Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (44 page)

The big Croat was seated on a damp, rotten tree-trunk that had been upended and left to moulder in the scrub fringing Farnham Park. He took a moment to flick specks of mud from his boots and fold the tops down to his knees, then looked up to stare across the park. There were thousands of figures moving in the fire-lit dusk. The new army, rumoured amongst the men to soon be dubbed the South-Eastern Association, had been told to prepare for an advance into the west – first Alresford, then Winchester, and then a move against Hopton’s main force. They had bivouacked in the parkland below the castle, camping in the open around their flickering fires, clustered in groups with their families. Wives and mistresses chattered as they scolded children, cooked pottage or stew, mended or washed clothes. The men recounted stories and bawdy jests, played at dice when the more puritanical officers were not about, or drank smoke from tooth-worn pipes. The rasp of sharpening steel cut through everything, a constant companion to the chirp of voices and the crackle of flames. Kovac’s troop had been evicted from the relative luxury of the castle, their billets given to more valued men such as gunners and engineers, and he had taken them out to the farthest part of the park so that their mounts could be tethered to trees and, more importantly, so that he could meet his contact away from prying eyes.

‘I ride on the morrow, Major Kovac,’ a voice spoke in hushed tones from the trees to his right.

Kovac looked round to see a moon-faced man peering through the branches. His eyes were black slits, his hair covered by a woollen cap that was tugged over his ears, and his torso was wrapped tight against the cold. ‘You understand?’ he said, turning his attention back to the bustling camp. ‘Be certain, Lieutenant Budge, lest you wish your neck stretched like a Christ-tide goose.’

‘I will take my patrol to watch the enemy, sir.’

‘And what will you look for?’

‘Lord Hopton’s army, sir, as per my orders from General Waller,’ Lieutenant Budge replied. ‘His strength and disposition.’

Kovac bent down to the leather bag between his feet. It had not left his side since his departure from Southampton, for, apart from his personal effects, it carried a purse made heavy by Richard Norton. Without looking round, he plucked a solid gold coin from within the pendulous pouch. He looked at the double crown with a smile. The single piece was worth ten shillings, a worthwhile sum for a junior officer of horse. He tossed it cleanly over his shoulder.

‘You will look for Hopton’s army, Lieutenant,’ he said after a moment, giving the purse a gentle shake. ‘But what will you see?’

‘Whatever you wish me to see, sir,’ Budge replied thickly. ‘Say the word, and it shall be seen.’

CHAPTER 21

Basing House, Hampshire, 5 November 1643

Stryker had finished overseeing the emplacement of the last of the guns out on the earthworks when the scouting party, led by Frederick Lawrence to scour the country to the north and east, returned to the fortress. He left the gun captains and their mattrosses – foreigners in the main – scuttling and squabbling about their iron beasts, considering elevations, checking and rechecking touch-holes, and strode quickly back up to the house’s inner sanctum. There he found the dismounted horsemen making report of a vast army that numbered, they estimated, up to two thousand horse and almost double that in foot. Lawrence himself confirmed the rumours just before noon, thundering through Garrison Gate to bring news that he had personally spotted the standard of Sir William Waller bobbing in the van. ‘They marched out of Farnham at dawn. Now mustering around Alresford.’

‘Alresford?’ snapped Sir John Paulet, Marquess of Winchester. He had tried to keep his voice hushed, for the Old House was busy with people, but anxiety seemed to lift the volume unconsciously. ‘Then what think you their destination?’

‘Winchester, I shouldn’t wonder,’ Lawrence answered, his face twitching. ‘He will engage Hopton.’

‘But Hopton has fallen back upon Andover,’ Paulet said dubiously. ‘What is his will here?’

Colonel Marmaduke Rawdon raised a hand to garner the attention of the group. ‘I understand Baron Hopton means to rendezvous with a contingent from Salisbury and Colonel Gerard’s brigade down from Oxford. Only then he will advance westward.’

Paulet drew a lingering breath, letting it trickle slowly through his nostrils. ‘Then perhaps we are safe. Waller passes us by.’

‘I pray it is so, my lord,’ Rawdon said, his sentiments echoed in murmurs by the others. ‘But let us stand ready, regardless.’

Paulet nodded. He looked at Stryker for the first time. ‘Is my ordnance in place, sir?’

‘It is, my lord,’ Stryker said. ‘There is little we may now do but watch and wait.’

Chilton Candover, Hampshire, 5 November 1643

The tavern was stifling in the heat of its two deep hearths, and the air was thick and fuggy, pungent with the stench of tobacco smoke and ale. Outside, spread wide over several patchwork fields all around the village, the army of Parliament made their fires for the night. They had no tents, very little shelter save a few farm buildings and the branches of bare trees, and the crackle and spit of flame was accompanied by the incessant griping of soldiers unaccustomed to life on campaign and unhappy with billets so exposed. In the tavern the officers were warm and dry, and they laughed and chatted, drew on pipes, imbibed the local brew and reminisced of home. Some stood by the windows, staring out at the blackness, a persistent drizzle speckling the dirty glass, while some simply leaned over rough-hewn tables and let their pots take them to places they would rather have been. One group, though, were huddled in a rear corner of the flint building, careful with their words lest the very beams themselves harboured Royalist ears.

The gathering, half a dozen in all, fell silent as a man in a thigh-length buff-coat approached. He stood over the large table and smoothed down his auburn whiskers. ‘Sir William, what has happened?’ he asked in taut tones. ‘My horse ride for the Alresford muster, only to discover you have come north at this late hour.’

Waller leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘I am glad you could join us, Sir Arthur.’

Sir Arthur Heselrige’s cheeks reddened and he offered a begrudging bow. ‘Forgive me, Sir William. It has been a long ride.’

General Sir William Waller regarded his irascible cavalry commander coolly. It always surprised Waller how slender the colonel was without his armour. ‘Winchester is no longer my prime objective.’

‘No longer?’ Heselrige spluttered. ‘Hopton is not yet prepared to march. His force musters around Andover. We must press our advantage while he teeters on his back foot!’

‘Would that were possible, Sir Arthur, but news reached me at Alresford.’ It had been a hard journey south and west. The Farnham muster had been blighted by rain and wind, their drills increasingly difficult to perform as the weather turned against them. Waller had resolved to make his move the day before, but his army had heard the trumpeted reveille on a chill and wet dawn that had rapidly been consumed by a wintry blizzard, rendering a march next to impossible, and he had been forced to dismiss them for another day. Eventually they had been afforded an opportune window by the elements, but the roads were wet and the going cloying at best. They had reached Alresford early in the afternoon, and it was there that Waller’s mind had been changed.

‘News, sir?’

Waller nodded, curling his fingers about a worn-looking pot of spiced ale. ‘News of the direst nature. Our scouts report a strong body of enemy horse moving south from Oxford. They mean to strike us in the rear, I am certain. If we move upon Winchester, we are liable to find this new enemy snapping at our heels.’ He lifted the pot and took a long, heady draught, leaving Heselrige to digest the information. ‘We will be caught between the pincers of Hopton and his ally,’ he said after a time. ‘We risk destruction, for we do not possess the strength to fight them at once. That is why we are here. I will not reach any further west until I am certain of the Cavaliers’ plans.’

‘But we must engage the enemy, General,’ Heselrige pressed as Waller had known he would. ‘For morale, if nought else.’ He shot a caustic glance at one of the commanders of the Trained Bands. ‘The London men mutter of home. They will not tolerate—’

Waller hit the table. ‘They will tolerate whatever I desire them to tolerate, damn your eyes!’ It was not a hard blow, but his fist was clenched tight and the uneven legs rocked violently, slopping drink and food across the surface. The assembly looked down, unwilling to meet their general’s gaze, and to Waller’s gratification even Heselrige had the decency to avert his eyes. ‘Am I understood?’ he asked, softly now.

The others nodded mutely. ‘My apologies, Sir William,’ Heselrige murmured.

‘Accepted,’ Waller said, ‘and your comments are duly noted, Sir Arthur. Indeed, I have turned our endeavours over in my mind ever since the scouts came in. That is why we shall not sit idle. We will occupy ourselves with the reduction of a different target, gentlemen. One that will keep our new brigades busy, but one close enough to the safety of Farnham, should reports of this new threat prove correct.’

Heselrige looked about the faces with renewed curiosity. ‘A different target, sir?’

Sir William Waller nodded firmly. ‘On the morrow, my friends, let us make an assay upon that den of Papist iniquity loathed so keenly by God Himself.’ He raised his pot in offer of a toast. ‘Let us destroy Basing House.’

Andover, Hampshire, 5 November 1643

Sir Ralph Hopton, Baron of Stratton and General of King’s Charles’s western forces, tugged the long sleeves of his leather gloves further up his forearms. He was mostly recovered, yet he was still self-conscious of the wounds that made his limbs thick, their senses dull, and his face strangely lopsided, as if the skin on one side had slid down his cheek-bone a fraction. The result was this unfortunate worrying at his clothes, and he inwardly cursed himself for the failing.

‘Colonel Gerard,’ he said, forcing a jauntiness he did not feel into his tone, ‘how now, sir?’

Colonel Charles Gerard rode his grey stallion to the cross-road that was their agreed rendezvous. At his back, arrayed in the depths of darkness, were the packed lines of horsemen that made up his cavalry brigade, and they sat, implacable, upon their mounts as he doffed his hat to his superior. ‘Well met, my lord, well met. And I bring you a brigade of horse for the protection of Hampshire!’

Gerard was the twenty-four-year-old heir to a powerful Lancashire dynasty, and his confidence overwhelmed any weakness that might have been engendered by a lack of years. He was the antithesis of Hopton – where the general was sober in dress and sombre in humour, the colonel was the very model of a Cavalier, adorned in silks and lace, with long hair cascading beneath a huge felt hat – but Hopton liked him all the same. Gerard was a professional soldier who, like Hopton, had learned his trade in the Low Countries and had served with distinction at Edgehill, Bristol, Lichfield and Newbury. ‘Let us move to quarters, Colonel,’ Hopton said, steering his mount about.

‘Quarters, my lord?’ Gerard asked. ‘Do we not take the war to Waller’s doorstep? He has gone, I hear, to the fields north of Alresford for the night. Perhaps Basing is his design. Might we not engage him before he slights their loyal walls?’

Hopton shook his head. In truth, he had been caught out by the speed at which Waller, his particular friend and formidable enemy, had moved into the south. Perhaps it was the residue of Lansdown that made him hesitant, or an inherent mistrust in his army, now that his Cornish stalwarts were no longer with him. Either way, he would not act rashly. The army needed time to prepare; Winchester, too, required time to put itself on an adequately defensive footing. ‘I would wait a while,’ he said eventually. He looked up at the sky. There were no stars, for the clouds were thick and low. ‘Let us witness Sir William’s next move, and act accordingly.’

Gerard clenched his teeth. ‘And Basing, my lord?’

Hopton turned his back on the colonel. He knew the young blades in his retinue would whisper cowardice, but his grand scheme had been put at risk by Waller’s return to the field. ‘I will not jeopardize Winchester for the sake of Basing House, sir,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘The marquess, for the time being, must look to his own safety.’

Near Preston Candover, Hampshire, 5 November 1643

Wagner Kovac found Lieutenant Matthew Budge in a barn that had been turned to stabling for the night. Budge’s troop had returned from their distant patrol that afternoon, during which time Waller’s army swarmed in the fields about Alresford, their tentacles stretching out to farmsteads and hamlets in a wide arc, stripping the common folk of whatever winter provisions they had managed to squirrel away.

Budge, sitting on a low bench, bare feet stretched out in front, was barking commands at a hapless local lad who was clumsily picking muddy clumps from the officer’s boots with a blunt knife. Boy and man looked up sharply when Kovac limped in, and the latter dismissed his new servant with an irritable wave.

‘I told you I would find you, Major,’ Budge hissed, throwing a furtive glance at his troopers at the far end of the barn. ‘I cannot be seen with you.’

Kovac tugged at the strands of his beard. ‘Try speak to me like that again, Lieutenant. Just try it.’