Traitor's Blood (Civil War Chronicles) (46 page)

Forrester nodded. ‘Watching and waiting. We look left and we look right and what do we see? Thousands of the rebellious buggers. Thousands!’ he shook his head, still shocked by the
memory. ‘Not just troops, d’you see? Shop-keeps, apprentices, tanners, bakers, every man and his dog!’

Stryker’s brow shot up in surprise. ‘They didn’t attack?’

‘Damndest thing, old man,’ Forrester continued. ‘Must have been twenty-five thousand of ’em and they wouldn’t fight. And we could hardly attack, given the struggle we had digging them out of Brentford. Didn’t have the stomach for it, truth be told. Not neither side.’

A week had passed since Brentford.

Lisette Gaillard had led Stryker back to the Royalist lines. Helping him on to her horse, she had left the dirk in his belly for fear its removal might cause catastrophic bleeding, so he had been forced to sit astride the beast, rather than lie across it. Sir Randolph Moxcroft was still slumped, face-down, across Tainton’s gleaming saddle, and the last thing Stryker remembered was looking across at the spy’s terrified, pallid face as Lisette had taken that second horse’s reins in her hand.

Lisette had commandeered her own horse in pursuit of Stryker. Unlike him, she had not checked whether the aide was carrying despatches, but merely dragged the hapless fellow into the mud, spouting a stream of threats in her native tongue. ‘And then I followed you,’ she explained. ‘You were not hard to track in those wide fields. I just had to be careful not to run into the bloody greencoats.’

That first night was perilous, but the ministrations of the Royal Chirurgeon, ordered to the captain’s bedside by Prince Rupert himself, had saved Stryker’s life. He spent the first three days – buffeted in the chirurgeon’s wagon as the army marched – in a feverish stupor. Occasionally he would respond to a voice he knew with a weak murmur, but efforts to rouse him from unconsciousness had proved fruitless.

Lucidity, when it came, did not spell immediate freedom from danger. For another three days the physicians clucked about him, keeping visitors – all but the fearsome yet charming
mademoiselle
Gaillard – away, valiantly attempting to minimize interference with his steady but fragile recovery. As a result, he did not hear about what had passed at Brentford and its aftermath until considerably later.

Stryker was not released from the chirurgeon’s ministrations until the Royalist army reached Reading. Shortly after, he received a summons to dine with Patrick Ruthven, the Earl of Forth.

Stryker now found himself, still slightly shaky, seated opposite Prince Rupert at the great, mirror-like oak table that dominated Ruthven’s commandeered quarters, sipping the finest wine and basking in the guttering glow of three-dozen fat candles. He was clothed in his new uniform, purchased with Ruthven’s own coin. A blood-red sash with golden trim swathed his torso, from left shoulder to right hip, while his tawny doublet and breeches were of the finest quality. The collar and gorget around his neck complimented his angular – and newly shaven – chin, while his feet were comfortable in the soft leather riding boots that had been a gift from his patron, the prince.

Lisette was at his side, resplendent in a dress that flowed with white frills and winking pearls, and the assembled soldiers, chivalrous though they were, struggled to keep their eyes from her.

Stryker was pleased to see the well-recovered Ensign Burton at the table, the lad’s arm still hooked in a tight sling, while the ebullient presence of Forrester made the evening one of good cheer. Sir Jacob Astley was there too, shaking his head in bewilderment, astonished by the story Forrester recounted.

‘Forgive me, my lord,’ Stryker said tentatively as he finished a mouthful of piping-hot mutton, ‘but would it be disrespectful for me to say that Brentford was not the hammer-blow we had hoped?’

The room fell silent. Ruthven leaned forward, his lined face creasing under a heavy scowl. ‘Aye, it would, Captain,’ he growled. ‘But it’d also be right, I’m sorry to say. Our progress
through the town and those confounded barricades was slow, painfully slow. In the end, we ran out of time.’

Astley nodded. It had taken far too long to reach the eastern side of the River Brent, and that, coupled with Hampden’s determined rearguard action towards Chiswick, had stolen the initiative from the king’s forces.

‘Those green-coated fellows charged our column five times in all,’ Rupert said, not attempting to conceal his admiration for Hampden’s men. ‘Of course, that should never have set us back the way it did, but our lads were dog-tired. Hampden’s were not. He played for time and his policy was successful.’

The armies had disengaged for the night, allowing the Earl of Essex, Parliament’s commander-in-chief, to muster his army, ably bolstered by Major General Philip Skippon’s London Trained Bands, and block the king’s route to the capital.

‘And you say the common folk came out, my lord?’ Lisette suddenly asked of Ruthven.

‘Aye,
mademoiselle
. So they did. Massed in their thousands in the fields about Turnham Green, they were. Shoulder to shoulder with the Roundhead regulars. A veritable sea of bodies. A sea too wide for our brave lads to cross.’

Lisette shook her head in wonderment. ‘Such a sight. The common folk rise up against their king? It would be unthinkable in my country.’

Ruthven leant back in his chair. ‘Our sacking of the town put their hackles up. They foresaw our lads making a mess of their homes and livelihoods, as they had at Brentford, and it set ’em against us.’

Stryker nodded. He had witnessed the looting of countless towns by victorious armies and was not surprised to hear of this reaction. The capital’s citizens had come out in their masses to block the roads. The Royalist army found enemies all around the land at Turnham Green, while informants spoke of armed men at every ditch and hedge, every stable, every barn, every tavern along the road. They described armed ships on the
Thames, extensive barricades in the great parks and cannon on every street corner.

‘I’d have liked to have fought the traitors there and then,’ Prince Rupert, head and shoulders above the assembled guests, chimed in. ‘But my uncle was not willing to face such a horde.’ He shook his head regretfully. The royal army had retreated from hard-won Brentford, recovering initially to Hounslow Heath and then to Kingston. ‘Well, here we are. Reading provides food and shelter enough for now, but we’ll be away to Oxford for winter.’

‘May I make so bold,’ Forrester addressed both prince and earl, ‘as to ask why? After all our gains since Kineton Fight, why must we fall back so far as Oxford?’

Rupert pulled a face that suggested he had not agreed with King Charles’s decision. ‘It is a place my uncle feels to be loyal. It will become his capital until the next campaign season. We retire there for the coldest months, when it is too difficult for our armies to march, and we’ll gather strength. When spring arrives, we will return to London with a greater force than Parliament thought possible.’

‘Finish what we started at Brentford,’ Sir Jacob Astley added in his gruff tone. The others nodded their agreement.

Stryker crammed another piece of the juicy mutton into his mouth and glanced around the room, letting his gaze idly take in bookcases, all packed with precious tomes, and the august figures staring down from fine portraits on the walls.

After Lisette had killed Makepeace and led a wounded soldier and a terrified traitor back to Brentford, she had eventually found Forrester and Skellen. The three of them had delivered Moxcroft to the cellar at Sir Richard Wynn’s grand home.

And Sir Randolph Moxcroft, now taken from that impromptu gaol by the king’s interrogators to face an uncertain fate, was the reason Stryker was here. Here in this town, here with this wound, with the woman he had thought long dead, and here in the Earl of Forth’s private quarters, sipping wine with a prince.

Rupert suddenly thrust back his chair and stood, holding a full glass of the vintage wine aloft. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said loudly. ‘We will pay our respects to Captain Stryker. He was sent at my personal behest to capture a notorious turncoat. You know he succeeded, and the trials he underwent in the process, for he and our new friends Forrester and Burton have enthralled us with their remarkable tale.’ That brought a small cheer, Astley thumping the table enthusiastically, and Rupert was forced to raise his free hand for silence. He looked to Stryker, Forrester and Burton in turn. ‘I thank you once again on behalf of His Majesty the King. Captain Stryker, you have exceeded your own impressive reputation.’ He paused. ‘These are turbulent times, gentlemen. We are beset with new enemies on all sides, it would appear.’ He met Stryker’s eye and his impish grin sparkled again. ‘I feel certain we shall have further need of your special services.’

He raised his glass of wine aloft. ‘A toast!’ Rupert bellowed. ‘To Captain Stryker!’

As night settled in, pitch-black and freezing, the assembled guests made their farewells. Stryker took his wide-brimmed hat, with its immaculate red, white and black feathers, and his newly honed sword from a waiting servant and stepped out into the cold, Forrester, Burton and Lisette at his flanks.

As the group paced down the steps of the earl’s temporary billet, an austere town house, and reached the road below, the sound of approaching hoof-beats reached them from further along the darkly shadowed street.

Colonel Lord John Saxby drew up beside them, his mount’s chest heaving frantically, and dismounted with a leap. ‘I . . . I am here, Stryker. I was overseeing the garrison at Wokingham, but received a message to attend upon the prince forthwith.’

As he spoke, a dozen soldiers formed a circle around him and Stryker. Saxby peered with astonishment into the grim faces, and recognized one of them as Sergeant William Skellen.

‘Surprised, sir?’ Skellen said laconically.

Saxby turned to Stryker for explanation, but Stryker drew his blade in one quick motion that made the colonel jump. Before Saxby could open his mouth to remonstrate, the razorlike tip of the captain’s sword was nestled at his throat.

Saxby froze, eyes darting left and right before finally resting on his friend’s implacable stare. ‘I . . . I say, Stryker,’ he stumbled through his words, wincing each time his Adam’s apple brushed against the blade’s uncomfortable pressure. ‘What the devil’s happening?’ He forced a thin smile. ‘You jest with me, sir?’

‘No jest, Colonel.’

‘Captain Stryker tells me you’ve been playing the knave, John.’

Saxby did not turn, for fear of the blade nestled below his chin, but he immediately recognized the accent; perfect English, with the tuneful lilt of the Netherlands and a hint of Bohemian iron. ‘There is some mistake here, Your Highness.’

Prince Rupert moved down from the steps to stand beside Stryker. ‘Captain Stryker and I have been acquainted for many years, and I trust his word.’

Stryker applied pressure to the sword, making Saxby wince. ‘And my word is that you are a spy, my lord. The man who almost ensured Moxcroft’s safe passage to the enemy.’

‘I . . . I do not know what you are saying, Stryker,’ Saxby stammered. ‘You have evidence of some kind?’

‘Your own agent told me.’

Saxby turned his desperate gaze to the prince. ‘You take the word of a mere captain over mine?’

Stryker jabbed the point of his blade into the skin beneath Saxby’s chin, ensuring he regained the lord’s attention. ‘You were Blake’s master. Forde’s master. You sent Makepeace to Langrish, didn’t you, Colonel?’

‘Preposterous!’ Saxby brayed, eyes darting rapidly in search of escape.

Stryker’s face was implacable. ‘Makepeace told me it was you, sir,’ he said. ‘He thought he had bested me, and would taunt me with the identity of his master.’ Stryker glanced at Lisette. ‘Only Makepeace died, and I survived.’

‘Your evidence comes from a man now cold in the ground?’

Stryker ignored him. ‘I admit, Colonel, it was hard to believe. But then I remembered you were present at the council at Banbury. One of a tiny elite who knew I was being sent to Hampshire and why.’

Saxby remained silent, but his shoulders sagged.

‘Why, John?’ Rupert asked, his voice taut with distress.

Saxby shook his head slowly, his eyes shining like hot coals in the dim street. ‘The world changes. The old ways will be replaced. God means to lead this country in a new direction.’ He glared from face to face in turn. ‘England is destined to be a republic. Our corrupt monarchy must be destroyed.’

Stryker remembered the execution he had witnessed after Edgehill. ‘Our pieces are in place. At the very heart of your army. That’s what Captain Forde said.’

‘His words were truer than we guessed,’ Rupert replied. ‘My God; and I thought he spoke of Blake.’

‘Blake was nothing,’ Saxby said. ‘A pawn.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘I am not afraid. The Lord’s hand guides this rebellion. It is blessed. My trial will merely allow me to spread the word of King Charles’s corruption. The people will hear and join Parliament in their masses.’

‘No,’ Rupert said quietly. ‘There will be no platform, Colonel.’ He turned to Sergeant Skellen. ‘Leave no trace.’

‘I am surprised you did not ride for the coast the moment the battle was over,’ Stryker said as they reached the far side of the road. He and Lisette were alone, pacing slowly along the street arm in arm.

‘I could not see you take all the credit.’ She frowned. ‘What will happen now? In the war, I mean.’

Stryker thought for a moment then shrugged. ‘It will continue. Brentford was a chance to end the conflict, but we let it slip through our fingers. Parliament will take heart from what happened at Turnham Green and they’ll be yet more formidable as the new year turns.’

‘More battles then? More killing?’

‘Aye, I should say.’

‘You will be in your element,’ she said mockingly.

‘As will you,’ he retorted quickly.

Lisette laughed. ‘
Touché, monsieur
.’

Stryker stood still, leaning close, his voice low. ‘What of the ruby? Will it really fetch such a price in Europe as to buy the king his vast army?’

Lisette shook her head. ‘No.’ Stryker stopped in his tracks. ‘Do not misunderstand me,
mon amour
, it
is
a gem of extraordinary value.’ She leaned close to, fishing in the neckline of her dress. In moments she had produced a small, wrinkled piece of parchment, which she unfolded with great care. ‘But
this
is what I was sent for. I did not know it, and most of the rebels who guarded it did not know either. But the thief must have.’