Highwayman- The Complete Campaigns

by Michael Arnold

  “An ague, sir,” she explained, “God help him.” She stepped into the room, bearing a large bowl of what he hoped would be warm water, a length of clean-looking linen draped over her forearm. “Taken to his bed. I have been sent in his stead.”

  Maddocks clapped his hands. “Smartly, then, for I cannot tarry.”

  She scurried to the low table beneath the room’s only window and set down the bowl, folding the cloth into a neat square and placing it beside the water. “There’s to be a hanging, so they say.”

  The casual tone annoyed Maddocks and he almost said as much but even the girl’s impertinence could not dampen his mood. He gave an affirmative grunt as he bent over the bowl. “A prolific thief, aye.” He splashed his face, pleased to discover that the water had, mercifully, been heated. When he straightened, using the cloth to dab away the trembling droplets from his nose and chin, he noticed Sally gazing absently out of the window that looked onto the castle’s debris-strewn ward. “Not here, girl. It’ll be done at Petersfield.”

  “Why, sir?”

  “Propriety. Justice must be seen to be done in the appropriate manner. Even I cannot string an offender up from the nearest tree.” Which was not strictly true, he thought, for he doubted any magistrate from here to Newbury would question the actions of Goffe’s right-hand man but that did not mean Maddocks was keen to test the theory. “He’ll meet his end at the town gallows on market day.”

  “Poor fellow,” Sally said.

  “We all must make our decisions in life and we all must carry the consequences.” Maddocks cleaned his teeth with the linen, each tooth squeaking like an unoiled hinge as he buffed vigorously. When he was done, he dropped the cloth into the water and strode towards the door, fetching up his belt and weapons as he went. “Deal with that, girl,” he commanded with a cursory wave back at the bowl. He took a sumptuous cape, the same colour as his capacious scarf, from a hook in the dark wainscoting. “I ride for Petersfield.”

  “To see justice done, sir?”

  He could not help but smile at that. “Just so, Sally. Just so.”

  #

  Near Widley, Hampshire

  Star’s lungs roared as he ran west.

  Lyle leaned in, calling encouragement, urging the grey stallion to dredge more speed from legs that must have been growing heavier by the moment. But he could not relent. It was almost seven miles to Portsea Island and he had chosen to take the high road, over the hills, where the going was more hazardous but the lanes less conspicuous, which meant that a full gallop was impossible. And all the while the sun climbed out of the horizon at their backs.

  Amelia clung on tight, squeezing Lyle’s midriff, her cheek pressed against his back. He looked to his right, checking that Grumm and Tyrannous were managing to keep pace. Behind the Cornishman was Whistler. The deserter-turned-thief looked frailer than ever, as if the wispiest of breezes might topple him from the saddle. He seemed so feeble, so inconsequential, clinging to the former smuggler like a limpet on a rock and yet what chaos the man had wrought. What forces he had unwittingly unleashed. And now there was Maddocks. Lyle saw the colonel’s face as he thundered along the track that was taking them up the chalky escarpment fringing the expansive harbours of Langstone and Portsmouth. His old comrade when they had fought under Ireton – ironsides together, zealous and triumphant – only to become his nemesis in the aftermath of Lyle’s desertion and Alice’s cruel death. Maddocks had hunted Lyle ever since, had chased him through forests and faced him at sword point and here he was again, dragged into Whistler’s mess just as Lyle had been. Maddocks. The thought of him made Lyle shudder in the gloom. He was a reminder. Of a lost past and a futile future. And now Lyle would be forced to confront him again. Because soon, inevitably, the hunt would resume and Lyle would have to fight for his life.

  #

  Warblington Castle, Hampshire

  “An ambush?”

  The young cornet of horse, whose usual role of carrying his troop’s colour had been superseded this dawn by an impromptu prisoner escort, blanched under the severe gaze of his colonel. “It was dark, sir,” he bleated, putting Maddocks in mind of a frightened lamb. He pointed at the domed pugmill some twenty yards to his rear. “They came out of the mill shelter. Tied us up.”

  “And took the prisoner,” Maddocks completed the sentence. He had already clambered into the saddle and fastened his freshly polished helm before hearing the chorus of alarmed voices coming from beyond the castle ward. Making for the sound at a swift canter, he had come upon a scene of confusion involving a routine foot patrol and the disarmed, bound and gagged wretches they had stumbled upon. Those humiliated creatures had turned out to be members of Maddocks’s own unit, which was something of an embarrassment but when he had finally grasped the implication, he had a mind to run each and every one of them through. He twisted, finding his immediate subordinate in the gathering daylight. “Captain Beck? Who, in Christ’s holy name, would do such a thing? Why?”

  Beck, who had scurried out of his own lodgings behind a suspiciously half-clad stable boy, had only just managed to gather himself for the breathless inquest. Red at the jowls and sweating profusely, he panted, “Fellow thieves, sir?”

  Maddocks awarded the suggestion the scorn-dripping sneer it deserved. “We have not encountered a modern-day Robin Hood, Captain.” He went back to the shame-faced cornet. “What did the culprits look like?”

  The cornet was busily rubbing his recently untied wrists. “They wore hoods, sir. It was dark.”

  “Try.”

  The cornet risked a look up. “Three of them.”

  Another of the prisoner detail, a youngster with a dark complexion and a pronounced squint, cleared his throat nervously. “Four.”

  The cornet nodded vigorously. “Aye, four, that’s right. The leader was a man. About my height.”

  “Accent?” Maddocks asked.

  The cornet shrugged. “Local, sir but-”

  “But?” prompted Maddocks.

  “His accomplices were unusual,” the cornet ventured.

  Maddocks shifted his weight impatiently. “How so? Come, boy, do not be timid.”

  “One was elderly,” the cornet said. “That is to say, he had an old man’s voice. And, I may be mistaken but I reckoned on two women.”

  That caught Maddocks’s attention. He edged forwards, ignoring the cornet’s flinch. “Women?”

  The trooper with the squint said, “He ain’t mistook, sir. Women, for certain. One was very young, at a guess.”

  And in that moment Maddocks knew. His heart seemed to plummet from his chest into his stomach and back again. “It is Lyle.”

  Beck, apparently composed now, said, “The Ironside Highwayman? But why would he bother with that raggedy pilferer?”

  But Maddocks was not listening, because something else – something worse – had occurred to him. Not occurred. The realisation had stabbed him full in the guts. “My lodgings,” he said absently, almost to himself as the connotations squawked and swirled like birds through his mind. Then, louder, “To my lodgings, Captain Beck, immediately!”

  #

  Portsmouth Point, Hampshire

  Botolph Spendlove had always wanted to visit the coast. A product of the rolling hills, he had walked those high crests and squinted into a horizon dazzled by the sea more times than he could count but there had never been reason or occasion to brave the roads that would take a traveller to the nation’s southern edge. The miles between Chalton and the Solent were lush and bucolic but they also negotiated challenging terrain and footpad-infested forests. His life, therefore, had been one of gentle downland and sleepy village, cosseted by parents who knew too much of the world to risk exposing their precious offspring to it and Botolph had been left to stew in his frustration and long for the chance to see soldiers and bustling streets and mighty warships.

  Now Botolph had it all and wanted none. He was in the thick of it, the lively, dangerous and depraved horn of dry land that served Engla
nd but was not truly part of her. Portsmouth Point. Spice Island. There were sailors and dockworkers here. Privateers and pirates, hawkers and pickpockets, smugglers and swindlers, fishermen and ferrymen, gamblers, drinkers, whores and their pimps. Out in the harbour there were the warships he had craved to see, billowing shrouds rigged to masts as tall as great oaks. The streets were a cacophony of shouts and laughter, of foreign tongues and strange faces from all corners of God’s creation, while the pungent scents of a hundred exotic spices mingled to make even the sharpest breeze heady and intoxicating. It was everything he could ever have imagined. And all he wanted was to go home.

  “Come, lad,” Duncan said, cuffing Botolph hard enough to make him stumble.

  Botolph barely managed to keep his feet. He could hear the mocking laughter of his captors at his back. He could feel the heat of humiliation rise through his face and his swollen eye sockets began to pulse. As he straightened, he risked a sideways glance at the huge Scotsman, noticing with a shudder how Duncan pointedly fingered the knotted coil of leather at his belt. The wounds that striped his spine began to burn at the sight of it, reminding him of the first hours after his capture, when these evil men had attempted to extract information that simply was not his to impart. He noted, too, that with his free hand Duncan picked at the scab on his chin. It gave him a glimmer of pleasure to know that it was Amelia who had inflicted the wound.

  Perhaps catching a shadow of defiance in the hostage’s look, Duncan advanced with his black gums bared, unhooking the whip in one deft motion. He unfurled it, working his wrist so that it rippled from handle to tip. Botolph shied away, shielding himself with his arms, though bitter experience told him it would prove futile.

  “Duncan!” Marek’s harsh voice brought the Scot up short. “I want him in one piece.”

  The Scot furnished Botolph with a sour look but he stayed his hand nonetheless, letting the others amble past as he coiled the leather once more. They were on the move, the gunners, bleary eyed and ill-tempered after a night of debauchery. They had vacated the Jolly Sailor at dawn and now made their way north, intending to take new lodgings at an inn situated flush against the dock, there to await the ship’s boat that would soon berth for the agreed rendezvous. Diamond was to sail back to Cadiz in a matter of weeks, Botolph had learned and all hands were expected back on deck to begin preparations.

  Marek came alongside him, nodding at the cobbles to invite him to walk. “He does not like you. The book is,” he waved a meaty hand, knuckles distended like knots on a branch, “priceless to us. But I must keep you whole so that that skurwysyn keeps his side of the bargain.”

  “Why do you call him that name?”

  “Skurwysyn? Bastard. Whoreson. Your master-”

  “He is not my master, you must believe me, I-”

  “Your master,” Marek said firmly, “is the worst kind of devil. A thief, for certain but also a liar.”

  Botolph abandoned the plea that had been forming on his tongue, for he could see plainly enough that Marek would brook no argument. Instead he gazed about the busy thoroughfare. “I have never been here before.”

  “Spice Island?”

  “Portsmouth.” He thought back to their brief conversation the night before. “You said it was an education.”

  “I was right?”

  “You were.” He looked up at the big gun captain, a heavy stone forming in his stomach. “How will I die?”

  “The water,” Marek replied, the frankness of his tone making Botolph shudder. “It is painless, so they tell me. I could make it worse for you, boy.” His voice darkened in warning. “Do not give me reason.”

  “I will not,” Botolph said hurriedly.

  “Will he come?”

  “This highwayman?” Botolph shrugged helplessly. “How should I know?”

  Marek laughed at that. “You have spirit, boy, I concede. You’d make a fine hand aboard Diamond.” He shook his head when Botolph made to speak. “Alas, that can never be. Your master has my book. I must be seen to fulfil my promise.”

  “But if he does not come with this book,” Botolph said, “he will not be here to witness my death. What can be gained?”

  “Plenty will bear witness, boy. Word will reach him and he will know.”

  #

  Portsdown Hill

  “I wondered why those bastards kept to their fire,” Whistler said as the horses drew up on the escarpment’s crest. The sun was fully visible now, the day cold but bright. “In the yard at Petersfield. Why not lodge under a roof, I thought? If not the farmhouse, then surely one of the stables.”

  “Sailors are not readily welcome,” Lyle said as he gazed down on the flat expanse of Portsea Island. The view snatched the air from his lungs. The coastal plain stretched off to sea, a patchwork of field and marsh, road and hedgerow, with the rooftops of Portsmouth dark in the distance, a charcoal outline against the horizon.

  Behind him, Amelia spoke. “For their rough manners?”

  Whistler laughed. “For their poxed pizzles, Mistress!”

  “That’s enough,” Lyle ordered. He was still staring into the distance, where land met water, examining the forest of bare masts that sprouted like black shoots from the glittering Solent, marking the bustling harbour and dockyard and, further out, the anchorage at Spithead, black hulls of the biggest vessels smudging the sky. Blake’s great warships were there, sheltered from all but south-easterly winds as they awaited the order to set shrouds and sail for Spain. Diamond would be among them. He tried to guess which.

  “And a man has more than thirst to be slaked,” Whistler was saying with obvious relish, “after many a month at sea. Any home with daughters to protect does not open the door to such travellers, no matter how weary they may be.”

  Lyle tore himself away from the ships and turned Star so that the grey stallion faced Grumm’s black gelding. “Down you get.”

  When Grumm did not move, the light of understanding showed in Whistler’s small eyes. His mouth dropped. “You mean to strand me?” His head jerked left and right, like a rat surveying potential routes of escape. “On this bloody hill in the middle o’ nowhere?”

  “Hardly nowhere,” Lyle said. He pointed north, to the breeze-rippled pastures beyond Whistler and Grumm. “You’ll find the Southwick road yonder.”

  “I will apologise to the lady, sir, I-”

  Lyle cut him off with a shake of his head. “I owe you nothing but a thrashing, sirrah, so I would consider yourself fortunate that I am willing to turn you loose.”

  “I shall starve,” Whistler opined, his tone growing shriller with desperation.

  “Here.” Lyle produced a small pouch from his saddle and tossed it to Whistler, who caught it with his scarred hand. “Get some food in your belly when the moment is opportune. But get away from here without delay. There’ll be soldiers on this road soon enough.”

  The thief weighed the money in his ruined palm and slid out of the saddle, leaving Grumm to make theatre of stretching his shoulders, as if the weight of the world had been lifted from them. Whistler asked, “Where shall I go?”

  “I care only that I do not look upon your face again,” Lyle said.

  Whistler glanced at the purse. “I can arrange that.”

  Lyle nodded. “See that you do.”

  They took the bridleway that led them south towards the vast island. Steep and winding, it cut a swathe through the white and green face of Portsdown Hill, small chunks of chalk skittering before them, kicked up by the horses’ hooves. The slope was carpeted in long grass and thick brier patches, broken up by stands of trees and through the branches they could make out the rooftops of the villages nestling like mushrooms at the hill’s foot.

  “Wymering,” Lyle said, indicating the buildings. “With Cosham beyond.”

  He felt Amelia lift her head from his shoulder to take an interest. “That is where we leave the horses?”

  “And meet Bella, God willing.”

  They rode on. Resisting the use
of their spurs to save the horses but always urging the tired beasts to push, for the road at their backs would not remain empty forever. Folk were abroad, though it was still early. Small children played and shrieked in the trees and Lyle’s party were forced to negotiate their way through increasing amounts of traffic. Heavily loaded wagons, making hard work of the cloying terrain, travelled in the opposite direction, interspersed by a small flock of sheep, a sack-laden donkey and a gaggle of stick-driven geese, all noisily vying for space as their owners looked to do business on the first dry day for some time.

  When they reached the village, Lyle made directly for the imposing whitewashed façade of Wymering Manor, a place so ancient that folk often found the detritus of Roman habitation in its gardens and cellars. From that landmark he was able to resurrect the lie of the land from memory and quickly located an inn just around the corner. The Bull & Gate was a modest, single storey affair but he recalled that it had adequate stabling and a discreet owner. He was forced to pay over the odds to the ostlers and landlord for a guarantee of security and anonymity, “But the crossing will be guarded by soldiers,” he explained to a disgruntled Grumm, “so we must travel inconspicuously.”

  Bella arrived soon afterwards, having taken the low coast road around Langstone Harbour. “Ain’t seen the buggers,” she replied, swinging out of the saddle, as Lyle took hold of Newt’s head collar and enquired as to any sign of trouble. “But I’d wager they’ve noticed the book’s vanished by now.”

  A high-sided dray, drawn by two meaty cart-horses and driven by a portly bald man, with a slab face and thick neck rolls, came to a halt about forty paces away. The vehicle was packed full of tightly bound hemp bales and Lyle watched as the driver leaned back on his bench and lit a pipe. “You found it, then?” he asked Bella with a wry smile.