Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (43 page)

‘His ranks swelling like stinking buboes,’ Vandruske piped at his back.

‘Charming, Jonas,’ Heselrige admonished, though without vehemence.

‘They cannot be allowed to spread,’ the Dutch colonel went on unabashed. ‘We must lance them to draw out the poison.’

Waller nodded. ‘He is in the right of it, of course, despite his unsavoury choice of words.’ He fixed Kovac with a level expression. ‘Much as I would like to strike at Basing, and as much support as we would doubtless enjoy in the Commons, it simply cannot be justified at this time.’

‘At this time, sir?’

Waller spread his palms. ‘It must be taken sooner or later, I grant you that much.’ Inwardly he was imagining the riches they might discover somewhere in the palatial mansion’s vaults, picturing the delivery of the Cade fortune to Parliament in a blazing triumph that would see his star rise higher than that of the supercilious prig, Essex. ‘But Baron Hopton is the greater danger. He simply must be the focus of this army, until such time as the situation has changed.’ He raised a hand to stem Kovac’s intake of breath. ‘You have my gratitude for the information, Major, and I will see that it is relayed to our mutual masters at Whitehall, but Basing is not where I will presently march. This army goes to Winchester.’

Basing House, Hampshire, 1 November 1643

Roger Tainton was not enjoying his new-found role as assistant farrier. It was not the hard work, nor the filth, the lack of pay or the paltry victuals. What he hated was the bowing and the scraping, the doffing of his itchy woollen cap to all and sundry, the way even the grooms sneered as he skulked past. He knew they would be watching him, judging his wounds as well as his skill; knew that no amount of headwear could conceal his face. In his heart he was still a Tainton, eldest son of the powerful Sir Edmund. His blood entitled him to sit at the highest table, in times of peace a guest of the likes of Sir John Paulet, not one of society’s maggots. But war had made him Paulet’s enemy, faith had compelled him to sacrifice his standing, and this most difficult mission had demanded his slide into the gutter. On the surface he assumed the persona of the commoner, Tom Chivers, but underneath he was a raging sea.

‘Hither, old cock!’ a voice yapped from the far end of the stable. ‘Tack this’n up well.’

Perkin Yates was not a hard taskmaster but he demanded a good job done, and Tainton was glad of his time in the cavalry. He had had grooms most of his life, of course, and ostlers had taken care of the horses at any inn his troop had passed through, but on campaign, riding out into hostile country and sleeping under the stars, the commanding officer had shared the privations of the men and been left to fend for himself and his mount come sunshine or storm.

Perkin Yates greeted him with a slanted grin. ‘Done well, Tom.’ He slapped the bay mare to which he had tended, indicating for Tainton to take the halter. ‘Well indeed.’

‘Pappy was a groom, Perks,’ Tainton said, deliberately roughing the edges of his syllables. ‘I listened well.’

‘Indeed an’ you did,’ the Yorkshireman chimed. ‘You’ll be happy here, I’ve no doubt. Now I’m to have a clinch wi’ the finest love ever I did have.’ He patted his breast with a mischiev­ous wink. ‘Sotweed from paradise.’

Tainton nodded. He had forsaken the drinking of smoke since his enlightenment, but he could not help the tingling in his mouth at the memory of fine Chesapeake Bay leaf. ‘Take your ease.’ He surveyed the empty stable. ‘I’m well on my lonesome.’

‘Just so, Tom,’ Yates replied, performing a smart about-turn.

‘Oh, and Perks?’ Tainton said.

‘Aye, Tom?’

‘I’ve to put some tack in one of the sheds along the way, but I believe the place to be locked. Perchance you’d have the key?’

Yates jammed his clay pipe between his lips. ‘Half the bastard keys in this place go a walkin’, never to return.’ His eyes darted up to a shelf behind Tainton. ‘Up there you’ll find the skeleton key. Turns every stabling door in the New House, and a few in the Old House, I’d wager.’

Tainton reached up and took the key down with a handful of dust and cobweb. ‘Thank’ee indeed. I’ll finish up.’ He waited until Yates had vanished through the doorway that led out into the cobbled courtyard, and then quickly completed his work with the horse. When it was tacked and tied by the halter to a stout rail, a trough of food within easy reach, he made his way out of the side door that connected the room to another stable. It was his eighth day in Basing, the seventh of active searching, and he was beginning to struggle to keep his frustration in check. He had always known the gold would be locked away somewhere in the bowels of the fortress, but there would be people who knew its whereabouts. Stryker and his woman were two such targets; some of the one-eyed fiend’s adherents would doubtless hold the information too. And yet there were simply too many people crammed into the sprawling site. Men, women and children, horsemen and infantry, gunners and their mattrosses, labourers, engineers, physicians, artists, priests, displaced aristocrats and their retainers. In the crowds, Tainton had found that he could move without fear of being accosted by someone who would recognize him, but he had not been able to track those same people down, especially given the poor state of his eyesight. All he could do was keep searching and pray that Kovac would be able to convince Sir William Waller to bring his army to Basing House before Stryker made his next move.

The stables were set into the north wing of the New House, and Tainton weaved his way through the adjacent block, past the trough beneath which he had stuffed his expensive boots and cloak, picking between barrows, pitchforks and busy broom-wielding stablehands. Soon he was into the next block, and this, like the first, was empty, so he made for the main doors that opened on to the courtyard and plunged into the flock of people that thronged between the various buildings. He would, as he did every day, make his way from New House to Old House making sure to keep his head covered and his eyes awake to faces he might know. He had about half an hour before Yates would wonder where he was.

Stryker pressed his fingers into the bruises at his ribs. His strength had almost entirely returned in the days since he started indulging in the robust diet available to Basing’s inhabitants, but his face and chest had been badly battered, and he suspected he would feel tender for days to come. He was waiting for a pair of halberdiers to unlock the broad double doors at the foot of the stone slope that plunged steeply into the foundations of the Great Gatehouse. Behind him the Old House sang with the sounds of the day, and he closed his eye, revelling in it.

‘She fares well, Stryker.’ Colonel Marmaduke Rawdon’s stentorian growl crashed like a thunderclap as he strode out from below the stone archway. ‘Though she declines to leave her chamber.’

Stryker nodded his thanks. Lisette’s association with the queen had seen her granted quarters within the most comfortable part of the estate, and she had promptly vanished from Stryker’s company. For his part, he had kept with the remnants of his whittled party. But as the days wore on, Lisette’s absence ached more keenly. He understood her feelings, but that had not stopped him asking Rawdon to look in on her from time to time in return for his advice on certain aspects of the burgeoning earthworks. Thus, he had found himself casting his eye over gun emplacements and powder magazines, new bastions blooming like grim petals from the loose-soiled palisades, and even the positions of picket teams, sent into the outlying countryside.

‘I am glad she is safe,’ he said, following the colonel down the slope. ‘I would leave this place, sir. Take—’ he glanced warily at the guards ‘—the wagon—back to Oxford.’

Rawdon went through the wide doorway and plunged into darkness. ‘You are free to go as soon as your escort arrives.’

‘You’ve heard nothing?’ Stryker said as he stepped into the gloom.

‘Nothing,’ Rawdon’s disembodied voice rumbled back. ‘The messenger went out, that is all I can tell you.’

‘Direct to Oxford?’

‘Direct, of course,’ was the snapped reply, Rawdon’s perpetually level-headed demeanour fraying a touch. ‘Time will resolve.’

‘I trust so, sir.’

They were at the rear of a dank chamber that had been excavated from the chalk. Once a storehouse attached to the old stables, it was now hardly more than a bare cave, its unadorned walls moist and floor rough underfoot. There was no illumin­ation, and they were forced to leave the doors wide open to allow the day’s watery light to seep in. Stryker’s eye gradually grew accustomed to the dense murk, and he saw Rawdon glide to a black lump at the very back of the room.

‘Waller is at Farnham,’ Rawdon said, standing beside the object that looked to Stryker like a huge pile of raw coal.

‘So the rumours have it, sir.’

Rawdon began fiddling at the undulating surface of the pile. He walked steadily backwards, peeling it away as if some magic tore the very shadow off the wall. Stryker saw that it was a large, black sheet. Beneath it, twinkling in the feeble light with every inch revealed, was the treasure of Sir Alfred Cade, piled high in its wagon. The colonel dropped the sheet and plucked one of the trinkets from its place amid the salvers and chests. ‘More than rumours, Stryker,’ he said as he turned the solid golden cross in his hands. ‘He is at Farnham.’

The red garnet set into the object’s base winked at Stryker as he spoke. ‘And this new army he is supposed to have?’

Rawdon whistled softly as he gazed at the heavy cross. He placed it carefully back with the rest of the hoard and looked up. ‘With him this very moment.’

‘How many?’

‘Some say five thousand, others as many as eight. Pray God he does not think Basing a large enough fish for his supper.’

‘Or pray,’ Stryker said, ‘Hopton advances beyond Winchester to take him by the collar.’

Rawdon grasped the sheet and dragged it back across the wagon to snuff out the glimmering gold. ‘There, Captain, your bounty is safe, as promised. Kept in the wagon, ready to move as soon as your escort allows.’

Stryker nodded his thanks. ‘I am grateful, sir. And the guards will remain?’

‘They will remain,’ Rawdon confirmed. ‘They know not what they protect, naturally.’ He followed Stryker out into the daylight, walking up the broad slope after the pair had overseen the locking of the double doors. ‘Have you seen the German fellow again?’

‘Kovac?’ Stryker shook his head.

‘Perhaps they were simply scouting.’

‘Perhaps.’ Stryker paused as a man pulled a precariously wobbling dog cart past, its load of earthen clods rising far too high than sense would allow. ‘Captain Forrester is convinced he seeks revenge. He is one of Colonel Norton’s officers, out of Southampton. Unlikely to scout this far, would you not think?’

Rawdon spread his palms. ‘Not something of which I am expert, I confess. But what is the fellow thinking? That he can ride direct through our gates and run Forrester through? Seems peculiar, to my mind.’

‘Peculiar indeed, Colonel,’ Stryker agreed. He too had ventured the idea that nothing more sinister than coincidence was at work, but Forrester had been uncharacteristically adamant. Yet Kovac could not have hoped to scale Basing’s walls with two troops of light cavalry, which begged the question: what did his arrival presage? Stryker knew its portent could not be good.

Roger Tainton was in the Old House. He moved, as was now something of a routine, around the circumference of the Norman ring-work, skirting servants’ quarters and a bakery, a row of storehouses and the infirmary. He reached the northern section of the complex, keeping to the shadows. A group of small boys skittered past like sparrows, the leader screaming with delight as he kicked a heavy ball through the crowds. Tainton reached out swiftly and cuffed one of the urchins, sending him reeling. His younger brother had been killed at one such game on Shrovetide when they were striplings. Stabbed in the guts while defending the goal. It had been a legitimate, if unfortunate, action by his opponent, and the training master had allowed the matter to drop without charge, but Tainton had ever loathed the game. He watched sourly as the grubby whelp wheeled away, flinging him a malicious gesture and a fountain of filthy oaths. The lad’s friends laughed, the ball bounced off a cart and round to the rear of sheep pen, and the group vanished.

When he looked up he feared his heart might stop, and he was forced to stoop a little for air. He gritted his teeth, steeled himself, swallowing hard and praying harder. For there, coming from the direction of the Great Gatehouse, striding like a pair of cocks on a dung heap, were two men. One was old, slate-grey and garbed in a slashed doublet and wide, feathered hat. The other was lean beneath a coat of mossy green, his hair long and black, face clean-shaven and hard as a granite cliff-edge. He had one eye that was bright like quicksilver, the other gone, its socket buried deep beneath the tentacles of a terrible scar.

If conspicuousness was of no concern, then Roger Tainton might have dropped to his knees in worship there and then. As it was, he took a step back, held his breath till his lungs burned, and stared so hard his eyes began to ache. Because, by the grace of God, he had found what he was looking for.

Farnham, Surrey, 1 November 1643

If there was one thing that Wagner Kovac had learned in his years of martial service, it was that guile, mixed in the right proportions with tenacity, was a powerful brew. Inwardly fuming, he had nonetheless bowed to the general, expressed his gratitude at having been blessed with the brief audience, and thanked Waller for the grace to even consider his plea. But when he had been dismissed, his mind had gone to work. Convince Waller, Tainton had said. Make him fall upon Basing with the full might of his fresh brigades. Wagner Kovac wanted the gold; how could a man deny such a windfall? But that was not his driving reason for reducing Basing House. Above all, Kovac wanted Captain Lancelot Forrester, trussed and pleading for his life, tied to the back of his horse and dragged all the way to Southampton, where vengeance would come together with the rehabilitation of Kovac’s own reputation.