Traitor's Blood (Civil War Chronicles) (31 page)

‘And the Trained Bands have been mobilized, I’ll be bound,’ Crumb said.

‘Of course, sir. Mobilized and itching for a fight.’

‘How many does that add, Lieutenant Ross?’

Ross paused, presumably in thought. ‘Seven or eight thousand, I believe.’

Crumb whistled. ‘An impressive number, sir. Pray God they’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with the full regiments such as your own.’

‘The London Bands are no common breed of scrappers,’ Ross replied seriously. ‘They are better drilled, better organized, more professionally led than any other militia. And a militiaman’s sole loyalty is to his family. The London Bands will be defending their very homes if Charles attacks.’

‘I feel safer already,’ Crumb said.

Down below, Lisette was curled tight, cloak drawn over her body, breath held as still as blazing lungs could tolerate. Instinctively she moved a hand to where the strongbox was bound at her midriff, letting her fingertips brush the reassuring angles of the wood. Her mind ran with curses. Using the Thames to reach the coast was risky, but neither Lisette nor Father Benjamin had foreseen wholesale searches of vessels.

A pair of boots came startlingly close. Quality boots, clomping heavily across the flat timbers. Crumb and his men did not wear this kind of shoe. Lisette gritted her teeth, snaking a hand to a secret hook in the cloak where her trusty dirk rested.

‘Nothing, sir!’ the soldier called back to his commanding officer. ‘Just wool and shit.’

‘Then we’ll bid you a good voyage,’ the lieutenant called out. ‘My apologies for waylaying you, sir, but we cannot allow the river to prove our Achilles heel.’

The soldier who had come so close to Lisette began to move away, and she almost sobbed with relief. But his pacing abruptly ceased. With a plummeting heart, she realized he was coming back.

‘Wait, sir,’ she heard the soldier say. ‘I’m sorry sir, but there’s one more sack down here I haven’t checked.’

Eli Makepeace was in ebullient mood. The master’s promise of wealth and glory was now within touching distance.

Moxcroft was secure and Stryker detained, no doubt destined for torture and execution. Makepeace would be lauded as a hero of the new regime. Perhaps they would even be presented to John Pym himself?

Luck had smiled upon him. There had been the constant risk that Moxcroft would turn on Makepeace, and decide it was more advantageous to spill his guts to Stryker about the captain’s real purpose at Langrish. But lured by the promise of riches, he had kept his word and his silence.

Until the Parliamentarian cavalry exploded from the depths of Shinfield forest, Makepeace had had no plan for escaping Stryker’s party, let alone with Moxcroft in tow. Now the solution had been handed to him. Stryker was a reckless warrior, a cavalier in the classic mould, and, on any other day, might have been tempted to fight to the death, but Makepeace knew him
to be conscientious enough not to waste his men’s lives in a fruitless skirmish. As the icy wind whipped at ears and numbed noses, and the party was finally able to see the dark haze of the innumerable fires clouding the horizon of the metropolis, Eli Makepeace knew that his star was truly rising.

Rumours that Charles and his army had marched south and east to wrest London from Parliament’s grip had been circling with every traveller they had encountered. Those rumours had been confirmed yesterday, the tenth day of November, when the troop had intercepted a messenger bound for Farnham Castle. The rider told them that the Royalists had indeed closed upon London and were now camped in the area around Windsor and Colnbrook. It was said that a delegation had ridden out from Parliament to talk of truce, but neither Tainton nor Makepeace expected much to come of such negotiations. Charles believed in his divine right to rule, and he would surely not deal squarely with low-born subjects now; subjects that had chased him from his capital with such humiliating impudence. No, the time to avoid further bloodshed had long since passed.

So there would be a reckoning, and soon. Makepeace did not welcome fighting another battle, but he recognized its inevitability. If it came to conflict, he would stay close to Bain. Some skins, Makepeace reflected, were too precious to be risked, and some were not.

He scratched himself. He could do with a bath, some good wine and a woman.

‘Morden is behind us.’ Roger Tainton’s voice rang like a bell in Makepeace’s ear as he reined in on his right. ‘Only ten or so miles more to travel.’

‘Praise the Lord, Captain,’ Makepeace said, the pious rhetoric sliding easily off his tongue. He had promised the young officer a share of the glory in rescuing Moxcroft, if Tainton agreed to convey them to London. It irked Makepeace a little that another man would deliver the legendary Stryker for execution,
but the pay-off was well worth it. He had made a powerful new ally.

As the front ranks of the troop rounded the road’s gentle bend, they saw the halberd first, hovering above a deep hedge like some silver bird. Presently the soldiers themselves came into view.

There were eight, a half-dozen musketeers with mud-caked latchets and flat montero hats, led by a long-faced, feral-looking corporal and a squat, heavily bearded sergeant. The hook, axe and blade of the latter’s pole-arm gleamed in the wintry sun, heralding the soldiers’ purpose like a martial banner. The soldiers wore orange sashes about their waists and Makepeace breathed a private sigh of relief. They had reached the Parliamentarian lines.

Tainton spurred his horse forward. He cantered the last thirty or so paces between the troop and the small picket, followed by Makepeace and two other officers.

Tainton had donned his sash as the first of London’s smoking columns had risen from the horizon and the sergeant stepped out from his small group to greet them. ‘Good-day, sir,’ he said, long teeth jutting crookedly between cracked lips.

Tainton nodded curtly. ‘Captain Tainton, Sir Edward Tainton’s Horse.’

The sergeant let his eyes – small, black and suspicious – wander beyond the mounted officer to where the long troop trotted round the muddy road’s curve. ‘Name’s Howling, sir. Sergeant-at-Arms; Tower ’amlets Trained Band. Beg pardon, Captain, sir, but may I ask your purpose?’

Tainton shifted irritably in his saddle. ‘We’re bound for Westminster, Sergeant. I carry prisoners.’ He indicated the cart with a rearward jerk of his head.

The sergeant scanned the cart’s bounty with interest, black eyes lingering on the captives for a second, and he licked his lips with a fat, wet tongue. ‘Hang ’em, I say. Hang ’em all.’

‘Spare me your opinions, Sergeant,’ Tainton barked.

Howling tore his baleful gaze away, meeting Tainton’s once again. ‘Sorry, sir, but I’ve orders that says you’re not coming through ’ere.’

‘Orders, you say?’ Tainton asked, his tone level, though his brow had darkened.

The sergeant nodded and produced a wad of tightly folded parchment from within his doublet. ‘King’s at Windsor, sir. Peace talks, it is said.’

‘Your point, Sergeant?’ Tainton said, his voice sharpened by irritation. ‘Come on man, spit it out!’

The soldier ambled up to Tainton’s horse and handed the parchment to the officer. ‘You’d better take a look, sir, for I do not have me letters. You’re to be redirected though, sir, right enough.’

They left Sergeant Howling and his picket behind, and, as the road forked east and west, took the left-hand route that would lead them west of the capital. Tainton had yearned to canter into London’s teeming streets resplendent in his fine armour and glorious after his capture of one of the Royalist army’s most talismanic figures. But the orders had been clear. The instructions were for any Parliamentarian units the picket might encounter. All troops were to make haste to the fields between Chiswick and Brentford. Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and commander of the Roundhead armies, was not inclined to leave the west of the city open to surprise attack. A vast Royalist force was camped on their doorstep and he was not about to grant it leave to simply stroll along the Thames unhindered. To that end, he had ordered any newly arriving units to divert towards the fields and villages that hugged the ancient river from the metropolis as far as Brentford. They could not raise a full army, for any such move might be misconstrued as an act of provocation and Parliament were anxious to pursue a peaceful solution after the bloodletting at Kineton. They had therefore elected to
post units towards the city’s western fringes, but nothing large enough to be construed as hostile intent.

Evening crept across the country and most of the cart’s human cargo slept. It was not an easy slumber, for they felt every lump in the road as the vehicle tossed and jolted them, but it had been an exhausting time since they left Langrish House and all were weary.

Stryker did not sleep. He sat against the cart’s raised side and watched. Watched the mounted troopers, his beleaguered men, Makepeace, Tainton, Bain and the countryside. Studying for weaknesses to exploit. But none presented itself. They would be carried to the Parliamentarian command and interrogated, probably tortured, and almost certainly executed.

Worse still; they had failed.
He
had failed. He had taken Sir Randolph Moxcroft at the behest of a prince and an earl, and then he had let the spy fall into the enemy’s hands. Moxcroft was free to sell the names of all Royalist informants in the south to an eager and vengeful Parliament. And those informants would die slowly.

Stryker heard water. It was a heavy flow, a substantial river. He twisted his head to peer over the side of the cart, only to see a wide torrent below. It had to be the Thames, he surmised, for they had passed Richmond some time ago. He looked ahead to the end of the road. A mist was descending, and it coupled with the black shroud of night to obscure his view of the far-off lights. But lights there were. Many of them, glowing orange in the distant gloom, telltale signs of at least a dozen homesteads, with the promise of more beyond. He squinted into the darkness but could discern no further indication of where they might be. It was clearly a settlement of substance.

As the mist grew thicker, they reached the ferry crossing. Tainton marshalled his men well and they boarded the barges with little ceremony. Even the horses offered only token protest while they were ushered on to the wobbling vessels.
They disappeared into the whiteness, the water splashing noisily at the ferry’s flanks, and there was a moment when Stryker wildly considered escape. After all, if he jumped into the water his captors would never be able to pick him out in the mist’s depths. But he was laden with heavy clothes. The visibility was so poor that he might never find his way up the slippery banks, and the water was so cold that it might end him long before his enemies could.

Tainton had had the foresight to send a rider ahead some time earlier, and the convoy was presented with a replacement cart upon arrival at the north bank.

‘Where are we?’ Stryker asked Tainton as the black-armoured captain cantered past, urging his troop to pick up the pace once again. The Thames swirled at their backs now, so he knew they must be heading north. The settlement he had seen earlier was now far closer, its lights burning brightly to his right.

‘Syon House, sir,’ Tainton barked. He pointed to his left. ‘Well, the house can be found in that direction, though we’ll not see it. We mean to cross its grounds and join the London Road at Brentford End.’

‘And then?’

‘Then we follow it westwards, away from the town, and find shelter at the home of Sir Richard Wynn.’

Stryker frowned. ‘He is loyal to the Crown.’

‘Indeed,’ Tainton replied, his face splitting in a ghoulish, moonlit grin. ‘But he is not at home.’

Stryker watched him surge away to retake his place at the column’s head. The carbine-wielding soldier at the vehicle’s far end eyed him lazily, before turning to watch the trees and fields trundle by.

Sir Richard Wynn was not home, his place as lord of the manor instead filled by one Lieutenant Colonel James Quarles.

‘Gone to lick the king’s arse!’ Quarles said of the absent owner upon greeting Tainton outside the house’s grand entrance.

‘And Colonel Holles?’

‘Gone to lick Devereux’s arse, I don’t doubt,’ Quarles replied. ‘So I find myself here, in charge of this fine body of men.’

The body of men turned out to be Denzil Holles’s Regiment of Foot. Holles was a Member of Parliament and one of the rebellion’s most staunch supporters, and had raised his regiment from the apprentices of London. Mostly young men of the butchery and dyer trades, they were a well-respected fighting force, for all they lacked in professionalism. They had made quite a name for themselves at Edgehill, where they had held firm amid the anarchy of those first moments after Prince Rupert’s cavalry charge.

‘He’ll return in a day, maybe two,’ Quarles had explained. ‘Until then, feel free to report directly to me. And that’s an order.’

The cart and its prisoners were left outside the house, under heavy guard, while Tainton, Makepeace and Moxcroft – the latter perched upon a chair carried by two burly pikemen – were conducted inside.

‘Please, sit,’ James Quarles had said, indicating two of the three wooden chairs in the room that served as his temporary quarters. As well as the chairs, there was a large oak desk, a tall bookcase and an ornate, wall-mounted lantern clock, its weights providing a steady heartbeat. The captains sat and Sir Randolph was set down next to them. ‘You see, gentlemen,’ Quarles continued as he settled into the remaining chair, the one nearest the crackling fire, ‘I am charged with defending this road. That is my concern. I require that you do not interfere with my one obsession. What do you require?’