Traitor's Blood (Civil War Chronicles) (22 page)

‘Who are you?’ Stryker finally said, his voice an unintentional whisper, as though the shock had squeezed his windpipe almost
shut. He devoured his slender companion with his eye as she stood before him, taking in everything about her physical presence. The golden hair, bright beneath the late autumn canopy, the wide eyes, the small scar that marred her chin, the way her brow furrowed when she frowned or smiled. She must either be a figment of his imagination or a ghost. The real woman of flesh and blood had long since been laid to rest in his memory.

Lisette, still cradling the bundle of linen, studied Stryker. ‘You look well,’ she said after a time. He shook his head slowly and her face coloured. ‘I am sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ repeated Stryker.

Lisette thought for a moment, struggling to pick words that might carry some semblance of worth. ‘I hurt you, I know that. And, yes, I am sorry.’

Stryker made a strange noise in his throat. ‘You died! You died, Lisette. One day I had you, we were happy, the next you were gone. Drowned. Lost at sea. They told me.’ He shook his head, felt his eye prick, amazed now at how easy it had been to believe it.

Lisette touched his shoulder gently.

He shrugged off her fingertips with a jolt. ‘I knew your work. Creeping in and out of corridors, whispering secrets, telling lies, committing murders. I shouldn’t have been surprised at one further deception, no matter what the cost to me.’

Lisette frowned. ‘We are neither of us saints, are we, sir?’

If a single person on this earth knew of Stryker’s sins, it was Lisette Gaillard. ‘But you were mine,’ he said. ‘I was yours. I did not know your duty would come before us, Lisette. I did not suspect that.’ He paused. ‘I was broken when you left,’ he said simply, the furious indignation now starting to slip away.

‘Damn you, Captain,’ Lisette suddenly snapped. ‘You are a hard bastard. You always were. The scars healed well, I am sure, and I do not refer to your face.’

‘Cast about!’ the sergeant’s voice echoed from beyond the copse. ‘That’s it, boys! The musket and match must stay in the left hand. Shove the stock on the ground on the outside of your left boot. Now place the charge!’ With their muskets held in the cast-about position, the men poured the remaining charge from their flasks down their barrels. Once the charge was placed, each tapped the butt of the musket sharply on the frozen ground in order to compact the powder, then fished in their pockets and bags for a musket-ball to follow it.

The sergeant nodded his approval. ‘Now place your wadding!’ The men reached into their pouches to grasp small pieces of wadding. They crammed what they retrieved into their barrels, too busy to notice the pair of figures in the dense brush.

‘Ram your wadding!’ Still in the cast-about position, the recruits removed a scouring stick from the housing beneath their guns, pushing it down the barrel until the wadding was compressed against the top of the charge and its smooth projectile. The sergeant marched forward a few paces to confront one of the recruits. ‘Don’t hold the end of the stick, you puke-brained bastard!’ he bawled. ‘If the bloody gun goes off now, it’ll punch a hole straight through your palm!’

Lisette’s reflexes were not fast enough to avoid Stryker’s arm as it lashed forward. He slapped her cheek, sending her thumping on to the leafy soil, her heavy burden spinning away into a patch of soaking bracken. The tall soldier leapt forward, straddling her slim torso, pinioning her wrists with hands like iron claws.

‘God damn you, Lisette!’ he snarled, his grey eye gleaming silver in the weak light. ‘Go back to hell!’

Lisette spat in his face. His grip loosened momentarily and she wrenched an arm free to rake her fingernails down Stryker’s cheek. He cursed, letting the other arm go, and she thrust it low, grasping and twisting at his groin so that he scrambled back to his feet. She was up now as well, closing with Stryker as he retreated, and all he could do was swat away her fists as
she targeted the sides of his head with buffeting punches. He took a pace backwards, and another, until the backs of his knees met with a broad log. Having nowhere left to retreat, Stryker leaned into the blows, ducking low, seizing Lisette around her waist. She swore as he hoisted her into the air, and he opened his mouth to command her to stop, but no words passed his lips, only a gush of warm air as the breath cannoned from his lungs. She had thrust her knee into his crotch, hammering pain into the very core of his guts, and she laughed in triumph as he dropped her to the floor.

Stryker collapsed over the log, his back slapping on to the mouldering earth. Lisette was no ghost. This was the same battling, snarling, wicked, gorgeous firebrand he had once loved, and, though he hated her, he wanted to laugh and dance and sing under the murky autumn sky, for she had been returned to him.

‘Return to port,’ the sergeant ordered. The musketeers levelled their weapons, achieving the port position. The sergeant filled his lungs, ready for the final, all-important orders. ‘Musketeers! Prepare to give fire!’ His little eyes momentarily shifted to the tangled branches some hundred paces to his side, for he thought he had seen a flicker of movement, but it had vanished as quickly as it had come, and he wondered if his eyes deceived him.

‘Blow upon your coals!’ Each man shifted his match into their spare right hand and blew upon it to ensure that it burned bright. ‘Cock your match!’ the sergeant brayed. In response, the men placed their respective cords between the jaws of each serpent. ‘If any man’s cord faces the wrong way I’ll have ’em flogged from here to London!’ The threat was unnecessary, for every man had fixed his match so that the glowing tip faced him. They all pulled upon their triggers, compelling the serpents to sweep in an arc so that the match touched the closed priming pan, ensuring the cord would not overreach its target.

‘Present upon your piece!’ the sergeant called. The men shifted their left foot forward and raised their weapons so that butts met with right shoulders.

‘Secure your scouring stick!’ Each man gripped the barrel of his musket with his left hand and could feel the ramrod connected to its underside. ‘It ain’t a big job, lads, but should you fire the stick accidentally you shall have the devil of a job reloadin’. And you’ll be a dead ’un in no time. Open your pan!’

With their right hand, the recruits flicked open priming pans. ‘Good! Good!’ the sergeant bellowed over the clicking of the mechanisms. He paused to draw a hurricane into his lungs. ‘Give fire!’

As if with one mind, the musketeers snatched on their triggers. Thirty serpents slashed back, sending thirty burning match cords on to thirty open pans. The charges ignited the priming powder, which, in turn, ignited the main charges that nestled deep within the barrels.

In the copse, Stryker felt pressure on his stomach, and he opened his lone eye to see Lisette kneeling above him, thighs either side of his midriff. He raised a hand to block the expected attack, but none came. Instead he felt the softness of her cheek against his calloused palm, and the light dimmed as her face lowered to his. He was vaguely aware of long tendrils of blonde hair tickling the sides of his head, and then the warmth of her lips was upon his own. Stryker tried to sit up, to take her in his arms, but she thrust her palms into his chest, forcing him back down, never taking her mouth from his. He resigned himself to her, letting his hands slide down to her backside, digging thick fingers into her rump, grinding her groin down upon his, revelling in the heat emanating through the fabric of their breeches. Mouths were still locked messily, lips and tongues writhing, continuing the duel their bodies had just fought. Teeth clinked, sweat mingled, groans echoed.

Stryker rolled her over, scrabbling to unfasten her breeches, but Lisette was just as hungry, just as ravenous, and she pushed him away, forcing him to stand so that she might tear furiously at his clothes, revealing him even before he had revealed her. When they were near naked, Lisette leapt into Stryker’s arms, hooking her hands around his neck, clamping thighs at his waist, letting him take her weight as he had done so many times before.

She wriggled her hips slightly, desperate to guide him into her, Stryker rammed her up against the nearest trunk, moist bark sliding roughly against her back, and they took each other in unrestrained, animal frenzy.

Out in the clearing, as if nature itself responded to their passion, came the thunderous sound of hell erupting.

Much later, when the musketeers had marched away and the lovers lay side by side among the leaves, Stryker felt hollow. Lisette, staring glassy eyed at the gnarled branches above, repeated her explanations over and over, telling him again how she had been sent to Spain on a mission so covert that it called for a severing of all her ties in England.

‘You still had a choice,’ Stryker said when she had finished.

‘You would have had me tell my mistress that I chose an English soldier over her?’

‘I would have had you tell your mistress you chose to shove the assignment up her arse.’

Lisette laughed daintily. ‘I believe you would. And that is exactly why I could not tell you. Do you understand me?’

‘You’re right,’ he said after a time. ‘I would not have let you go. And had you defied me, I’d have followed you to the ends of the earth.’

Lisette sat up, fastening the shirt she had been too busy to remove. ‘I did – do – love you, Stryker. In my fashion.’

He sat up too. ‘And your own fashion means you enjoy me when it serves your purpose? Cast me aside when your mistress calls? Is that the way of it?’

She did not answer as she stood, padding almost silently over soil churned dark by their frantic movement to retrieve boots and breeches that had been flung haphazardly into the scrub.

‘Why are you here now, Lisette?’ Stryker said, as he watched Lisette dress. She did not answer, but began kicking at a pile of fallen leaves and twigs until a solid thump sounded against her boot. She stooped to retrieve the package. The swathes of linen had come away, revealing the wood.

‘What’s in that box?’ Stryker asked.

She smiled enigmatically. ‘You might think about donning your britches, sir, before asking further questions. The day is cold.’ She reached out, drawing soft fingertips along his forehead and down the left side of his face, tracing the swirls and undulations of the scar she had once tended with poultices.

When she turned to walk away, plunging into the trees, Stryker scrambled to his feet, hurriedly dressing. ‘Wait!’ he called after her, hopping awkwardly in the wake of her rapidly disappearing form as he struggled to cram on his left boot. ‘Wait, Lisette!’

By the time he had scrambled into the clearing, she was gone.

‘
W
hat do you want?’

The woman was old, wizened. She peered through the small hole in the door, presenting a sharp nose and suspicious eyes to the newcomers.

‘Want?’ Captain Eli Makepeace asked. ‘We must see your master urgently, madam. It is a matter of life and death.’

The woman sniffed. ‘They all say that. Wait there.’ She slid the shutter closed.

Makepeace stepped back from the threshold and craned his neck to look up at Langrish House. It was an imposing, three-storied structure of beige stone and huge rectangular windows. In the gathering dusk it cast sinister shadows, long and jagged.

‘Sh-shall I knock down the door, sir?’ said Bain, standing a pace or two behind the captain.

Makepeace turned, looking up at him. ‘Have patience, Sergeant. Old Moxcroft will open up once he hears our tale. No need to ply your skills yet.’

‘And what tale’s that, cully?’ The speaker was a very short, wide, snout-nosed man in his middle forties, wielding an ancient-looking fowling piece. He and his half-dozen mates had appeared from the side of the house, all bearing muskets, poised and ready.

Makepeace glanced from one hostile face to the next. ‘Easy now, gentlemen. Let’s not be too hasty on those triggers.’

‘Soldiers ain’t welcome ’ere,’ the barrel-bodied leader said. ‘Cavalier, most like, by the sound o’ that slick tongue.’

‘Foppish arse’ole,’ a young man, wet-lipped and jaggedtoothed, put in.

‘You are for Parliament?’ Makepeace said.

‘Not neither,’ the leader replied. ‘We’re for our kin only.’

Makepeace thought back to the clubmen they had enraged further north. ‘A fair stance, friend, and no mistake. I am no Cavalier, and I mean you and your village no harm. I carry a message for Sir Randolph. I must speak with him.’

‘Shoot ’im, Marrow!’ another of the men growled. ‘Don’t matter if he’s Cavalier or a piss-lickin’ Puritan. He’s a soldier and there’ll be more on their way. Always are. They’ll want feedin’ and clothin’ and Christ knows what else.’

The short man, Marrow, stepped forward with clear intent.

‘Hold, Jem!’ a new voice suddenly echoed from somewhere behind the group. ‘We said hold, you stubborn toad!’

‘You must forgive Mister Marrow, Captain.’

They were in a small room at the rear of Langrish House. The walls were crammed full of scrolls, shelf upon shelf of them, vellum splashing the chamber in creams and ochres. The owner of the house was seated before a wide-topped desk, strewn chaotically with papers and open tomes. He leant back in his chair, making a steeple of long, bony fingers at his chin.

Makepeace was seated opposite. ‘No harm done, Sir Randolph.’

Moxcroft dipped his head in what might have been apology. ‘He and his sons are useful to us. We feed them a morsel or two, they keep an eye on our estate.’

‘Fuckin’ clubmen again,’ a voice murmured from the doorway.

Makepeace twisted round to look at Bain. ‘Hold your bloody tongue, Sergeant.’

‘It is fine, Captain, really,’ Moxcroft said smoothly. ‘We admire a man unafraid to speak his mind.’

Makepeace wrinkled his nose. Bain stood a little straighter.

‘And we’re glad of his presence,’ Moxcroft continued.

‘
We
?’ Makepeace asked.

Moxcroft rolled his eyes witheringly. ‘
We
are Sir Randolph Moxcroft.’ He ignored Makepeace’s bafflement. ‘Jem and his lads don’t . . .
appreciate
. . . our situation, naturally, so it is wise to guard the door. We maintain the pretence of a peace-loving merchant, and they consider us worth protecting. We would not like them overhearing us now.’