Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (22 page)

Balthazar bobbed his knees in something like a curtsy, immediately regretting the gesture. ‘I’m sure he is an obedient companion.’

Titus Gibbons laughed loudly, the sound vibrating in Bal­thazar’s ribcage. ‘That he is, Captain Balthazar! And well put! This other fearsome beast,’ he said, stroking the bristles of the smaller mongrel, ‘is Sir Walter. He is not an obedient companion, I do not mind telling you, but I would never be without him.’

Balthazar forced another smile. ‘You are welcome as ever, Captain Gibbons, naturally,’ he lied cheerfully. For all his affected style and grace, Gibbons was an uncivilized wretch as far as William Balthazar was concerned. Much, he reflected, like Roger Tainton and his motley gaggle of bullies. But as Scilly’s senior officer and de facto governor, Balthazar was hamstrung by the war. He must make every concession to these ruthless men, for they fought under the colours of King Charles, and that made them his allies, whether he liked it or not. He realized he was fiddling furiously with the pearl earring at his left lobe, and he snapped his arm down, stuffing it behind his back.

Titus Gibbons beamed, at once charming and terrifying. ‘Always a pleasure, Captain Balthazar. My crew will stay aboard the
Stag
for the most part, so there’ll be no trouble in town.’

‘I would appreciate that.’

‘But I’ll be grateful if you might allow them ashore in small numbers. They have been at sea a long time. They require a moment of . . .
comfort
. . . if you understand my meaning.’

Balthazar knew exactly what the privateer meant, and the notion repulsed him. ‘In twos and threes.’

‘Twos and threes?’ Gibbons echoed. ‘One per man will do well enough, sir! Well, perhaps a brace for me, eh?’ he added with a wink.

‘The men,’ Balthazar snapped, irritation beginning to puncture his calm exterior, ‘are permitted into Hugh Town in their twos and threes.’

‘Understood,’ Gibbons said, holding up placating hands. ‘Clear as the chime at dog-watch.’

Balthazar tugged at the sharp end of his waxed beard. ‘You’ll stay at the castle?’

‘An honour, Captain. Have you heard from Godolphin or Bassett?’

Balthazar moved aside to show the privateer along the walkway. ‘Not in weeks. They fight on the mainland with Hopton, as far as I’m aware.’

Gibbons walked at Balthazar’s side, the dogs winding in and out of their legs, padding softly on the damp timbers. ‘They made him a baron, did you hear?’

‘I did not. News takes its time to reach us here, truth to tell.’

‘He is Lord Hopton of Stratton now.’

Balthazar glanced up at the tall sailor. ‘He is recovered, then? We heard tell he was wounded in battle.’

‘So they say. Burned badly, but mended in the main.’

‘And what of the sea?’ Balthazar asked. ‘The Parliament ships harry you?’

Gibbons nodded. ‘They rule the waves, except in the south-west. We may put in at Bristol and the Welsh ports, and here, of course. East of Plymouth becomes a tad more challenging, I’ll confess.’ He blew out his cheeks. ‘In truth, we are outshipped, outgunned and outmanned. Those vessels remaining loyal to the Crown may only inconvenience the enemy. The war must be won on land.’

‘Pray God our forces prevail, for all our sakes.’

‘Indeed,’ Gibbons said. He looked over at the castle, adjusting his hat to shield his gaze from the rising sun. ‘Ah, my old friend. The ugliest star I ever saw, and yet the most welcome to mine eyes.’

‘The hearths are ablaze, Captain Gibbons. Come and take your ease.’

Southampton, Hampshire, 12 October 1643

The breath of the guards wreathed their shouldered muskets as though the pieces had been recently discharged. The ground was solid and uneven underfoot, mud churned by boots and frozen by a bitter night. The new sun had brought with it a touch of warmth to thaw feet and hands, melt the veil of frost that whitened the iron hinges and bolts of the cell doors, but still the surface of the well was glazed and the roof tiles glistened. The courtyard’s braziers raged red and orange, belching out heat for the guards to enjoy, yet none dared draw close to the iron cages. None had the nerve to snatch comfort in this grey dawn, for shame required penance.

Richard Norton, Parliamentarian colonel of horse and newly made Governor of Southampton, felt the skin at his cheeks and neck burn and knew it was as much borne of fury as of the cold air. ‘Speak, man, and be quick about it.’

‘F—forgive me, Governor—’ the sentry intoned through a roiling vapour cloud.

‘I do not want apologies, Corporal,’ Norton snapped, ‘I want answers!’

‘Sir, may I—’ another man began tentatively.

Norton rounded on him. ‘No, Captain Miller, you may not. You may command this pigsty of a prison, but you were not present when our piglets were let loose, were you?’

The captain, a fastidious little man with immaculate uniform and permanently pursed mouth, shook his head, his gloved hands worrying at the brim of his hat. ‘I was not, sir.’

Norton shifted his attention back to the sentry. ‘Well?’

The musketeer who had commanded the pre-dawn watch stared apple-eyed around the abandoned slaughter-yard as though the answer might come to him from one of the decrepit sheds that had been crammed full of enemy prisoners. When his gaze fell upon the only one of the low, rectangular buildings that was open, he took a deep, lingering breath. ‘They fooled us.’

The empty unit was behind Norton, and he turned to stare at it. ‘That much is obvious.’ He looked back at the corporal. ‘How did this humiliation transpire, pray?’

‘They—that is to say—we—’

‘Spit it out, man, or you will find yourself the next guest of this establishment.’

As ever, Wagner Kovac was at Norton’s side. ‘You want me make him talk?’

‘His face was covered in muck, sir,’ the corporal blurted, transfixed on the huge man with the bushy beard, ice-blue eyes and strange accent.

‘Muck?’

The corporal nodded vigorously, deciding speed of confession would stave off the governor’s Teutonic henchman. ‘Bird—
doings
. And whatever else they could mix with it.’

‘And he put this on his face?’

‘Aye, sir. Smeared all over. Like a diseased man. A leper, like, or some terrible pox. They cried plague.’

‘Then you should have put an extra lock on the door, Corporal, not opened it.’

‘I realize that now, sir. I thought to take a look, is all. See if they was lying.’

Norton gritted his teeth. ‘Well you certainly found out.’ He scanned the courtyard. ‘We have a score of escaped malignants.’

‘Aye, sir,’ the corporal said sheepishly. ‘I am sorry, sir.’ He straightened suddenly, setting his jaw and casting his eyes towards the gathered musketeers who looked on in contrite silence. ‘I’ll find ’em, ’pon my word. Me and the lads, we’ll—’

‘No, Corporal,’ Norton cut him off with a dismissive wave. ‘You’ve done enough, I think.’ Footsteps crunched behind. He twisted to see a party of men advance from the direction of the brick house that served as the captain’s quarters.

‘Norton!’ the man at the forefront of the group called. ‘Norton! Why was I not summoned?’

Norton smiled wolfishly. ‘Sergeant-Major Murford. How nice it is to see you this crisp morn. Though I must insist that you employ my correct title when addressing me.’

Murford halted a few paces from Norton. ‘Governor,’ he rasped through gritted teeth. ‘Why was I not summoned? These are my men.’

‘Not a claim I would be quick to make, if I were you,’ Norton replied. ‘You were not summoned because you were not required. But be assured, Sergeant-Major, that, in time, I shall see these pathetic minions of yours fill a pike block on some God-forsaken field. They might learn their trade properly, or die in the trying. For now, they may keep the remainder of our charges secure. My men will see our fugitives rounded up. Captain Kovac?’

The Croat stepped forwards, deliberately moving between old governor and new. ‘Governor Norton, sir.’

‘We have twenty missing Cavaliers. Take your troop and hunt them down.’

Kovac dipped his head solemnly. ‘A pleasure, sir.’

‘It will not be too taxing, for they are all on foot.’

‘Sir, I—’ the corporal blurted, his bottom lip trembling now.

All eyes went to him. ‘What is it?’ Norton asked, sensing trouble.

The corporal’s head looked as if it might shrink into his shoulders as he spoke. ‘They’re not all on foot.’

Windsor, Berkshire, 12 October 1643

Sir William Waller was high up on the great castle’s eastern rampart, body tensed against the icy wind. His elbows were planted firmly on the crenellated stone, perspective glass pressed against one eye, the other eye clamped shut. He trained the instrument on the convoy that had trundled into town. It seemed to have no end, stretching back along the road that coiled about the high walls, wagon after wagon piled with provisions, eventually vanishing as the muddy thoroughfare curved through Windsor’s gates and out into the countryside. The long train slithered like a great serpent into the dense woodland that smothered the land between here and Staines. It had rained during the night, enough to make the ground – churned by shoe and hoof and wheel – into a sticky morass that clung to feet and sucked at each vehicle. The going, therefore, was infuriatingly poor, drivers forced to leap out of their wagons to beat and berate their lowing oxen. Every few yards there was another blockage, another cart tipped to the side, two wheels sliding in the grime, their opposites hoisted impotently in the air.

Waller moved the glass from one vehicle to the next. Between the struggling wagons and their plaintive beasts of burden were the soldiers. They were arrayed in marching order, fixed in dense units so that it was difficult for them to negotiate the trees that hugged close to the road’s flanks. They were stuck, therefore, behind and between the vehicles that carried the provisions destined for their bellies and the ammunition bound for their muskets. Officers raged, sergeants bawled and the men stood in their files, sung songs, chattered and complained. Some pissed at the roadside, their urine mixing with the dung of the animals to make the mud all the more viscous and vile. The officers had long since abandoned their efforts to prevent them from adding to the mess, for too much time had passed to order a man to cross his legs.

‘If the Cavaliers were to attack now,’ Waller muttered, ‘all would be lost, by God. They could smash and loot our carts with impunity.’

‘You have a whole army here, General,’ an aide, one of three men standing just to Waller’s rear, responded smartly.

Waller trained the glass on the town. Its thatches spread out from the foot of the royal fortress like mushrooms at the base of an ancient elm. ‘Really?’

The aide moved to the rampart and looked down. ‘Perhaps we should send some dragooners out to hurry them along.’

The town was a mass of roads and alleys separating cottages from shops, and warehouses from civic buildings. From where he stood, it looked to Waller like a vast nest. But what was most striking was the sheer number of people. His new army was here, spread out in taverns and homes, within the town and without, all the way across the smaller hamlets and into Staines-upon-Thames to the south, and Slough to the north. Waller had begun raising the force a month earlier in the wake of his devastating defeat at Roundway Down, rebuilding from the nucleus of his Western Association that had been so completely obliterated on those bloody slopes. Yet just as the new army had looked promising, momentum had stalled. His commission had been retracted after a long-running dispute with the Lord General, the Earl of Essex, and only now, after being forced to grovel in the glow of Essex’s new-found glory, had Waller been returned to some level of authority. Essex was the leading light after his heroics at Gloucester and Newbury, but Waller was finally in possession of the commission he needed to complete his own force.

The general nodded. ‘There is a good portion of an army down there, I grant you. But which of them is ready to march, let alone fight? It is only a month since we moved them here, and yet they act as though their war is done. Chasing the local girls and wallowing in the taphouses and stews. If our convoy were attacked, they’d not drag their britches up in time, let alone find their muskets. Get some dragoons out on the road, as you suggest. Let us have our supplies inside the castle before any brave Cavalier thinks to snaffle them.’

‘Aye, sir,’ the aide replied, taking his leave.

Sir William Waller lowered the glass, stood back from the wall and stretched, covering his mouth as he yawned. ‘We shall have a commendable force when we are done, Colonel Vandruske.’

One of Waller’s remaining two companions was a tall man with fair hair cropped close to the scalp, a large scar running jaggedly across his left cheek, and dark blue eyes. He wore civilian, if expensively cut, clothes beneath a breastplate, and a huge broadsword hung at his waist. ‘I do not know about that, General.’

Waller was short and portly, with an oval face, light brown hair and a long, hooked nose above an auburn moustache. He raised a hand to tug at the strands of his beard, which was trimmed into a triangular wedge at the point of his chin. ‘Speak plain, Jonas.’