Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (42 page)

Stryker did not know what to say. The scheme was mad. And yet Skaithlocke seemed entirely committed to it. Had he lost all reason? His eyes blazed with a zeal Stryker had encountered before in the stare of other men. Dangerous men. ‘How will you kill the King?’ he managed to ask.

Skaithlocke beamed, though his hands were beginning to tremble, and he thrust them behind his back. ‘I have a man already in the Royalist camp. A deadly man of such skill with weapons that you and I could only marvel.’

‘Who is he?’

‘An irrelevance,’ the big man replied dismissively. ‘A tool.’ He laughed, an unnatural, high-pitched sound amid this new fervour. ‘He is a self-important knave with an eye for the ladies, a love of his golden locks, and a penchant for dandyish bloody ear-strings. But, by God, he can kill.’

‘Vincent,’ was all Stryker could say. He rocked forward, propping elbows on his knees, and put his head in his hands. ‘What has happened to you?’

‘Happened to me?’ Skaithlocke replied in a tone that suggested Stryker was a dullard. ‘I have told you already.’

Stryker rubbed his face hard, hoping he would look up to find this was all some morbid dream. But he knew it was not. Indeed, he could understand Skaithlocke’s reasoning, for he too had been afflicted by the same madness these last weeks. He thought of the woods around Hartcliffe and swore softly. He had crushed a frightened man’s wrist when intoxicated with the heady concoction of grief and guilt. It was a poisonous brew.

Skaithlocke was close now, his shadow creeping over Stryker. ‘You’re with me, aren’t you, son? One brother avenging the death of another, eh?
Exitus acta probat.
’

Stryker looked up. ‘I—’

Footsteps sounded in the doorway. ‘You’ve told him, then.’

Stryker looked up sharply as Skaithlocke spun on his heels. The newcomer was a weedy man with greasy hair and pockmarked cheeks, one of which flickered uncontrollably. He came into the room, and Stryker saw that his gait was severely lopsided, made so by a dramatically twisted upper back.

‘Ezekiel Nobbs,’ Stryker said, his eye flicking down to the pistol in the man’s hand. ‘Still alive, I see.’

Nobbs took a moment to take in Stryker’s ravaged features. His chuckle was teeth-gratingly nasal. ‘And well, which is more’n can be said for you, by the looks of things.’

‘You always were a charitable soul, Ezekiel.’

‘And you always were a sanctimonious prick,’ Nobbs hissed.

Stryker stood slowly, scanning the room for a chance to escape. The pistol quivered slightly in Nobbs’ grip. ‘Where’s Jonas? You and he were inseparable, scuttling about like a pair of rats to do the colonel’s bidding.’

‘Mister Crick is dead,’ Skaithlocke said, his deep voice echoing loudly. ‘The less said about him the better.’ He moved between the two men. ‘Stryker is with us, Nobbs, do not doubt it.’

Nobbs’ secretive eyes shrank further into his skull. ‘Sure about that, are yer, Slager?’

Stryker frowned. ‘Slager?’

Skaithlocke’s lips twitched. ‘It is what the Dutch call me. A friendly name.’

‘Friendly, sir?’ Stryker said, unconvinced. ‘It is not the kind of name a man is given. He earns it by his deeds.’

‘Admiring, then,’ Skaithlocke muttered testily. ‘I have conducted things –
conducted myself
– rather differently since John was ripped from me.’

‘And now they call you Butcher?’ Stryker asked, wondering what horrors had been inflicted upon this man’s enemies already in the years following John’s death. ‘My God, Vincent.’

Skaithlocke’s jaw quivered as he gritted his teeth. ‘Enough of this, Innocent! Enough, I say! You are with us, and that is what matters. Comrades in arms again, as God intended. King Charles will soon be rotting in the ground, and we will lead our new crusade against the Lord’s foes.’

‘Sir,’ Stryker said weakly, thinking how best to penetrate the colonel’s feverish mind. But just to look into Skaithlocke’s eyes was to know that he was not for turning. ‘Aye, sir. I am with you.’

The fat man grinned in blissful triumph, patting Stryker hard on the shoulder, and only turning away when the shuffle of a dragging leg sounded close at his back. Nobbs, it seemed, could see what the colonel could not, for he had levelled the pistol directly at Stryker. He shook his head as he limped into the room. ‘He’s lying, Slager.’

Skaithlocke went to intercept him. ‘Do not be a fool, Nobbs. You heard my son.’

‘He ain’t your son, Slager. He’s a fucking liar. Look at his face. He thinks you’re a Bedlamite.’

Skaithlocke seemed confused for a moment, rotating his head between the two men. ‘You are mistaken,’ he murmured.

Nobbs came closer, keeping the cocked pistol steady, its black muzzle gaping at Stryker. ‘Look at ’im, Slager. He’s makin’ you look a right bumpkin.’

Stryker raised his hands in supplication. ‘He’s the liar, Vincent. He’s jealous.’

‘Jealous?’ Nobbs grinned nastily, exposing sharp teeth that jutted from festering gums like a row of fangs. ‘He thinks you’re mad, Slager. But he can’t tell you so, cos he knows you’d have to kill ’im, now that he knows what we’re about.’ He shook the pistol. ‘Why don’t you let me do it?’

Vincent Skaithlocke’s hands were around Ezekiel Nobbs’ throat before the small man could react. The pistol fired, smoke jetted outwards to fill the chamber, but the ball slammed harmlessly into the floorboards. Nobbs dropped it, his hands clawing desperately at the great paws that now crushed his windpipe. He scratched and kicked, but he was too weak to fight off Skaithlocke.

Stryker stood, but could do nothing to prevent the attack. He had seen bears maul ban-dogs many times, and this was not so far removed. Skaithlocke lifted Nobbs off the floor, the smaller man’s toes helplessly scraping the boards for some kind of purchase. But the colonel was too big, too strong, and he shook Nobbs like a rag doll, throttling the life out of him until the whites of Nobbs’ eyes filled with blood and his tongue pushed its way out between blue lips like a pink slug, dangling there in a coating of foam turned crimson by gnashing teeth.

And then it was over. Nobbs hung limp like a puppet in Skaithlocke’s vicelike grip. The colonel released him, let the corpse collapse to the floor, lifeless limbs resting in strange positions, as twisted as his deformed spine.

‘Colonel?’ Stryker ventured.

Skaithlocke looked up, turning slowly to his old friend, blinking blearily as though he woke from a strange dream. ‘He did not believe,’ he said.

‘Is that what happened to Jonas Crick?’ Stryker ventured.

Skaithlocke nodded. ‘They only wanted the money I’d promised. They were not like you and me, my son. Not like us.’

‘Not like us,’ Stryker replied.

CHAPTER 17

Beside the east wall, Gloucester, 21 August 1643

Stryker walked the walls in the hour or two after midnight.

He paced alone, his hand twisting around the shark-skin sword grip, tension tightening every muscle. His mind, it seemed, had been consigned to an invisible rack, where it had been stretched to breaking point. They had hidden Nobbs’ body in the cellar of Skaithlocke’s temporary residence, a pathetic bundle of rags and limp flesh stuffed face down in a barrel. It would be found before long, but neither man could think beyond their immediate futures. They spoke instead of the daring soldiers they had fought with and against, of the things they had seen and the tribulations they had suffered and survived. They remembered poor John, of course, toasted his memory. Finally, though, Stryker had had to depart, for he was due to take part in the next instalment in Massie’s schedule of disruption and audacity. He had left the man he revered above all others staring at the walls as he continued his obsessive plotting. And now Stryker paced because he needed the fresh air, and because he knew he must put space between himself and the troubled colonel; because he needed to consider his next move.

He crossed Friar’s Orchard and made his way towards the East Gate. Moving beyond the ancient city entrance, he continued towards the earthworks around Whitefriars Barn at the corner of the old section of medieval fortifications. Adjacent to those works was a terrace of single-storey wooden huts, all pressed together and rotting as one. He scanned them quickly as he skirted the hovels, looking to see what life still remained in this part of the city. Nothing stirred. Perhaps the locals had had the good sense to leave, given the crumbling buildings’ proximity to the battered walls.

When he turned, the man behind him was so startled that he did not even try to hide. Instead, he stood stock still, seemingly frozen to the debris-strewn road. ‘Captain.’

Stryker nodded. ‘James Buck.’

‘Surprised to see me?’

‘Surprised to see a clerk abroad at this time.’ He raised his brow. ‘Surprised to see that you’re spying on me.’

Buck’s perpetually sad eyes creased at the corners. ‘Not spying, sir.’

‘Then why do you follow me? Incidentally,’ he added, ‘you are not very good at it. I’ve been listening to your heavy feet since Friar’s Orchard.’

‘You were at the quarters of Mister Skaithlocke, were you not?’ Buck asked. ‘The governor’s advisor.’

Stryker thought about that. ‘Did Killigrew send you here?’

Buck wrinkled his nose to suggest Stryker might be stupid. ‘You know he did.’

‘To watch me.’

‘Not a bit of it.’

‘Did he not trust me to carry out the task, is that it?’

‘No, sir. You are wrong.’

Stryker searched Buck’s sallow face for a trace of guile, but something in the intelligencer’s confident tone made him believable. ‘Then what is your business here? You say you were sent to infiltrate the rebels, just as I was, and tried to arrange a clandestine meeting with me some days ago. But when I was distracted, you vanished.’ He paused to listen for sounds of anyone approaching, but all was still. ‘Now I find you have decided to act as my shadow. It is strange behaviour, Mister Buck.’

Buck lifted a hand to ruffle his lank chestnut hair. He blew out his cheeks and stepped closer so that they were only an arm’s length apart. ‘I am Ezra Killigrew’s man,’ he said in barely a whisper. ‘And I was sent into Gloucester to gather intelligence, only to find I have no reasonable way out.’

‘But?’

When the blow came it felt as though Stryker’s guts had been bludgeoned with a musket stock. He doubled over, helplessly winded, and spewed a thin stream of stinking yellow vomit on to his boots. Buck stepped casually away, and Stryker saw the dark shaft of a cudgel in his white-knuckled hand.

‘But,’ the intelligencer said, ‘my sister is wife to a man named Triggs, and he, you will be pleased to learn, is a dragooner.’ He waited for Stryker to straighten, though the captain staggered uneasily, hands pressed tight to his midriff. ‘A dragooner in a yellow coat.’

Stryker spat sour residue from his mouth. ‘Crow.’

Buck lifted the cudgel menacingly. ‘My brother-in-law is one of Colonel Crow’s men, aye. He asked me to see what influence I might wield, and, you will again be pleased to learn, I wield quite a bit. At least enough to know that Mister Killigrew had asked you to carry out your own little mission. I was due to come to Gloucester at a later date, but it seemed logical enough to inveigle myself into Killigrew’s plans. So here we are.’ He slapped the hefty club into the palm of his free hand. ‘And you shall die knowing that you’ve been a walking corpse since the day you crossed Artemas Crow.’

Stryker’s stomach lurched again and it took all his strength to keep another torrent of vomit down. ‘He’s tried to kill me before,’ he hissed through clenched teeth.

Buck grinned maliciously. ‘Well, he won’t need to try again.’

Stryker went for his sword, but Buck was faster than he had anticipated. His would-be assassin struck in two swift motions, wrapping the knuckles of his hand before he could get them behind the hilt guard, and then bringing the weapon up to clatter against his chin. Stryker pitched backwards, biting his tongue as he went, and tripped on a pile of stone scraps. He landed on his rump, the metallic zing of blood filling his mouth.

‘Silly,’ Buck said, stepping over the loose shards and drawing a dirk from his waist.

Stryker knew he had to stall for time. ‘You’re no mere clerk,’ he said, recalling the well-worn sword Buck had carried on their journey from Bristol. It was not the weapon of a man who spent his time shuffling paper. ‘Massie saw right through you when first we met him.’

‘Almost,’ Buck admitted. ‘Fortunately, you helped me convince him. But you’re right, of course. I have carried out one or two of Killigrew’s more
ugly
assignments in my time.’

‘Why not kill me on the road?’

‘Before Gloucester?’ Buck replied, taken aback at the question. ‘I could hardly prevent you from doing your duty, Stryker. I am a loyal subject, whatever antipathy my kinsman may feel towards you. I considered denouncing you as the spy that you are, but I dare say you’d have returned the favour. So it has been a game of watching and waiting.’

‘The other day?’ Stryker said, remembering the meeting that had been so abruptly cut short.

Buck nodded. ‘I’d have stuck you there and then, but your gangling shadow was too close for comfort.’