Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (42 page)

It was only when Forrester muttered a soft curse that he looked round at his friend. ‘What is it? What do you see?’

Lancelot Forrester swore again. He kept the glass up, as though it had been nailed to his eye, his mouth flapping like a gasping fish in the hold of a boat. ‘I know that colour. It is Kovac.’ Now he lowered the glass. He looked at Stryker. ‘It is Wagner Kovac.’

‘Norton’s man?’

‘He is not here for Basing,’ Forrester whispered darkly. ‘He is here for me.’

CHAPTER 20

Farnham Park, Surrey, 1 November 1643

Beneath the batteries of Farnham Castle, on the sprawling expanse of green parkland identified as the long-awaited Parliamentarian rendezvous, Sir William Waller, supreme commander of the newest army in Britain, reviewed his troops. It had rained overnight, leaving the ground sodden and the air chilly and vaporous, and he walked before the assembled throng swathed in a long, fur-lined cloak, his wide-brimmed hat tilted slightly over his face. Before him was arrayed a formid­able force, units clustered in dense blocks, their colours bobbing on the breeze.

‘We hear Hopton is at Andover, Sir William,’ Colonel Jonas Vandruske said. The tall Dutchman held his own hat beneath his armpit so that he could sweep a gloved hand through his short fair hair as he talked.

‘They found no resistance in Dorset, then,’ Waller said, pausing to look up at into the colonel’s dark blue eyes. ‘Do they march?’

Vandruske shook his head. ‘Not thus far, sir. They muster around Salisbury and Andover in the main.’ He shrugged. ‘Some are at Winchester, of course.’

Waller resumed his progress. ‘Then we have time. We must strike Sir Ralph before he can coordinate his efforts. Smash through Winchester, drive into his army at Andover, and push him westward until we may force his hand in the field.’

‘You would risk open battle?’

‘After Roundway?’ Waller shot back wryly.

The Dutchman coloured a little, the large scar running horizontally across his cheek appearing paler against the blushing skin. ‘No, sir. That is not what I meant. Not at all. Simply that our army, for all its size, has, at its core, divisions from the Trained Bands.’

‘They’ll fight if I ask them, Jonas,’ Waller replied, though he felt far from sure. Did he really think that they would fight, or was some part of him driven by a desire to exceed the feats of his superior and nemesis, the Earl of Essex? The Lord General had relieved Gloucester and held Newbury with an army of hastily raised apprentices, and Waller would be damned if he could not match the achievement with exploits of his own. He turned his head to the massed ranks to prevent Vandruske reading the concern in his eyes. ‘I mean to wait another day or two. More men and arms come to Farnham, and I would not leave them behind purely for haste.’

Vandruske grunted agreement. ‘And the families of our new city folk are sending a train of provisions, I understand.’

‘We will be well supplied, I am pleased to say,’ Waller muttered, though in truth he was wondering what exactly he would face in the coming days. Rumours filtered from the north that the armies of Essex, Rupert, Byron, Newcastle and the Fairfaxes were again in the field, while in the south Richard Norton’s men were engaging with Lord Crawford’s Cavaliers. And in front of Waller, not thirty miles due west, Baron Hopton’s forces were gathering like a winter storm. The nation was in a state of flux. The uncertainty made his heart race and his chest feel tight.

Waller had led his army out of Windsor two days earlier, the bristling column trundling through the countryside like a vast serpent, its spine made of men and horses and wagons and artillery, baggage carts, women, children and supply wagons. En route they had met up with more detachments from his own regiment, and when his ranks had almost completed their growth, they had streamed south into Farnham town. There was not the space in the castle to house such a multitude, and so the general had named the wide park as the place where they would muster. Now, with a straight back and swelling pride, Waller walked slowly across their front rank. There were redcoats and bluecoats, yellows and whites, the green-coated garrison from Farnham itself, and various gentlemen troopers in their own civilian clothes. The metal of helmets and pikes, muskets and swords, ornate pommels, swirling hilts and spinning spurs glinted in the weak sunlight. Huge squares of taffeta hung from poles above the infantry brigades while smaller cornets flapped to mark out cavalry, each with its own colour and devices: stars, diamonds, circles, fearsome beasts, tracts of Latin, biblical verses. Waller now commanded sixteen troops of horse, eight full companies of dragoons and thirty-six compan­ies of foot. Almost five thousand men in all. In addition, he had ten large fieldpieces, drawn stoically by teams of harnessed working horses, and half a dozen cases of drakes, enclosed wagons of war with guns protruding from their loopholes that were capable of deadly fire in open terrain. And there was a large cache of black powder, though it was kept well away from the main carnival of colours, escorted by bluecoats armed with firelocks, for the handling of lighted match near barrels of powder was sheer suicide. Waller shuddered privately at the thought of an errant spark.

‘Sir?’ Colonel Vandruske prompted.

Waller smiled sadly. ‘I was reflecting upon the safety of our powder train. Baron Hopton fell afoul of an explosion after Lansdown Fight.’

Vandruske’s face creased sourly. ‘A pity it did not put an end to him.’

‘Have a care, sir,’ Waller snapped brusquely. ‘Sir Ralph may oppose me in war, but he remains my dearest friend.’

‘My apologies, Sir William,’ the Dutchman said, not sounding entirely contrite. ‘Thoughtless of me. Yet you must soon engage him.’

Waller walked on steadily, nodding to Colonel Jones, commander of the Farnham greencoats, who stood at the head of his men, their white banner draped from a pole behind him. The thought of fighting Hopton again weighed heavily upon his mind. ‘I must shift for my conscience, and he must shift for his,’ he said eventually. ‘And we will be friends once more, when this lamentable business is done.’

‘Sir William!’ an officer shimmering in blackened armour astride a huge black stallion called down from his perch. He was positioned at the head of a dense block of heavy cavalry.

Waller beckoned to the horseman, stifling the image of jousting knights that his mind had conjured. ‘Sir Arthur! Well met! Fare you well?’

Sir Arthur Heselrige was the forty-two-year-old Baronet of Noseley and the commander of Waller’s Horse. A staunch Pur­itan, firebrand critic of the king, and good friend of Waller, he had led a regiment of cuirassiers since the beginning of the war, seen them distinguish themselves at Lansdown, receive a shattering rout at the disaster on Roundway Down, and now, with the grace of God and despite injuries received on that fateful day, had somehow made the Farnham muster with a reborn force of which he could be proud. He let his mount walk slowly out of the line. ‘Well indeed, Sir William, well indeed.’

‘And the leg?’

Heselrige was a lean, spare man with long auburn hair and a full moustache. He was noted for his irascibility, but now, patting his plate-caged thigh gingerly, he flashed a brilliant smile of small white teeth. ‘Festered. Blood went bad, I’m fearful to report, and it stank some, I don’t mind telling! But it healed, thank King Jesus.’

‘It is providence keeps you breathing, sir.’

Heselrige nodded. ‘Providence and proper armour.’

Waller smiled. ‘It pays to ride to battle in an iron shell.’

‘I was shot thrice at Roundway, Sir William, and all bounced clean away. It was only when the craven malignants cut my horse from beneath me that they caused harm.’

‘And how are your dashing lobsters?’ Waller asked, deliberately employing the term the common soldiery used for the heavy cavalry, so encased were they.

Heselrige grinned again. ‘Pious, brave and eager to follow William the Conqueror.’

Waller touched a finger to his hat. ‘Touché, Sir Arthur.’ He noticed another horseman rein in just behind the leader of his heavy cavalry. The man looked to be an officer, for a volumin­ous orange scarf was tied about his waist, but he only wore the accoutrements of the harquebusier – simple plate on back and breast, thick hide beneath, and a three-barred pot on his head. ‘You appear to have a cuckoo in the nest, Colonel Heselrige.’

Heselrige glanced back briefly. ‘This man sought an audience with you, General, but was denied. He came to find me in your stead. He has a message of some import, sir.’

Waller stared at the horseman, who removed his helmet to reveal a face pulpy from a legacy of pox, and a white beard tainted by yellowish streaks. His eyes were startlingly bright, almost mocking. ‘I see you are not one of mine, sir, for you wear the colour of His Excellency, the Lord General.’

The horseman slid a hand instinctively to his broad scarf. ‘My regiment fought with him at Newbury, sir. Under Sir Philip Stapleton.’

Waller mothered his simmering annoyance, glancing at a nearby aide. ‘Get him another, Andrews. Blue or yellow, I care not which.’ He looked back at the harquebusier. ‘Sir Arthur evidently considered your message worthy of the telling. But first,’ he said as the man urged his horse forwards, ‘who the devil are you?’

‘My name is Wagner Kovac, sir. Major, Colonel Richard Norton’s Horse.’

‘He was a clerk,’ General Sir William Waller said as the four men passed, on foot, by the gently swaying corpse dangling from a gnarled oaken bough. ‘From my own regiment, no less. A good man, so I thought. Regrettable.’

Major Wagner Kovac was at his side, staring at the purple-faced clerk as the rope softly creaked with his weight. ‘What was his offence, General?’

‘Mutiny,’ Waller said. He glanced up at the body of the man he had that morning condemned, a lesson in leadership for the others. ‘The inactivity irks them, the weather enrages them. It was always thus.’

‘We must watch the Trained Bands in that vein, Sir William,’ Colonel Vandruske muttered. ‘They do not relish leaving London.’

‘Mutineers, the lot,’ Sir Arthur Heselrige, heavy-footed in his jangling armour, added sourly. It was at his insistence that they had convened this meeting away from prying eyes and flapping ears.

Kovac grunted. ‘In my country we—’

‘And where exactly,’ Waller interrupted, ‘is your country, Major Kovac?’

‘Croatia, sir.’

Waller raised his brow inquisitively. ‘You sound rather Germanic, sir. I spent some time thereabouts, many years back. Fought for the Venetians first, then served with Vere in the Palatinate.’

‘Father was Carniolan,’ Kovac said. ‘I spent much time there, though Croatia is my heart’s home.’

‘Even so,’ Waller persisted, eager to test this man of whom he knew so little, ‘The common tongue is Slovene, is it not?’

‘The common tongue, sir,
ja
.’ The cavalryman smoothed a fistful of white beard in his gloved palm. ‘The better sort of folk speak German.’

Waller nodded, satisfied, and began a slow stroll along the adjacent tree-line as crows began to circle overhead. ‘And what word were you to bring me, Major? Your commission is with Richard Norton, lately Governor of Southampton, yes? What, therefore, brings you to Farnham?’

‘Basing Castle, sir.’

‘Basing?’ Waller echoed. ‘That den of miscreants has been playing on my mind of late. Why, only a matter of days ago the Marquess of Winchester’s putrid warrant was read before the Commons.’

‘His warrant to raise funds?’ Kovac asked.

‘The same,’ Waller said, surprised. ‘Seized, thank the Lord, before its damage became too great.’

‘Seized, Sir William, by me,’ the big Croat replied smugly. ‘By my troop, down in Petersfield.’

‘Then you are to be commended, Major Kovac, truly. Basing House must be reduced as soon as is opportune.’ Waller found himself reflecting upon the note his own patrols had intercepted some days earlier. One requesting an armed escort to march down from Oxford. The marquess was evidently busy working against the Parliament.

‘It is opportune now, General,’ Kovac said.

Waller shot him a caustic expression, unhappy with the man’s terse temerity. ‘I do not follow.’

‘I have waited at Farnham for you this past week, sir. Waited to tell you of the riches to be found within Basing’s walls.’

‘Sir John Paulet is a wealthy man.’

‘No, sir,’ Kovac replied. ‘I speak of a large hoard. A trove in plate and gem. The personal fortune of the late Sir Alfred Cade.’

Waller stopped in his tracks. Now he knew why those add­itional soldiers were needed. ‘You know this for certain?’

Kovac nodded eagerly. ‘I do, sir. A Parliamentarian agent is within the walls even now, working towards the gold’s liberation.’

Sir William Waller had his orders, and it would take more than the rumour of gold to capture his attention. And yet Paulet’s warrant had indeed been read at Westminster, and they had called for him to be hauled to London in chains, his retainers pressed into the rebel armies and his estates confiscated. It would not, Waller suspected, take a great deal of persuasion to convince them that Basing House should be the real target for his new army. He blasted cold air through his nose. ‘Hopton is on the horizon.’