Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (10 page)

Rawdon showed Forrester to the south-western corner of the courtyard, and led him into the wall tower that overlooked this part of the house. They climbed silently up the steps, emerging on to the roof. It had once been conical in shape, but the ceiling tiles had been stripped away to leave the bare skeleton of the timber frame, allowing the defenders a clear line of sight. Rawdon stared down at the earthworks that protected this side of the fortress. ‘In truth,’ the colonel said, now that they were out of earshot, ‘the marquess is reluctant to risk the men.’ He pulled a sour expression. ‘Reluctant to risk the house while the men are gone.’

Forrester had to raise his voice above the whipping wind, gripping his hat lest it fly away. ‘But he will do as he is asked?’

‘He will do as he is
ordered
. But he’ll gripe, have no doubt, for he will see conspiracy where there is none.’

‘Forgive me, Colonel. You refer to yourself?’

Rawdon sucked at his grey moustache. ‘Come now, Forrester, you did not notice the barbs he slings?’

‘He made mention of your reputation, sir, which, I confess, puzzled me a touch.’

Rawdon paused, moving to the edge of the tower, through the rafters of which a small artillery piece stretched. It was a falconet, Forrester saw. Not ordnance that could hurt a stone wall, but, turned upon a massed group of infantrymen, perfectly capable of cleaving bloody holes in their ranks. It guarded the southern approaches, warning any attacking force that terror awaited them. Rawdon patted the cold barrel. ‘I was with the Parliament at the outset of this horror.’

That surprised Forrester, and it was all he could do to keep his face impassive. ‘I see.’

‘After Kineton Fight, the King’s men made play for the capital.’

‘I was there. I fought at Brentford. But the rebels we faced that day were Brooke’s and Holles’s. Some of Hampden’s greencoats. You would not have been—’

‘I was Lieutenant-Colonel of the Red Regiment,’ Rawdon cut in.

‘The London Trained Bands?’ Forrester said. He did not recall their presence at Brentford, and was about to say as much when he remembered the conclusion of the king’s thrust upon the capital. It had all come to a head, and an end, on a large swathe of common ground near Chiswick, where the London militia, bolstered by the very people of the metropolis they were sworn to protect, marched out to block the road. It was a daring gambit in the face of the all-conquering Royalist army, and it might have resulted in the worst bloodbath England had ever known. ‘Then you were at Turnham Green.’

Rawdon nodded. ‘I was. I stood in that vast barricade of flesh and bone, staring down the barrels of so many Royalist muskets. I thought the world must end there and then.’

Forrester remembered staring back at the Parliamentarians, wondering whether he would be ordered to fire on so many of the king’s subjects. In the end, they had abandoned the advance, fearing the damage such violence would have done to their cause. ‘We had not the stomach for it.’

‘I am not certain we did either. Now we shall never know. And I will be ever grateful for that. I am a Londoner. The carnage that day would not have been worth even the Crown, though I’ll thank you not to repeat such treason.’

‘When did you—’

‘Turn my coat? Winter. I had hopes for peace but attempted to maintain friendships with both sides.’ He grimaced, perhaps reading the incredulity in Forrester’s eyes. ‘It may seem feeble to you, but I am an old man, Captain. Peace matters more than your opinion.’

‘But the peace talks foundered,’ Forrester prompted, unwilling to be drawn into an argument.

‘They did, and then Parliament implicated me in a plot to seize the Tower armoury.’

‘The Crispe plot?’ Forrester said. He almost laughed. For all the old man’s talk of desiring peace, he had been dabbling in espionage the entire time.

‘The same. I knew I was in danger if I remained astride our terrible fissure. I threw myself on the King’s mercy.’ He shrugged. ‘His Majesty forgave me, I raised my own regiment, and here we are.’

‘Here we are, indeed.’ Forrester went to the other side of the gun carriage and stared down at the ditch. Immediately below them it ceased to run straight, but angled out, forming a tri­angular bastion, spiked storm-poles lining the base like teeth. There was another curving feature to the west, thrust out to protect the southern approach to the Old House in the shape of a half-moon. Again, he was impressed by the ambition – not to mention the level of engineering prowess – that was on display. ‘But the marquess has not forgiven you.’

‘He does not truly trust me,’ Rawdon replied, his voice muffled by the wind. ‘But it is more than that, Captain. The Paulets are one of the foremost exponents of the old religion in this country.’

Forrester could guess what was coming next. ‘And you are ardently for the new.’

The colonel shot him a wan smile. ‘Basing has become a refuge for Catholics all across the land. A beacon, lighting their way to safety in a nation that has become fraught with danger. I do not begrudge them that, Captain, but they perceive the marquess as their hero.’

‘And their commander,’ said Forrester, beginning to understand.

‘Aye. He is lord here, but I am governor. How can I make plans for defence or attack if those under my command do not consider me their leader?’

Forrester saw now that things were not as straightforward as he had first thought. Matters of military expertise, religious difference and deep-set mistrust were compounded by rivalry over who really commanded Basing House. He wondered how the great fortress was to remain strong if the unity of its leaders could not, but decided to keep his own council. ‘Will the rebels attack Basing?’

‘Eventually, they must,’ said Rawdon. ‘The south-east has a great many Royalists, but they keep mouths and doors firmly shut. The active men in these shires are those for Parliament. Militarily at least, Westminster’s arm reaches all the way to the coast. And yet still there stand enclaves for our cause. Winchester, Donnington Castle, Basing House.’ He looked across at Forrester, plucking off his hat and ruffling his hair. ‘For the rebel lion to truly take this region, he must first pluck those thorns from his paw.’

‘You will prove a deep-set thorn, sir,’ Forrester said truthfully. He might have concerns over Basing’s divisive leadership, but Rawdon was intelligent, and his preparations for the house were genuinely robust.

‘Aye, that we will,’ Rawdon said. He met Forrester’s eyes. ‘And we pray Baron Hopton will punch through to relieve us before any real blood is spilt.’

Forrester kept his gaze level. ‘He marches soon.’

‘Then perhaps all will be well,’ Rawdon said, looking away to the distant hills. ‘And in the meantime, I shall arrange for our own forays to become more penetrating. Let us keep the rebel busy, so that he does not notice his enemy approach.’

‘Thank you, Colonel Rawdon. I shall take pleasure in delivering your reply to Oxford.’

Rawdon turned to face him, his tone almost apologetic. ‘Unless you might stay a while.’

‘Sir, I—’

‘You are engaged in something pressing at our new capital?’

A voice in the back of Forrester’s mind screamed at him to claim that he needed to return to Oxford immediately upon pain of death. And yet part of him could not help but be enticed by the offer. Rawdon seemed a good man, and the prospect of languishing in camp for only God knew how long made him yearn to stay out in the field. Not least because Stryker had managed to slip Oxford’s shackles, and the fact irked him more than he cared confess. He shook his head. ‘What did you have in mind, sir?’

‘My men are green, Captain,’ Rawdon said. ‘Raised only in April, they have sallied out for supplies, and, to their credit, were active in repulsing Norton’s attack in July. But these raids you ask for will take skill and courage. My men possess the latter in abundance.’

‘You would have me fight for you, sir?’ Forrester asked.

Marmaduke Rawdon sucked his moustache again, and gave a firm nod. ‘
With
me, Forrester, aye. Lead one of the sally parties. Show them how a proper warrior goes about his business.’ He extended his hand for Forrester to shake. ‘What say you?’

CHAPTER 5

St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly, 5 October 1643

The sea was part of Scilly. It surrounded, shaped and harassed the myriad rocky outcrops that formed this far-flung English outpost. Yet it was more than this. It pervaded everything: the smell on the wind; the salt in the air; the sound all around as the Atlantic sucked and broke in frothing whirlpools at the foot of every cliff. Stryker heard it now, forcing open his eyes, and imagined the great waves as they crashed home in their perpetual battle with the land. A stabbing pang of longing jolted through him. To see those waves, to feel that frenzied wind on his face. It would be very heaven, he was certain.

The dark-skinned man had not visited the prisoners again, leaving them for more long hours to wonder at their fate and the bizarre accusation that had been levelled at them. And then soldiers had come. They were garrison men, Stryker guessed, shipped over from Cornwall at the outset of the war, and here they had stayed, waited, watched the tumultuous seas and prayed the rebels would never come. Now they believed they had arrived in the form of a one-eyed officer, a Scottish dwarf and a motley assortment of hard-looking rogues. No wonder they would not speak with him. The soldiers had hauled Stryker up by his armpits and dragged him along a dank passageway through the heart of Star Castle, dumping him unceremoniously in another cell, one with manacles hanging by chains from the stone wall, and with only rats for company. There was a window, and, tiny though it was, the pathetic chink of light that streamed through was more welcome to Stryker than a feather bed. He could now tell dawn from dusk, at the very least.

That had been almost two days ago, he reckoned, and nothing had been forthcoming since. Food, water, a fresh piss-pot, all brought by sullen guards who seemed to shy away from him as though he were a fierce dog.

Stryker went to the window. His legs felt weak, almost numb. He knew that Star Castle was built on rising ground a short distance back from the shore, and he could see the bleak, white-foaming grey of the waves through his window, a tiny vista of rock and ocean, framed in cold stone. Thus he realized his cell must be set into the outer wall, a chamber within one of the eight points of the great star for which the fortress had been named. Between the castle and the foreshore the terrain was a plain expanse of green heathland, interspersed by the occasional smudge of grey where rocks broke the surface. And yet as he stared out with a flourishing desperation to feel the grass between his toes, he noticed the dark patches that flanked one particular granite outcrop. At first he had assumed they were scorch marks from fires, perhaps set by members of the garrison on picket duty, but as his eye adjusted to the light, he realized that there was depth in the image. He stared hard, finally coming to understand that the dark smears were, in truth, pits: deep holes had been carved out of the headland on either side of the stones. They were too wide to be graves, but he could not imagine to what other use they might be put.

He was still peering out through the tiny hole when the door opened. He spun around quickly to see a slender man dressed in a suit of dark blue enter the room. He was perhaps an inch or two shorter than Stryker, with a tight-lipped expression that suggested the very notion of stepping on to the grimy rushes was anathema, and he squinted at the prisoner over the wire rim of thick spectacles that made his eyes appear far larger than they were.

Stryker thought the fellow looked more scholar than soldier, and he might have said so but for the trio of grim men who entered the cell in his wake. One face Stryker recognized as the man who had shown him off to the curious group of onlookers some days previously, for his intelligent eyes and copper-toned skin were difficult to forget. But the others were new. They were the kind of ruthless men Stryker had known all his life.

‘You bring your rooks to give me a beating?’ he said, backing nevertheless into the wall behind. ‘I shall show them a beating.’

The dark man did not move, but both his compatriots made to challenge Stryker. All were halted by the fellow in blue. ‘Wait, sirs. This is not the way.’

Stryker still stared at the two rougher figures. ‘Who are they?’

The bespectacled man pulled an expression of distaste. ‘Our guards.’

Stryker studied them. One was short and bearded, so pallid that he seemed almost choleric, with a dense thatch of auburn hair that had been sheared into a wedge above his collar bones. The other man was huge. Bigger still than Skellen, and powerfully built, his head was completely bald and framed by ears that were tiny and strangely thick. His eyes too were small, and so pale that Stryker had initially thought them entirely transparent. He kept his gaze flicking between the two. ‘Why have I been moved?’

The elegant man, clearly an officer, adjusted the clip that kept his spectacles fastened to his nose. ‘I would speak with you privately.’

Stryker finally looked directly at him. ‘Who are you?’

The man offered a twitch of a bow. ‘I am Captain William Balthazar.’

‘You command here?’

‘While Sir Thomas is away, aye.’