Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles (48 page)

In that moment Lieutenant Andrew Burton believed him. Believed the power in Slanning’s voice and the devilry in his glistening eyes. Despite himself, he felt a surge of hope. ‘Aye, sir. We’ll send him packing.’

‘Back to Devon, Lieutenant! That’s the spirit!’ Slanning beamed. ‘So long as he does not find a bloody hill to climb, eh?’

Near Stratton, Cornwall,
14
May
1643

The hill was ideal.

Looming over the village from the north, it was steeply sloped and flat-topped, protected to the south by a patchwork of hedged fields and to the east by a wooded escarpment that was far too sheer to scale. Furthermore, the River Strat gushed at its foot, and an ancient earthwork provided stout defence at the summit.

Yes indeed, thought James Chudleigh as he gazed down at the cluster of pale dots that was Stratton, the hill was perfect. As commander of Parliament’s army – at least until Lord Stamford arrived – the task of scouting the land had fallen to him. And he had been guided by God to this spot. Ordinarily it would be madness to camp on the top of such a high place, but his army was well supplied with ammunition and provisions, and he could stay there for as long as was necessary. Thus, he had decided to march up to the flat crest with his five thousand men, and challenge the Cornish Royalists to knock him off. Soon the malignant horde would come to this hill, flounder on its steep slopes, and be overwhelmed by Chudleigh’s much larger force. The coup de grâce, of course, would be the triumphal return of his father’s cavalry from Bodmin. They would smash into the Royalist rearguard, sweeping them from the field, and from England, in one decisive victory. All he need do was hold the position and wait.

‘You see the trees lines?’ Chudleigh said, thrusting an arm to the west to indicate the network of hedges and sunken lanes that webbed the lower third of that steep face.

The woman standing beside him shrugged. ‘I see them.’

‘That is where the king’s men will flounder.’

The woman gave a contemptuous snort. ‘You pray.’

‘I do not need prayer, Miss Cade,’ Chudleigh said, not deigning to look at the infuriating bitch. ‘If they choose not to fight then I will await my father, who comes with near two thousand horse. When he arrives I will march down there to meet him and together we will smash Hopton’s pitiful army between us.’

‘It is the Cornish,’ Cecily Cade retorted waspishly. ‘They will fight.’

Chudleigh shrugged. ‘Then I will have men –
hundreds
of men – in those lanes and hedges, and they’ll cut the malignants to shreds before they so much as spy the summit. A few will doubtless make it on to the open terrain.’ He glanced at the big artillery pieces being dragged into place a little way down the hill where the lanes petered out, leaving open pasture all the way to the summit. There were thirteen such guns, and, further back, a huge mortar, squatting like a black mastiff against the green grassland. ‘And those will be shredded in seconds.’

‘You are confident, General.’

‘With good reason, Miss Cade. With good reason.’

Cecily Cade stared up at the young Parliamentarian. ‘Why did you feel the need to show me all this?’

Now Chudleigh met her gaze, his face serious, his right cheek twitching slightly. ‘Because you must see your folly. Witness the end of the war in the south-west. Understand that to join the rebellion is to join God’s own cause. We are on the cusp of change, Miss Cade. England will soon be made anew.’ He grasped her shoulder suddenly, making her shudder. ‘Tell me the location of the gold and the new nation will be yours for the taking. You will be a heroine of the rebellion.’

Cecily Cade looked the major-general straight in the eyes. ‘I would sooner be dead than betray my king.’

He sighed in resignation. ‘You will certainly pray for death before too long.’

She looked up at him with utter scorn. ‘You will hand me to your vile men? I am not afraid, sir.’

Major-General James Chudleigh shook his head sadly and began to walk away, leaving his prisoner to the guards who now converged around her. He looked back briefly. ‘I shan’t give you to the men, Miss Cade. I am not a monster. No, you will be questioned by another.’

‘Who?’ she called after him.

‘You are not afraid?’ He shook his head. ‘You should be.’

An hour later, in the shadow of the hill that had become a rebel fortress, three men strode purposefully through fields left untended and abandoned by terrified farm workers. Their boots trampled green crops, sank in soft soil, and slipped when planted in the slick droppings left by the horses and oxen used to haul Chudleigh’s big guns into position.

‘Curse this
mierda
!’ one of the men, lagging behind the others, hissed in heavily accented English as he shook his leg to free the toe end of a particularly sticky piece of faeces. He was a short man, dark of skin and hugely fat, his black cloak, designed to be voluminous, stretched tight about a morbidly fleshy frame.

The taller of the fat man’s companions, keeping up a brisk lick despite leaning heavily into a knotted walking cane, turned back brusquely. ‘Keep up, José!’

José Ventura, Spaniard, Protestant convert and faithful servant to witch-finder Osmyn Hogg, muttered something unintelligible in his native tongue and launched into a jowl-shaking scuttle to regain the pace. ‘Where we go?’ he added breathlessly.

The third man, a pale creature with beady black eyes and skin so taut it was almost translucent, did not look round. ‘Into the village. Well, the outskirts, to be precise.’

Osmyn Hogg, limping beside the pale man, glanced down at him, instinctively suspicious of the Parliamentarian power broker. ‘Oh?’

‘I have something to show you,’ Major-General Erasmus Collings answered nonchalantly.

That did not fill Hogg with confidence. He made his daily bread by hunting out and purging evil-doers from God’s realm. Sometimes it meant that difficult decisions were made; blood spilled, children frightened, and folk killed. But whatever he and Ventura did, they did it in the name of God, with His blessing. Yet Hogg had returned from the New World to find an England full to bursting with men like Collings. Those who would inflict pain and suffering, would lie and cheat and steal and betray for their own advancement. For earthly rewards. He mistrusted such men.

‘Why we leave Colonel Wild?’ Ventura asked suddenly.

Again, Hogg noticed that Collings did not lower himself to address the Spaniard directly. He offered a cursory reply as he studied the ground, careful to avoid the dung. ‘Because this is none of his concern. He will spend the rest of the day sulking, no doubt.’

‘He feels,’ Hogg answered quickly, as much to curtail Ventura’s abrupt line of questioning before it was perceived disrespectful than anything else, ‘he should not have to suffer such indignity.’

‘He is a failure in the Parliament’s army, Master Hogg,’ Collings answered as though he spoke to a halfwit, ‘and he will suffer whatever indignity I perceive fitting. His troop are good. One of the best we have, in fact, and he will get them back. But he should be put in his place.’ He looked at Hogg then. ‘And when better than during a battle at which his harquebusiers would have been utterly impotent?’

‘They would?’

‘Of course, sir. Hopton will have pike blocks, so we will crush them with pike blocks. Besides, we have near six thousand men on top of that small crest. Where would we put horsemen as well? No, they are better employed down at Bodmin with Chudleigh the Elder.’

That seemed reasonable enough to Hogg. Still, he thought, Wild’s rage smouldered bright and hot. They had spent much time in his presence since arriving at Stratton, both for their own protection and because, when battle came, Hogg felt that would give him the best chance of finding – and killing – a certain Royalist officer. ‘He is angry.’

Collings’s deep-set eyes, like twin sepulchres in his lily-coloured face, narrowed with malice. ‘He is pathetic.’

Hogg thought about that. About the scornful treatment Wild had received since their ignominious return from the defeat on Dartmoor. It seemed to him as though Collings had gone out of his way to puncture the colonel’s hitherto inflated sense of pride. ‘You would have him hate you?’

Collings halted, purple lips twitching at the corners. ‘I understand the workings of his simple mind, Master Hogg. He will blame Stryker for this. For the defeat, quite rightly, but also for the humiliation he has since suffered. Even now he will be plotting his revenge.’

Hogg nodded in sudden understanding. ‘And strive all the harder for the villain’s downfall.’ Collings was deliberately goading Wild into a frenzy of hatred and bloodlust. When the time came, the general would release him knowing that Wild’s only thought would be murder. When he looked into Collings’s face, Hogg saw that the general regarded him with renewed interest. ‘Sir?’

‘You yearn for Stryker’s demise as well,’ Collings said. It was not a question.

Hogg breathed in through his long nose, held the breath for a heartbeat, and released it slowly. ‘He and I have a shared history.’

‘A history that has set you against one another?’

‘Aye, General.’

Collings began to walk again, ragged corn stems rustling against his shins. ‘Stratton is ours,’ he said as the first of the village’s low buildings came into view. ‘Yet the king’s champion, Sir Bevil Grenville, has a home here. Ironic, is it not?’ When Hogg did not answer, too engrossed in his own thoughts to think of the paradoxes of this conflict, Collings spoke again. ‘That is why you would remain at Wild’s side, yes?’

The question jolted Hogg. ‘Sir?’

‘Your personal antipathy towards Stryker. I ordered you to remain with the army, but not necessarily with Wild. You choose to stay close in the hope that he is able to hunt the man down.’ He bobbed his head as they drew nearer to Stratton’s outermost buildings. Small timber-framed structures with filthy ancient thatches. ‘Reasonable. I’d have done the same. And yet you have another duty to perform before you seek any vengeance.’

‘Oh?’ Hogg enquired warily.

They had reached one of the shabby buildings. Its beams were rotten and worm-ridden, and, even from several feet away, Hogg could smell the ripe odour of damp and mould. Collings rapped knuckles briskly on the low door. It creaked open, the face of a soldier appearing from the far side. Collings looked up at Hogg. ‘Speak with a prisoner for me.’

Hogg stayed still. ‘I am a witch-catcher, sir, not a soldier. I cannot employ my more—
rough-handed
—techniques for a secular task.’

‘Upon the orders of General Chudleigh,’ Collings retorted calmly.

Hogg frowned and moved his stick from one hand to the other as his palm began to ache. ‘Is Lord Stamford not in charge here?’

Collings’s grunt dripped contempt. ‘When he arrives, yes, but he has yet to show his face.’ He smiled unpleasantly. ‘Perhaps the gout has spread to his horse.’

Collings led Hogg and Ventura into the room. He stepped to one side, allowing them to peer unhindered at the ghostly figure at the room’s far end.

Hogg blinked rapidly as his eyes acclimatized to the poor light, though it was Ventura who recognized the figure first. ‘She was one on the tor,’ he hissed in his master’s ear.

And then Hogg found he could place her too. It was surreal to find her here, of all places, but here she was. ‘The witch.’

‘Well now she is our prisoner,’ Erasmus Collings said from his place beside the door.

Hogg stared back at him. ‘She was with Stryker.’

That seemed to elicit a flash of interest from Collings’s magpie gaze. ‘She was with a large group of enemy foot when captured.’

‘And Stryker?’

‘I was not told. Our man mentioned a much larger force than he was expecting.’

Hogg nodded. ‘Wild’s troop were bested because Stryker received reinforcements. They appeared right out of the wood as though spawned by the very trees.’

To his surprise, Collings shrugged. ‘No matter. Miss Cade is of greater import. It appears she knows the location of a goodly store of treasure. Chudleigh would have her share that location with us.’

The woman’s eyes were wide, unblinking, but her headshake was firm. ‘I’ll not speak a word.’

‘Do you recognize me, girl?’ Osmyn Hogg asked. He stepped closer so that she could see his face more clearly. ‘Or Señor Ventura, perhaps?’

There was a long silence before the light of understanding seemed to flood across the woman’s face. Her eyes darted manically between Hogg, his walking cane, and his assistant. ‘Murderers!’

‘Witch-hunters, my dear,’ Hogg replied smoothly. ‘And you are one such imp-suckler according to the man, Otilwell Broom.’

Cecily Cade’s hands shook now. Her face was ashen grey and her bottom lip quivered violently. ‘You killed him in cold blood.’

Hogg calmly fished within the folds of his black doublet, drawing out a square of paper, which he carefully unfolded. ‘I killed him in God’s righteousness.’

Collings took the paper and scanned through its inky scrawl. ‘Broom named her as Satan’s whore?’

Hogg gave the hint of a nod. ‘To you this woman is but a prisoner. To me, she is a witch.’ He stabbed at the paper with an outstretched finger. ‘You hold my proof.’