Traitor's Blood (Civil War Chronicles) (26 page)

Stryker surveyed the carnage for a few moments. Twisted bodies were strewn around the entrance hall, a pall of black smoke roiled against the high ceiling and the familiar, stomach-turning stench of death was all around. Burton slumped to his knees, the shock of the action turning his limbs to jelly.

Forrester and Brunt appeared at the top of the staircase. ‘Not a peep up here, sir,’ the officer rasped, his chest labouring.

‘Nor here, sir,’ another voice came from the ground floor, and Stryker twisted to see Sergeant Skellen emerge from the front door. ‘Gardens are bloody empty.’

From the depths of a long, dark corridor there came the clamour of voices. Stryker’s men tensed, preparing themselves for another battle, but a familiar face appeared.

‘Find anything, Corporal?’ Stryker said.

O’Hanlon smiled broadly. ‘That I did, sir. That I did.’

Another figure emerged beside the Ulsterman. Plainly clothed, and clearly unarmed, with foxy and handsome features. He had long red hair that fell about his shoulders like a mane, a neat red beard, waxed to an impressively sharp point, and golden hoops dangling from each ear.

‘Hello,
mon Capitaine
,’ said Eli Makepeace.

Lisette Gaillard might have chosen her queen before her lover, but it had been a closer contest than she would ever admit to Stryker.

Now their paths had split again, for Stryker had continued south while Lisette’s mission took her north, and yet she was thinking of him as she rode against the spitting rain and spiteful breeze. Lisette had believed, when she left him that June day, that she was hard enough, staunch enough in her beliefs, to walk away without remorse. Now their frantic coupling in the copse had awoken emotions and memories she thought she had under control.

After she and Father Benjamin had passed below Basing’s impressive gatehouse, crossing the bridge over the River Lodden and plunging into the shadows cast by tangled trees across the northern road, her companion had prayed with her. It had been a strange experience, for the priest was a High Anglican and Lisette a Roman Catholic, but she had come to trust the kindly clergyman as much as Queen Henrietta clearly did. When they parted for the last time, she had leaned across from her saddle and kissed him tenderly on his cheek.

‘Dawn, Lisette,’ Father Benjamin had whispered hurriedly, fighting to regain composure. ‘Crumb is a loyal man,’ he added, seeing the look of misgiving in the Frenchwoman’s eyes.

‘You really trust him?’ she asked dubiously.

Benjamin shook his head. ‘I have learned to trust no one. But he professes to be the king’s man. Besides, I have paid him well.’

‘Dawn, then.’

He nodded. ‘He will be waiting at his barge, the
Cormorant
. Speak the message and you will be allowed aboard.’

And that had been the last word spoken between them. Benjamin Laney would return to his parish, while Lisette would take the strongbox to The Hague and, she imagined with a pleasant pang of encouragement, a delighted queen. It felt strange, wrong somehow, to be taking the precious ruby to England’s capital, for it was there that its theft had originally been engineered, and there where the rebellion’s heart beat strongest. But it was her only foreseeable route to the Continent. Her only way.

Eli Makepeace grinned like a shark. ‘I never thought I’d say this. But you are nothing short of manna from heaven, Captain.’

They were in Sir Randolph Moxcroft’s small, scroll-laden chamber at the rear of Langrish House. Night had fallen fast, but the walls and scrolls, furniture and faces glowed bright amid phalanxes of candles.

After the skirmish the men had cleaned their blades and checked through the effects of the dead. Stryker turned a blind eye to this practice, so common among soldiers. After all, what use did a dead man have for material things? Once pockets had been searched and the few coins, musket-balls, knives or cartridges salvaged, they had lined the bodies in a row, shoulder to shoulder, on the grass near to the front path where Jared Dance had fallen. Eight in all: Dance, Marrow and his six sons.

Stryker’s response when he saw the grinning face of Eli Makepeace had been to surge across the entrance hall, leaping over prone bodies and discarded weaponry, and add one more corpse to the butcher’s bill. But Lancelot Forrester had stopped Stryker in his tracks.

‘This is neither the time nor the place for murder,’ Forrester had argued breathlessly. Stryker understood. Even amid so
much death and destruction, he could not allow his men to see an execution in cold blood. ‘They’ve acquitted themselves with skill and valour my friend. Now let them see that these men died for the nobler cause, rather not to satisfy a thirst for blood.’ Forrester had doused Stryker’s fire, like many times before, and the blood-spattered captain was able to master himself.

Makepeace, Bain and Moxcroft were summarily taken into custody, until they could be interrogated, and the business of burying the dead was completed in quiet solemnity.

The survivors had also needed time to see to their own injuries. These were stab wounds and sword slashes in the main, though Brunt had broken his nose under the weight of a musket stock, and O’Hanlon required a bandage to the head where a ball had grazed his left temple. Stryker’s stomach, while painful, was no more than a flesh wound. This was soon closed up, somewhat haphazardly, by Sergeant Skellen’s crude stitching.

‘Good as new, sir,’ Skellen said as he wrapped a dressing tightly around his captain’s stomach to keep the wound compressed.

Two hours later Stryker and his officers, Forrester and Burton, stood before a large table of thick, dark wood. On the opposite side, perched on a massive chair reminiscent of a throne, sat Captain Eli Makepeace. Behind Makepeace, face grim and arms bulging, like a Nubian slave of the Roman Empire, stood the gigantic form of Malachi Bain.

Skellen and O’Hanlon were guarding the front and rear of the building respectively. Stryker was not inclined to take chances.

‘I’ve no fancy for your rhetoric, Makepeace,’ Stryker said. ‘Just tell me what the bloody hell you’re doing here.’

Makepeace explained that he had been sent with despatches bound for Portsmouth. The crucial harbour city had fallen to Parliament in September, and the king was desperate for local support in order to mount an insurrection against the new governor, Sir William Lewis.

‘We’, he glanced back at Bain, ‘set out on a desperate race to the coast. The despatches were bound for a fellow named
Gideon Harding, an influential merchant in the town. Our people there inform us that he has some considerable influence over his associates in the mercantile class. And, it is whispered, holds a candle for the king’s cause. The despatches promised him great rewards if he might stir up ill-feeling toward Lewis and his nest of traitors.’

The mission, he explained, had led him from the throng of humanity at Banbury all the way down through the bleak autumn landscape of middle England, eventually stalling in this forgotten corner of east Hampshire. ‘A perilous journey, for certain,’ Makepeace said. ‘But a more crucial one was never undertook.’ He sucked at his pipe, drawing in a lungful of fragrant smoke before letting it slip through parted lips in measured tendrils that snaked up across his face. ‘We dodged Roundhead patrols at every turn, placing our lives in the hands of the Almighty, praising His name with each passing day.’ A sorrowful expression crossed his face, and he went on to explain that they had successfully reached the outskirts of Petersfield but were ambushed by a Parliamentarian cavalry patrol. ‘We stood and fought,’ he said wistfully, ‘each of us sending a brace of men to the afterlife before we were taken. We might have made good our escape, had my brave steed not taken a shot.’

‘And you were brought here, sir?’ Forrester asked dubiously.

Makepeace winced, a painful memory it seemed. ‘Moxcroft is a
traitor
,’ he spat the word with venom, ‘as you apparently know. The house is well built, with thick walls and strong locks. The bastard lets them house prisoners here when the Petersfield gaol is full. We were to be transferred back into town for hanging ere long.’

‘Hanging?’ echoed a shocked Burton.

‘Aye, lad,’ Makepeace said gravely. He glanced at Stryker. ‘You and your men found us before the wicked fellow could . . .’, he drummed lightly on the table, ‘. . . consign us to our fate.’

‘But the men we fought weren’t trained soldiers,’ Stryker said.

‘Local militia,’ Makepeace said. ‘Loyal to Moxcroft. His own private army.’

‘A mightily impressive tale, sir.’ Ensign Burton was clearly in awe of the man seated before him.

‘Impressive?’ Makepeace replied. ‘No, young man. I did my duty the only way I knew how, sir. As an officer, I was entrusted with the most crucial of documents, and charged to guard them with my life.’

‘And yet you failed to deliver them,’ Stryker said bluntly.

Makepeace’s brow creased. He looked away. ‘And for that I am ashamed,’ he said, speaking to the ranks of vellum rather than the men before him. ‘I am. When we were taken by these Puritanical whoresons, I was wracked with guilt and distress.’ He allowed himself a sad smile.

Stryker gazed at the flame-haired officer, his face unreadable. ‘What is it I’ve sometimes heard you say, Forry? There’s daggers in men’s smiles. Isn’t that from
Mac
—’

‘Blast your black soul, Stryker!’ Makepeace shouted. ‘But you’re a devilish cur. Read the bloody letters yourself, if you cannot believe the word of a gentleman!’

Stryker leant forward, taking a thin pile of parchment from the table. He began to leaf through them, occasionally glancing up at Makepeace.

‘You see?’ Makepeace continued. ‘They’re all there. They carry the king’s own seal, for Christ’s sake! Sergeant Bain and I have been through hell itself these past days. We have ridden hard, day and night, upon a mission of the greatest import. We were taken by a patrol and our lives nearly forfeit. And I would not lightly revisit the depths of despair to which I sank during our hateful incarceration within these walls. It has been no less than torture, sir. Your own corporal found us with that bastard spy’s pistols pointed at our heads. He was preparing to murder us before you could come to our aid. And this is how you insult me? By branding me with insinuations and mistrust? It will not do, sir!’ The suffused face of Makepeace sagged and he slumped
back into the chair like a marionette with its strings cut. ‘You can ask the bugger yourself, if you don’t believe me.’

Stryker regarded Makepeace for a long time, the simmering hatred he felt for this man a match to the priming pan of his fury. Without another word, he stalked the few paces to the table and leaned across its polished surface, taking the startled Makepeace by his collar. Makepeace could do nothing but allow himself to be hauled up from his seat, until the table’s edge pushed painfully into his lap and his upper body was suspended in Stryker’s iron grip.

Bain would have defended his officer, but Burton had drawn his blade. The bald-headed sergeant sneered, but he was unarmed.

Nose to nose now, Stryker and Makepeace regarded one another with a loathing that seemed to engulf the room. ‘It won’t do?’ Stryker said, his voice low, dripping with threat. ‘It won’t do, eh? I’ll show you what fucking won’t do.’

Stryker heaved on Makepeace’s collar, twisting him over in a movement so fast that his victim was lying flat against the tabletop before any of the other men could react. From somewhere Stryker had conjured a blade. It was not a long weapon, like the dirk he kept at his waist, or the one in his boot, but a wicked little implement no longer than his index finger. At once the knife was hovering above Makepeace’s throat.

‘Good God, man!’ Forrester was calling from somewhere behind him. ‘Have you run mad?’

Stryker paid no heed. ‘I’m going to kill you, Eli. I’m going to slit your throat and let you bleed out like a dung-smeared pig.’

Makepeace stared into Stryker’s single grey eye. He had seen that flash of quicksilver before and knew that Stryker wanted his blood. He struggled, bucking against the infantry commander’s lean body, which was all muscle and sinew. The knife broke his skin.