Grumm stared at it. “Just don't drop the damned thing next time, Major. She's your talisman. That extra shot will save your life one day.”
The sound of Bella chuckling excitedly made both men look down at her. She had a heavily creased square of vellum in her pale hand, which she thrust under Lyle's nose. “Finally the cull cackles!”
“What is it?” Lyle asked.
“That prisoner, Samson. Goes by the name of James Wren.”
“Sir James Wren was a lieutenant-colonel of harquebusiers. Rivalled Prince Robber in the saddle. I fought him once.”
It was late. The last patron had staggered out into the crisp night air, and the Red Lion's heavy studded door had been locked and barred. The candles guttered, throwing eerie shapes on the whitewashed walls, while the last remnants of flame danced in the hearth. Bella had cleared away the detritus of the meal, replacing their ale with steaming pots of spiced wine, and now the three outlaws sat together at the age-scarred elm table, a strangely concocted family who knew that each night together could be their last.
“Fought with him?” Eustace Grumm asked, staring at Lyle over the rim of his wooden pot.
“Fought him,” Lyle repeated. “A skirmish in the days before Worcester.” He took a swig of wine as he remembered those frantic times when the son of the deposed king had returned to lay claim to the crown. The young king had been smashed by Cromwell's far superior New Modelled Army, a battle that had effectively put an end to the wars that had stolen a decade from the people of the British Isles. Cromwell had called Worcester a crowning mercy, but all Lyle remembered was bloodshed and panic, and a populace worn to wraiths by plague, starvation and fear. “Lucky to get out of it with my hide in one piece.”
“A king's man?” said Grumm.
“None more so.”
Grumm raised his pot. “May he rot, then.” He took a long draught, belching when he was done, and wiped his glistening beard with a grubby sleeve. His eyes narrowed as they searched Lyle's face. “And yet?”
“And yet it would seem he now languishes in Goffe's clink,” Lyle replied. “If he's to be moved down to Portsmouth, then perhaps transportation awaits.”
“Why would you care? An old enemy imprisoned by a new one.”
Lyle shrugged. “Because the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Eustace. Wren was an honourable fellow, for all his malignant allegiance, and I would see him free if it hurt the Protectorate.”
Grumm still stared hard at his friend, his blue eyes alive with suspicion. “I do not like that look.”
“You mentioned a masquerade?” Lyle said, snapping his head round to address Bella. “Hippisley's place at Hinton Ampner?”
“Aye,” Bella nodded. She clutched her pot in both hands, cradling the warm vessel against her chest as though it were full of precious gems.
Lyle drank slowly, luxuriating in the spices that fought away the autumn eve. “Not far from here. Out to the west above the Winchester road. When was this event to take place?”
“On the morrow,” replied the girl. She gathered up a handful of the long, mousy hair that fell to her shoulders, running it through her fingers, her face wistful. “Wish I could be a great lady at a dance.”
Lyle grinned. “You are already a great lady. But perhaps your wish is not so far-fetched. I believe we have our solution, praise God.”
“Our solution?” Grumm spluttered as Bella beamed. “You cannot possibly...”
“Worry not, old fellow,” Lyle cut in. “You need not embroil yourself in this.”
Grumm lifted his pot. “Suits me well, and no mistake.” When he had swallowed, he fixed the highwayman with a drilling stare. “You're a damnable fool, Samson Lyle, I do not mind telling you.”
Lyle raised a single eyebrow. “Evidently.”
“Anyone who is anyone will be there, for Christ's sake. God-rotten magistrates. Bureaucrats. Soldiers. Any number of Major-General Goffe's lackeys.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “Zounds, the Mad Ox too, I shouldn't wonder.” He leaned in suddenly. “He knows what you bloody look like, you fool!”
“But not what you look like,” Lyle replied. “Or Bella. Besides, it is a masquerade. Every man and woman will wear a disguise.” He rubbed thick fingers over the emerging bristles of his chin, the scraping sounds seeming unnaturally loud in the empty taproom. “I have to go, Eustace. I have to go. If Sir Frederick Mason is in attendance then we may discover when they plan to move Wren. It is a chance to strike at our enemies.”
“Well do not count on my assistance, you bee-headed bloody frantic,” Grumm retorted hotly. He folded his arms, setting his jaw and staring at the blackened beams above. “I shan't have any part in it, as God is my witness.”
PART TWO: THE DANCE
Hinton Ampner, Hampshire, November 1655
Hinton Ampner was a tiny village straddling the road between Petersfield and Winchester. The land was thick with forests that stretched in all directions into the chalky South Downs, only occasionally broken up by patches of open farmland that sustained the smattering of timber-framed hovels clustered like toadstools about the hamlet's core. And that core was the Manor House, the huge edifice of red brick and grey stone that had been built in Tudor times as a hunting lodge and grown into the most imposing structure for miles.
It was evening as Samson Lyle and Eustace Grumm stepped over the threshold. The surrounding trees darkened an already grey dusk, but the great house glowed bright, basking in the tremulous light of a thousand candles. No stinking tallow, Lyle noted, for Sir John Hippisley had done well out of the revolution, seen his star rise with the other hard men of the new order, and the old Roundhead's home was sweet with the scent of beeswax, a touch of wood smoke and a great deal of perfume.
A footman in a fine suit of shimmering red and blue strutted confidently out to greet Lyle like some over-sized kingfisher. At his flank was a soldier clutching a halberd. Lyle felt his pulse quicken. The footman held a mask attached to a thin rod, which he lowered to appraise the new arrivals. “Sirs?”
This was the first test of Lyle's nerve, and he held his breath behind his own ostentatious mask of gold and black. It was fastened by a string about the back of his head so that there was no danger of it slipping, and he bowed, the mask's goose feather fringe wafting at his scalp and tickling his ears. “Sir Ardell Early,” he said, his voice sounding so peculiar in the muffled confines of the disguise. He glanced over his shoulder at the figure who had accompanied him to the door. “And Winfred Piersall.”
The footman considered the names, and for a terrible moment Lyle thought they had been discovered, but the man offered a wide smile and a deep bow and swept his arm back grandly. “Your servant, gentlemen. I hope you enjoy your evening.”
The men allowed themselves to be shown into the house's inner sanctum. There would be no further need to prove their credentials, for a masquerade ball was precisely that - a masquerade. Men and women were not themselves on an evening such as this. They were whoever they wished to be, hidden by their disguises and afforded complete anonymity for the night. It was a fashionable pastime on the continent, and would, Lyle suspected, have become quite the thing in England had the Stuart dynasty survived its time of judgement. But now such public displays of opulence, not to mention the private exchanges of carnality that inevitably went on in darkened corridors behind the bright ballrooms, were not condoned by Cromwell and the men, like William Goffe, who ruled in his name. And yet, though theatre had been banned, and many of the great pagan-spawned festivals that had been adopted and adapted by the High Church were doggedly repressed, the new regime understood when it was politic to cool their instinctive censoriousness. Their great supporters - those strongmen who had killed a monarch, purged a Parliament and made Cromwell king in all but name - were occasionally to be allowed down from the giddy moral heights to which they had been thrust. When it served a purpose.
“Your lad did well,” Grumm, upholstered in a green suit and mask so that he looked to Lyle li
ke a huge frog, muttered under his breath as they were ushered along a well-lit corridor.
“Pays to know a Little Mercury or three,” Lyle replied in hushed tones. The highways and lanes of Hampshire were abuzz in daylight hours with boys and girls around the age of eleven or twelve, delivering letters and invitations from one great house to another. They were the life-blood of rural communities, and Samson Lyle had recognised their worth almost as soon as he had embarked on his criminal crusade. He had several in his pay, who provided him with gossip and occasionally intercepted useful correspondence. In this case, he had asked his contacts to keep their eyes sharp for letters bound for Sir John Hippisley's estate. One lad had brought him two such documents. Both declining invitations to this evening's masquerade. One from a wool merchant known as Sir Ardell Early, the other from Winfred Piersall, a moderately successful goldsmith.
“You think Sir Frederick's here?” Grumm asked.
“Aye,” Lyle replied just as quietly. “Goffe wants something from Hippisley. Money or land. This dance is part of the payment. Mason will be here reminding Sir John of his obligations.” He noticed the kingfisher-clad footman glance over his shoulder. “I was just saying,” he added in a louder voice, “that this place is exquisite.”
The footman nodded. “Quite so, sir. Sir John purchased the seat five years ago, yet still he improves upon it. We have a large hall, as you will presently see, two parlours, and twenty-one chambers. There is a brew-house on the estate, along with a malt-house, stables, barns, and our own hop garden.” His ears quivered, and Lyle assumed he was smiling behind the mask. “Even a bowling green, would you believe?”
“I look forward to complimenting your master on such a fine home,” Lyle said.
They reached the end of the corridor and the footman pushed a set of double doors that opened into a sizable room that might have been used to entertain dinner guests once they had removed themselves from the grand hall. There were tables lined against one wall, crammed with goblets full of various types of liquid, while a small choir of perhaps a dozen children were arranged opposite. They wore white robes and masks, which, to Lyle's eye, made them look like faceless cherubim. Something he found profoundly disturbing. They sang a high, lilting tune that was sweet enough, but did little to assuage his unease. More mirrored doors were on the far side of the room, flanked by a pair of retainers as luxuriously dressed as the rest of the staff, and Lyle guessed they would lead into the main hall. He gazed left and right. This was to be a grand affair; that much was clear. The panelled walls carried a near impossible shimmer, polished to within an inch of the servants' lives no doubt. Every mirror gleamed, every floor tile squeaked its cleanliness beneath every boot heel, and every tapestry had been dusted and straightened in preparation for the most discerning of guests. Lyle was glad he had dressed in his very best finery. Bella had gone to great lengths to scrub his long riding boots and bring his favourite shirt to the whiteness of virgin snow. She had chosen for him a black coat with slashed sleeves that revealed the yellow lining beneath, and, though he had complained of looking like a gigantic hornet, she had insisted that nothing less would do. The brilliance of the newly freshened shirt collar offset the coat nicely, she had said, and, even Lyle could admit, the delicate lace at his cuffs certainly provided a deal of beauty to the ensemble. It was all finished off, of course, by the gold mask, and now, as he and Grumm were shown into the great hall, he thanked God for it. For he stepped into a roiling cauldron of bodies, all immaculately attired, all disguised, and each one an enemy.
The choir song was overwhelmed by louder, jauntier music from the balcony, even as the rest of Lyle's senses were assailed. It was as if Sir John Hippisley had squandered his entire fortune on this one gathering, such was the display of wealth that greeted Lyle's gaze. A vast hall of polished floor and high ceiling, awash with colour, draped in bright tapestries, transformed for the night into a Venetian ballroom that thronged with figures dripping in gold and silver, lace and satin, feathers and fans and pearls. Music played above the incessant chatter, masked men and women danced in the room's centre, laughing and whooping and calling to one another like so many rainbow-fledged birds. The women wore swirling dresses, voluminous and shimmering, while the men were adorned in such gaudy attire that Lyle felt as though he had stepped into a room full of peacocks.
Lyle could not help but laugh at the sight, and he sensed Grumm at his shoulder.
“Strange,” he said, comfortable that the din of the dance would obscure his words to all but his friend. “Always considered this kind of thing belonged to the past.”
Grumm gave a low snort. “The lofty peaks we are ordered by the good book to scale, are not always attainable. It is man's nature to kick back at the chains of morality once in a while.”
“You're in the right of it. I imagine we shan't find any ardent Puritans here.” That was the irony of this brave new world, he thought. The Parliamentarian faction had never been unified in search of a republic. Indeed, the vast majority of the old Roundheads - himself included - had enlisted to oust the king's corrupt advisers, not bring down the entire monarchy. Where the Royalists had fought for their king and the status quo, the rebel cause had been one of disparate factions, all brought together through a common enemy. They were not all dour Puritans, but a violent concoction of Presbyterians and Independents, soldiers and merchants, aggrieved aristocrats, rebellious Members of Parliament, and radical commoners seeking to level the very foundations of society. Little wonder, then, that no sooner had the shared enemy been vanquished, the factions began to rupture. They turned upon one another, tearing the hard-won peace to shreds. It had taken two more wars to finish the quarrel, leaving the Independent party supreme and unassailable: Oliver Cromwell its figurehead, the New Modelled Army its muscle. But that meant a great many of the ordinary rebels had never been as sober and pious as their new masters. They had supported a cause that had overtaken them, overwhelmed them, and now many - most, perhaps - yearned for the old days that, though far from perfect, were not as stifling as life under the Major-Generals. They went to chapel, they prayed and fasted, but if ever an opportunity to while away an evening with dance and song presented itself, the people would flock to it like so many months to a flame.
“Not any proper ones,” Grumm muttered, his mind evidently in tune with Lyle's. He inched closer. “What do we do now?”
“Find Mason.”
“How?”
“He's a sober sort,” Lyle replied, hoping he was right. “He'll be plainly dressed by comparison with the majority. And he's run to fat. Shouldn't be too hard to spot.”
“Conspicuous by his banality. What if he knows Sir Ardell Early?”
“I'm in disguise. Besides, we took a nicely bulging purse from Early once, if you recall, and he was not too dissimilar to me in height and build.”
“Then what?”
“Then I'll get him on his own.”
Grumm jabbed him with a sharp elbow. “And then what?”
Lyle shrugged. “I'll think of something.”
They moved into the crowd, buffeted by sweeping skirts as couples breathlessly whirled past. He noted the smells. Heady perfumes, lavender oil and rose water, all mingling strangely with the sweat and stale tobacco of the men and the smoke of the hearths. He extricated himself from the mad rush of the wide floor and eased through the bodies to the outer wall, where he turned to observe. It was surreal to see such flamboyance in these austere days, and he felt himself smile at the sight. The men at the apex of society, power-brokers like Goffe and Cromwell, would probably endorse this event for reason of political expediency, but the hearts of those that gave them their power - the radical Puritans at Whitehall - would give out on the spot if ever they knew what Cavalier pursuits went on in this far-flung part of their new Godly empire. He found the idea infectiously pleasant. But more than that, more than the idea of human nature pushing past the grey barriers of England's incumbent rulers, Lyle simply enjoyed the spectacle.
The women threw back their heads and laughed, their forms elegant and their hair released from the coifs they would wear during the day. The men seemed freer somehow. No longer tethered to the stakes of probity driven into the nation by the Lord Protector and his formidable army. And there were jewels here too, glimmering, glinting garnets and rubies and sapphires. They winked at Lyle, dazzled him, and he beamed back. Because Alice would have loved an evening like this. She would have danced until dawn and burst with the sheer joy of it.
There were warnings too. Soldiers stood sentry at the four corners of the room, and he guessed there would be more patrolling the rest of the house. He steeled himself against the nonchalance such a lavish spectacle could engender. The waters in which he and Grumm paddled were infested with the most dangerous sharks imaginable.
“I'll take my leave,” Grumm said after a short while.
Lyle looked across at him. “Aye.” He reached for the green-swathed elbow as the old man went to move. “And Eustace? Take care.”
Highwayman- The Complete Campaigns Page 5
