Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (14 page)

Norton turned back to look at the delegation. His regiment had been in Southampton for just two days, and he had busied himself with arranging supplies, writing notes to Westminster and plotting his designs upon the rest of the county. Yet mutterings had reached his ears of disgruntled citizens unhappy with Murford’s rough tactics. He had dismissed them, but perhaps, he reflected as the noise reached a deafening crescendo, the resentment was a more deep-rooted problem than he had assumed. He planted his hands on his hips. ‘Well?’

The alderman set his jaw. ‘Murford’s excesses destroy this fine place as sure as any of the Cavaliers who might threaten us. He taxes us to the hilt to fund his revelry.’

‘Revelry?’

‘A banquet, for his own pleasure! He took the coin from our purses with menaces. Threats of plunder and violence.’

Another city elder came forwards, moving to his colleague’s side now that the die had been cast. ‘The villain pulled down the picture of Queen Bess from above Bar Gate!’ he decried with shaking fists. ‘He claimed this tribulation was Her Maj­esty’s own fault. For if her reformation had been prosecuted with true faith and vigour, our current strife would be avoided.’ The veins were visible on the man’s temples as he spoke. ‘I may be a Parliament man, sir, but I would never speak ill of so venerable a sovereign. No, Colonel, the scoundrel is rotten to his core.’

It was the coldest morning of the autumn so far, and the biting air made the skin itch about Norton’s cheeks and neck. It was all he could do not to fling away his gloves and tear at himself with fingernails. ‘And what would you have me do?’

‘Do, Colonel Norton?’ a new voice bellowed from atop the gate. ‘You’ll do nothing if you wish to remain within my walls.’

Norton looked up to see a short, heavy-jowled man. ‘Governor Murford, I was merely—’

‘Your men have spread out like the French Welcome,’ Peter Murford interrupted, ‘in homes and shops and taverns. There are horses stabled in our churches.’

‘And I thank you for it,’ Norton replied.

Murford’s fleshy cheeks trembled as he cleared his throat noisily. ‘You thank me by inciting revolt amongst my people?’

‘I do no such thing, sir!’ Norton retorted. ‘I came to speak with the aldermen, to take their words and messages back to London.
Your
people descended upon me like the locusts of Exodus.’

‘
Pah
!’ Murford exclaimed, waving a chubby fist in the air. ‘They are perfectly contented, sir.’

Norton gritted his teeth. ‘They seem perfectly discontented, sir.’

Murford’s little eyes raked across the angry faces ranged before them. ‘I do not believe such slander.’

‘Look for yourself, sir,’ Norton replied mercilessly. He cupped a hand to his ear. ‘Listen. A tide appears to rise against you, does it not?’

Murford had turned deathly pale and looked as though he might vomit over the Bar Gate’s rampart. ‘You are a rogue and a blackguard, sir. Your presence ignites the flames of dissent.’ He uncurled a fist, extending his forefinger to point accusingly at the red-haired colonel of horse. ‘No longer are your disreputable men welcome in this city, Norton. No longer, I say! I want you gone. The whole regiment. Out of here this very moment!’

It was then that Richard Norton had an epiphany. Hampshire was a lawless place. Godly towns like Southampton and Poole were counterbalanced by malignant hives like Winchester or Basing. The countryside in between was a dangerous frontier infested by brigands and deserters, patrolled only by smaller units such as his own, fighting petty wars for every crossroad, bridge and ford, every village, every road, hillock and copse. It pained Norton because he was a Hampshire man. His estates were at Southwick, his kin spread from the coast to the Downs, and he had long yearned to bring it under Parliament’s heel, for the good of the people. But how? He was free of Essex’s field army for the time being, able to impose his veteran horsemen upon the land, and yet he could never hope to build something permanent without a real base. A bridgehead from which to launch his private campaigns. But here, now, the opportunity had presented itself; it was as a lightning bolt to his mind, delivered by the hand of God Himself. He showed Murford his back, pacing the few yards to where his horse waited in the midst of the twitchy cavalry cordon. With the governor’s incensed oaths ringing in his ears, he took the reins from a gentleman trooper and clambered up into the saddle, wheeling the beast about to face the mob.

‘Would you have me go, good people?’ Norton bellowed. As he expected, the crowd screamed their opposition. He wrenched on the reins again, this time coaxing the horse from the protect­ive line and back to the foot of the stone stairs. The aldermen scattered like starlings in the face of a cat, and Norton stared up at Murford, still standing upon the rampart. ‘They do not feel safe without me, it seems. Though is it the Cavaliers they fear, or their own governor?’

‘How dare you, sir—’ Murford blustered. ‘How dare you!
Men
!’ He looked left and right, seeking the assistance of his garrison. Half a dozen musketeers had come down from the Bar Gate and, though they responded smartly enough to the cry, the presence of so many of Norton’s cavalrymen kept their pieces firmly shouldered.

‘Sensible fellows,’ Norton observed.

Murford’s jowls shook violently. ‘To it, men!’ he persisted, pointing at Norton. ‘Take him!’

‘Try,’ another voice rose above the clamouring crowd. Norton looked to his right to see Wagner Kovac’s white-bearded face. The Croat’s icy gaze was locked upon the governor’s nervous men. ‘For love of God, try, I beg you.’

Norton grinned. ‘Captain Kovac yearns for a scuffle, as you can see. It has been a great many days since he killed a man.’ The musketeers seemed to baulk at the threat, some freezing where they stood, a couple edging back up the steps.

Murford raged on, crimson-faced. The elderly alderman took to the bottom step, positioning himself between Norton and Murford, his milk-white palms raised in supplication. ‘Colonel Norton. We would have you as our governor.’

‘By what right?’ Murford spluttered, thrusting his lank hair to the side of his forehead.

The alderman threw him a look of pity. ‘He is the power here, Murford. We need his strength.’

‘This—this is—Insurrection!’

‘He is the only man able to guarantee our safety,’ the alderman replied. He turned to Norton. ‘Will you answer our plea, sir?’

Richard Norton had forgotten the dreadful itch that so often made his life a misery. Instead his heart swelled and his mind soared. He thanked God, and offered a solemn nod. ‘I will.’

St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly, 7 October 1643

‘You are a mulatto?’ Stryker murmured, trying to think of something to divert his interrogators from their infernal questions. He lay on his side. The air carried the tang of vomit, though he had become almost inured to it now. It astonished him how much damage mere seawater could do. Fassett had intimated that his hirelings had urinated – or worse – in the brackish, filthy concoction, which might have exacerbated the effect, but ultimately it was the salt that burned his innards and turned his guts to a mess of twisted anguish.

Sterne Fassett had brought a low stool into the room this time, and he perched on its edge, cradling the jug in his lap. ‘The man who stuck his pizzle in my bitch of a mother was a blackamoor. A sailor. I knew him not. And I hated her.’ His face split in amusement. ‘Perhaps that is why I am such a bastard.’

Stryker did not know how long it had been. He thought he had counted two days and nights, but he was too confused, too weakened, too agonized to know for sure.

Sterne Fassett had returned as promised. His obedient creatures, Squires and Cordell, had pinned Stryker again, though with increasing ease, and more of the foul liquid had been sent into Stryker’s stomach, searing him, purging him. More questions had come. He had railed at them in return, threatened their lives, to which the echoes of laughter had broken through his spasms like distant thunder. And then nothing. They had gone once more, leaving him crumpled and retching, passing hours with only the sound of his gargling chest and the crashing ocean for company. It was only now, after so many lonely hours, that they had paid him this most recent visit, and he had wanted to weep as the lock had clunked in the door.

He was as weak and brittle as dry leaves, unable to eat the food that was offered, and never able to quench his torturous thirst with the paltry amount of fresh water they had allowed. He knew the pattern, of course. They did not want him dead, not quickly, and seawater would kill a man in days if he did not dilute it with the fresh equivalent. So they offered him tiny amounts, enough to keep his body from shutting down al­together, yet never enough to slake the gnawing need that would slowly drive him mad. They were dragging the torment along, spinning it out like a mile-long thread, weakening their prisoner, crushing his spirit, until he would say anything to cut that thread and make the horror end. But he would not speak. They already knew why he had sailed to Scilly, but they did not know to which island he had been bound, and that thought sustained him in the cold and dark of his cell.

He tilted his head up to look at Fassett. ‘What happened to your nose?’

‘Whore-runner in St Giles.’

‘You refused to pay?’

‘
Ha
!’ Fassett barked. He shook his head. ‘I never pay. I was working a job for one of the fat bugger’s rivals. Visited him to . . .
suggest
. . . he move his operation elsewhere. In truth my employer fancied the look of some of the blubber-belly’s Winchester Geese.’ He licked his lips slowly. ‘Some juicier cunnies you’d be hard pressed to find, I’ll give him that.’

‘The fellow took exception?’ Stryker mumbled.

‘Of course!’ Fassett flicked the stubby nose, severed so unnaturally flat half-way down its length. ‘Came at me with a bleedin’ cleaver.’

‘And he now lies at the bottom of the Thames . . .’

Fassett fiddled with one of his few remaining teeth. ‘Along with a great many more.’ He slid off the stool so suddenly that Stryker flinched, causing him to smile. ‘Worry not, Captain. I do not intend to share my special claret with you today.’

A shiver of hope ran up Stryker’s spine. It was only when he looked up at the grinning Fassett that he knew the truth, and his pathetic gullibility made him sicker than any amount of the foul potion. ‘You damned liar.’

He screwed shut his eyes, twisting away with all his might as the dark shapes of Squires and Cordell advanced upon him.

CHAPTER 7

Basing House, Hampshire, 9 October 1643

‘I understand your reticence, Captain. The territory is dangerous.’

Sir John Paulet, Fifth Marquess of Winchester, paced slowly through the bustling agricultural enclosure known as the Grange.

Captain Lancelot Forrester kept pace at Paulet’s side. ‘It has nothing to do with danger, my lord, I assure you. I was sent here to deliver my message to you, and that is what I did.’ He stared at a large bird of prey as it wheeled silently above the distant trees. ‘But you have kept me here, my lord.’

Paulet slowed down, lacing his fingers behind his back. ‘You make it sound as though you are my prisoner, Captain Forrester.’

‘I am certain that was not his intention,’ Colonel Marmaduke Rawdon said. He walked on Paulet’s other flank, leaning back slightly to shoot Forrester a caustic look as he spoke.

Forrester cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘Not at all, not at all. Indeed, I have been happy to assist in the blooding of Colonel Rawdon’s troops, my lord, for I believe our mutual masters at Oxford would have me employed in such worthwhile service while the army remains inactive.’

Paulet seemed happy with that, his pace increasing again. ‘Then what is your new concern, sir?’

‘May I?’ Rawdon cut in, perhaps reading Forrester’s apprehension. ‘Captain Forrester is too respectful to say, my lord, but he is a soldier. The command of a sortie against the enemy is his meat and drink. What you now propose is something more clandestine. He is not comfortable with such a plan.’

Paulet’s brow climbed up his thin head as he turned to the captain. ‘What say you, sir?’

‘I am a soldier, my lord,’ Forrester said, having to bite his tongue to bring some moisture into his mouth, ‘not a spy.’

Paulet stopped. They were beside the Great Barn, the vast brick storehouse that would soon be crammed to its soaring rafters ready for winter. ‘My house is full of soldiers, Captain Forrester. Men ready to fight for their king. But the soldiers are green as cabbage, the commanders are elderly, and the rest are peaceful fellows. Poets, artists and the like. Driven here by men of the new religion. A religion that covets brutality and strength over beauty and contemplation.’ He began to walk again, either missing Rawdon’s reddening complexion or choosing to ignore it. ‘Tell me, Captain. Which of those would you send with my warrant?’

Paulet had backed him into a corner and, when all was said and done, Forrester had no recourse but to agree. Paulet, after all, had a point. He was the best man to perform the task, however much he disliked the notion. ‘I will go with a happy heart, my lord.’

Paulet beamed. ‘And you will have my eternal thanks.’ He snapped his fingers, summoning a servant, who sprang from beyond the soldiers to produce a folded rectangle of pale parchment. Paulet handed it to Forrester. ‘Take this warrant to our agents in the county. It must be proclaimed wherever possible. Alton tonight, Petersfield the morrow, and as far south as Rowlands Castle. It beseeches all right-minded subjects of our faithful sovereign to dig deep in their coffers. We must raise money for the defence of the realm and the destruction of our great enemy.’