d wager naught could see you harmed.’ His eyes dropped to the third man in the group. ‘And Captain Forrester. Well met.’

Forrester brandished an urbane grin. ‘Well met, Sir Bevil.’

A shadow ghosted across Grenville’s cheerful face suddenly, and he glanced left and right. ‘Let us speak in private.’

‘Captain Stryker was made aware of our mission, sir,’ Payne’s stentorian voice grumbled back. He winced as Grenville set his jaw. ‘By absolute necessity.’

Grenville blew air out through his nostrils. ‘So be it.’ His voice fell to a coarse whisper. ‘What have you to report?’

Forrester and Payne exchanged a sideways glance, the former clearing his throat. ‘We have failed, sir.’

Grenville did not speak, but his eyes flickered up to stare at his manservant.

Payne winced and nodded slowly. ‘It grieves my very heart to say it, but it is true. Sir Alfred is dead. Killed by brigands.’

Sir Bevil Grenville removed his hat, tossing it behind to be caught by the aide who held his horse’s reins. His hair, lustrous and bronze despite the gloomy day, escaped at all angles as soon as it was released, putting Stryker in mind of a lion’s mane, and he ruffled it vigorously with a gloved hand so that the curls cascaded across his shoulders, falling band collar, and silver gorget. ‘Jesu,’ he said heavily, ‘then his knowledge is lost forever.’

‘Would that were true, Colonel,’ Anthony Payne growled. ‘He had a daughter.’

A moment’s silence followed as Grenville absorbed the revelation. ‘And she has the location?’ he asked slowly.

‘Aye.’

‘Then—’

Payne grimaced, mouth working tonelessly like a landed fish.

‘Then,’ Lancelot Forrester cut in, seeing Payne’s discomfort, ‘the rebellion will soon be a deal richer.’

The knight looked from the tubby officer to Payne, and back to Forrester. ‘They have this woman?’

Forrester dipped his head, like Payne unable to hold the great man’s searching gaze. ‘We were betrayed, Colonel. A man named Richardson, Terrence Richardson, has foiled us with his treachery.’

Grenville’s handsome face tightened. ‘Richardson?’ He scratched at his chin briefly, lost in thought. A memory evidently hit him, for his eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets. ‘But I know that fellow. He is one of Sir Ralph’s most trusted men.’

‘Then he has turned his coat, Sir Bevil,’ Stryker interjected levelly. ‘He ambushed us with a troop of horse. A Roundhead troop. We fought him off, naturally, but not before he had taken the girl.’

Grenville’s hand fell to his sword-hilt, and he gripped the handle as if to steady himself. ‘And Cade’s daughter has the information we seek?’ he pressed, clear voice belying the strain Stryker could see in his eyes. ‘You’re certain of this?’

Stryker glanced at Forrester and Payne, but the pair could not bring themselves to meet the colonel’s stare. ‘Aye, sir,’ he replied. ‘We understand Richardson has taken her direct to Lord Stamford.’

Sir Bevil Grenville spun away, startling everyone present. He strode rapidly back to his horse, taking the reins and his wide, feathered hat from the blank-faced aide, and hauled himself back up into the saddle.

‘Colonel?’ Stryker called after him.

Grenville’s apple-eyed gelding whinnied at the sudden flurry of activity, and turned a tight circle, blasting steamy clouds from flared nostrils. Sir Bevil Grenville laughed, patted the beast’s neck, and steadied it with a deft twitch of the reins. It immediately became calm. He stared down at Stryker and his men. ‘If the rebels have Sir Alfred Cade’s daughter, gentlemen, then by Christ we must get her back!’

CHAPTER 19

North Petherwin, Cornwall,
14
May
1643

It was Sunday, and the common land just outside the little East Cornwall village had been transformed into a green cathedral. Blocks of men, arranged in regimental denomination, knelt on the dewy grass as their preachers bellowed thunderous sermons to the drifting clouds like so many angry magpies.

The Royalist army had grown since leaving its Launceston base. Sir Ralph Hopton’s summons had had the required effect, and as the force made its gradual progress north and east its ranks had been swollen by the arrival of those units necessarily spread along the border with Devon. Five hundred roaming horse and dragoons under Lord Digby had cantered to Hopton’s aid, while Lord Mohun’s Regiment of Foot, nine hundred strong, had joined them from Liskeard, and Sir Nicholas Slanning had brought up his thousand men from Saltash. The numbers remained paltry in comparison with those the Earl of Stamford could bring to bear, but at least the king’s western army was beginning to look more formidable.

Lieutenant Andrew Burton knelt towards the front ranks of Trevanion’s, his adopted regiment. His head was bowed, ready to bob in dutiful unison with the rest when the moment called, but his eyes were wide open. He was not thinking of the Scriptures, or of the ranter’s hoarse-voiced pleas for God to protect His righteous warriors in the bloody days to come. Burton’s mind was a jumble of images and emotions, certainly, but ones that would sooner enrage the big, silver-haired preacher than delight him. The broad-shouldered cleric, black-smocked and clutching a small Bible in white-knuckled fingers, harangued Colonel Trevanion’s men with a spittle-dowsed passion, and Burton was relieved his own thoughts would remain private, because at the very forefront of them was an image of a woman. A raven-haired beauty of pale skin and round eyes that shimmered green and hazel. Cecily Cade.

From the moment he had set eyes on her amid the bullet-riddled remains of her father’s coach, he had yearned for her. The smell of her hair when she wafted past had been intoxicating; the sound of her voice; the smooth lines of her body, hidden so tantalizingly beneath that delicate yellow dress. He had been in love, he supposed, from the very beginning. Or in lust, he chided himself ruefully. And now that he was away from her, away from Stryker, he was beginning to wonder if that lust had made a fool of him.

His stomach lurched suddenly, rumbled audibly enough for the man next to him to jab at his ribs with a sharp elbow. He hissed an apology, wondering what the man expected after they had dined the previous night on a single, weevil-ravaged biscuit each. How Sir Ralph expected his men to march, let alone fight, on such pathetic rations, he did not know. He hoped Stamford’s army was equally as ill provisioned.

Stryker would never have let his men go this hungry before a brabble.

Burton sat back on his haunches, shocked by his own mellowing. He was still angry, would still happily crunch a fist into the captain’s narrow chin, but the boiling, murderous fury had cooled. Perhaps he had misinterpreted the events of that fateful night. Stryker had protested his innocence, but he had taken Stryker’s refusal to put him on a charge for such rank insubordination as a sign of guilt. But now, in the cold light of morning, he could not help but rethink things.

‘Bow your head, man, lest you be struck down by His wrath!’

The cleric, wielding his Bible as though it were a weapon, had noticed the absent look on Burton’s face among the rows of solemn godly folk. He hurriedly dropped his gaze, reacquainting himself with the bead-glistening grass, and found, for the first time in days, a sense of peace. And regret.