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

He pulled the gloves from his hands and dropped them at his feet. Planting a cold, bluish palm against his eye, he pressed, rubbing and grinding mercilessly until it hurt. He stared again, forcing himself to focus on this battered stretch of coast. Still things were blurry, but the mist was beginning to clear. He could discern more edges from the darker smudges and knew now that they were people. Or at least they were bodies, punctuating the shore at intervals for as far as he could see. Some were up, crouched or standing, bewildered and staring mutely at these harsh new surroundings. Others did not move. They lay crumpled and twisted, faces flat against the sand, ominous in sheer inertia.

It was chaos. Carnage. As though some great maritime battle had been fought off shore, the dead and wounded spewed up by the ocean with the spars and shrouds shredded by flaming cannon and whistling shot. Except war had not come to this cold place, nor had guns belched across the waves. But battle, it seemed to Stryker, had been joined nevertheless. Man had taken on nature, and he had been found wanting.

‘Beelzebub’s ballocks,’ a deep, droning voice intoned behind him.

Stryker managed to turn and focus. The man he saw was tall and thin. He wore no coat, for the garment had seemingly been stripped off by the night’s furious tides, and the shirt left behind was dishevelled and tattered. ‘Sergeant Skellen,’ he said. ‘How fare you?’

‘My noggin, sir,’ Skellen said, lifting a hand to his bald head. ‘Feels like I’ve been cudgelled by a bleedin’ bear.’ His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, exposing forearms that were long, and, though thin, knotted with lean, taut muscle. The veins on his hands and wrists were raised, as if the skin was layered in an intricate web of whipcord, and his palms were like shovels. He was several inches taller than Stryker, with eyes set deep within darkly hooded sockets.

‘You look hearty enough to me, Sergeant,’ Stryker said.

Skellen ran a huge hand over his stubble-shadowed chin as he perceived his captain. ‘You don’t, sir.’ Squinting down the length of the curving shoreline, he said, ‘Think we’ve lost a few.’

Stryker used his tongue to corral a few errant grains of sand from along his gums, spitting them into the wind. ‘More than a few.’

He followed Skellen’s narrow gaze. Of the forty or so people he could make out amongst the wreckage of the
Kestrel
, only half of those were visibly moving. And in that moment he understood that Stryker’s Company of Foot would never be the same again. He had lost them. Or, at the very least, a good portion. They had been swallowed by the sea, chewed in its vengeful maw and tossed on to this lonely beach. He stared out at the slate-grey water. How many were still out there, food for the monsters of the deep?

‘Muster the men, Will. Let us see what we have left.’

Stryker stood on the rocky ridge and stared down at the men on the beach. He could hardly countenance what he saw. Debris was everywhere, lapping on the gentle tide or working its way on to the saffron-coloured sand. A single sail bobbed in the surf a little way out to sea, while a large amount of rigging wallowed in vast tangles that made the shallows appear to be infested by a colony of giant octopuses. Amid those hempen tentacles were black shapes, the detritus of life aboard a ship. Splintered timbers, square trenchers, sacks, barrels, clothing, blackjacks and a myriad of other items, all turned to flotsam by the great storm that had put an end to the doughty Dutch fluyt. There were bodies, too. Face down for the most part, drifting with the water out of reach, already becoming bloated and pale.

‘That’s the lot, sir,’ Sergeant William Skellen announced morosely as he clambered up to his commanding officer’s granite perch. He spat towards the sea in impotent defiance. ‘Eleven lads left.’

Stryker nodded as he counted the ragged line of survivors for himself. They were arranged below the ridge, wan and exhausted, mere shadows of the hard men they had been. ‘Eleven. Along with you and I.’

‘And Jack-Sprat.’

‘Must you?’ Stryker admonished, though he did not begrudge Skellen his laconic mirth in so dire a place. He gave a wintry smile. ‘And where is he?’

For answer, the tall sergeant pointed to their left, his long bony finger tracing the curved spine of rocks. Sure enough, perhaps a hundred paces away, the diminutive figure of Simeon Barkworth, formerly the Earl of Chesterfield’s bodyguard and a member of the feared Scots Brigade before that, was gesticulating animatedly at a trio of men. All were taller than the bald fellow, who was no bigger than a dwarf, but each nodded with every gesture as though he were their natural superior. He might have been small, Stryker mused, but with eyes as yellow as a feline and a temper as explosive as black powder, he was as intimidating as a rabid ban-dog.

‘Getting’ the pit dug,’ Skellen elaborated when Stryker did not speak. ‘Plenty o’ bodies to be rid of.’

Stryker stared at the Scot’s three companions. ‘Our sailors?’

‘Aye. Them three’s all that survived.’

‘Jesu,’ Stryker rasped on a sighing outbreath. So three of the ship’s twenty-strong crew had made it to shore, in addition to eleven of Stryker’s thirty musketeers. He shook his head with the sorrow of it. ‘We lost nineteen men as well as Ensign Chase, Corporal Mookes and Drummer Lipscombe.’

‘That we did, sir. A terrible day.’

Stryker nodded, though in truth it was a miracle that any had survived. He remembered nothing after the ship went down. It was cold and black and then he was in the angry sea. He understood in that moment, as chill salt water poured into his mouth and nose and ears, that he would die. The next thing Stryker knew, he was awake on a beach. At least, he reflected as he turned his back on the shore to study the terrain inland, he had only taken half the company. The rest of his officers and all twenty of his pikemen were safely back in Oxford. He supposed he ought to thank God for that small grace. His company had come through the smoke-wreathed hell of Newbury relatively unscathed. If the Almighty saw fit to temper Stryker’s growing confidence by wiping out half his men in one fell swoop, then it was truly a cruel lesson to learn. He blinked and stared down at the island.

‘Where are we, sir?’ Skellen asked.

‘I know not.’ Suddenly craving his pipe, he put a hand to his shoulder, forgetting that he no longer had his snapsack. Indeed, he no longer had much at all. Unlike most, he still had his coat, saturated though it was, and his boots had been tight enough at his thighs and calves to repel the pull of the current, but his pistol was gone, as were his brace of dirks, his powder horn, water flask and snapsack. He planted his hand on the ornate hilt of his sword. It was a beautiful weapon, a gift from the queen herself, and he was glad that it fitted its scabbard so snugly and the baldric in which it hung had clung to him well. Most of his men had nothing but shirts and breeches to their names.
Christ
, he thought, but what had he brought them to? It was his arrogance that compelled them to climb so willingly aboard the ill-fated
Kestrel
. His promise to Cecily Cade – as she lay dying with an assassin’s crossbow bolt lodged in her flesh – that he would make the journey to retrieve her family fortune for the Crown. Why had he made so rash a pledge? Was it to assuage the guilt he felt for the bolt that had taken its fatal course after he had knocked the bow? Or had he made his promise because Lisette Gaillard, the woman he loved, had sworn hers? He stared up at Skellen. Whatever the reason, the company had followed him without question, even after marching through the hail of lead that was Newbury Fight, and now they had been destroyed for their misplaced trust. ‘Hubris.’

Skellen screwed up his leathery face. ‘Sir?’

‘I have brought us to this.’

‘You give the orders, sir, and we see ’em through.’ The tall sergeant shrugged. ‘Not a man ’ere, nor on that ship, nor back ’ome what’d have it different.’

‘We came through Newbury to wash up here.’

‘We came through Newbury, sir, aye. And Gloucester before that. And Roundway, Lansdown and Stratton. Every day is a day I hadn’t expected to see, sir.’

They fell silent as the miniature figure of Simeon Barkworth scurried along the granite barrier to reach them. ‘Fuck me, sir, if those salty bastards ain’t the worst gravediggers I ever saw!’ His voice was a rasp, as though a ligature throttled the sound as he spoke. ‘Don’t know one end of a shovel from t’other.’

Skellen wrinkled his long nose. ‘They ain’t got shovels, Tom Thumb.’

Barkworth’s yellow eyes sparkled as he glared up at the sergeant. ‘Well spotted, you lanky goat’s prick.’

The Scot was a reformado, a man who had enlisted with Stryker after the Battle of Hopton Heath, but who held no official rank. As such, he was, technically, not subordinate to Skellen, but that did not mean the sergeant would tolerate the insult. The tall man stepped forth, eliciting a mad cackle of a challenge from Barkworth, before abruptly stopping in his tracks. He stared down at the bar that had swung heavily across his path.

‘Not now,’ Stryker said, keeping his forearm solid against Skellen’s sternum. ‘Or I’ll drown you both myself, understood?’

Skellen swallowed and nodded.

‘Aye, sir,’ Barkworth croaked, rubbing the livid band of scar tissue that swathed his neck, the mark of a failed hanging. He looked back along the line of the dune. ‘Was a figure o’ speech, sir. The shovels, I mean. The sailors are next to useless. Can rig a bastard-big boat, I’m quite sure, but they can’nae dig for shite.’

Stryker lowered his arm and followed the Scot’s bright gaze. ‘With their hands, Simeon?’

Barkworth shrugged. ‘We’ve no tools, sir.’

‘Send some of our men to assist.’

‘Sir.’

The pair watched as Barkworth scrabbled his way down the treacherous escarpment to corral a squad of Stryker’s men. At length, Skellen cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘Thinking ’pon Miss Lisette, sir? Beggin’ your pardon.’

In another place and time, Stryker would have scolded the sergeant for his impertinence. But he nodded as he watched the waves lap the shore. ‘Aye.’ He could not hide his worry. She had gone ahead of the main force, typically unwilling to wait for Stryker to be released from duty. Lisette was supposed to locate the house where Cecily Cade claimed her father’s fortune had been stored, and await Stryker’s arrival. Now, and not for the first time, he had let her down.

‘She’ll have found the gold already, like as not,’ Skellen said hopefully. ‘Frightened the living ballocks out of some poor local, got him to help her take it back. If she’s in Oxford right now, sir, suppin’ claret and cursin’ all English heretics – ’cept the King, of course ­– I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.’

Stryker could not help but laugh. Lisette was an agent of the Crown, more specifically of Queen Henrietta Maria, and she was not a woman to be underestimated. The men, including William Skellen, found her bewitching, for her beauty was matched by her talent for death and deception. ‘You’re probably in the right of it, Sergeant,’ he said, though he was not so sure. He peered inland to hide his discomfort, and studied the terrain.

They were on an island, clearly, for he could see all the way to the far side, where another craggy coastline nestled against the dark of the sea. The water pressed in to the right and left as well, but further away, and he realized that the island must be long and narrow. As far as he could see, the beaches were yellow with sand, separated from the interior by crumbling cliffs that appeared almost white below the grey skies. Beyond the rocks, the interior was green but sparse, rising at either end to rocky hillocks. He could not see any buildings, nor even the tell-tale smoke trail that might betray a hidden hearth. He recalled a discussion with Captain Jones. ‘The Scillies are made up of many islands. Most uninhabited. And we were near the easternmost when . . . when it happened.’

‘So we could have landed on our feet.’

‘I would hardly say that,’ Stryker countered. ‘But the point is made, Will, aye. Seems it may not all be disaster.’

Skellen picked his nose, inspected the end of his finger, and cracked his neck loudly. ‘So how in the name of Joseph’s pretty coat do we find out where we are?’

At first, Stryker thought the sharp click was another one of Skellen’s stiff joints, but when he caught the sergeant’s eye in alarm, the pair of them spun round to see the huge fowling-piece pointed directly at them.

‘Allow me to help, gentlemen,’ the man wielding the gun said. He did not look like a soldier, but his demeanour seemed calm enough for Stryker to hesitate in his natural urge to attack.

Stryker raised his hands. ‘Ho, sir, do not be hasty with that thing.’

The newcomer smiled behind the black muzzle, a gesture that did not reach his wide, brown eyes. ‘As I said, I am here to help. You’re on the isle of Great Ganilly.’ He drew the firearm to full cock. ‘And you’re in a spot ’o bother, rebel.’

‘The island’s the better part of a thousand yards from north to south. And the terrain’s a bitch at either end. Fortunately, there, in the very middle, she’s not a hundred yards across, and barely above sea level.’

Their captor’s name was Jethro Beck: a man of the Scillies, born on St Martin’s, and a fisherman by trade. Now, as the boat slid out between the jagged rocks, he indicated the place to which he had forced them to march. The spot where the vessels had been waiting on Great Ganilly’s western shore. ‘Can get from one side o’ the island to the other in a matter of a few minutes.’