Lyle glanced across at Tom, who sat in a cushioned chair nearest the hearth, a clay pipe dangling from the corner of his mouth. “How so?”
The fisherman sucked the pale stem, a stream of smoke tumbling from his nose and peered back with milky blue eyes that were sagging and wet, reminding Lyle of half-open clams. “The Bridge is out on The Point.”
Lyle sketched a map in his mind’s eye. At the westernmost edge of the town, beyond the main defences, he remembered there was a small tidal bay that was almost entirely enclosed by a crescent-shaped spit of land. That spur, Portsmouth Point, being a landing place for many of the sailors coming ashore from the Spithead anchorage, had its own gate in order to protect the town from interlopers. “Do they man the wall there?”
The fisherman dragged on his pipe again, speaking through the roiling smoke screen. “They do.”
Grumm looked across at Spendlove. “You got in.”
“One man, infirm and unarmed,” Spendlove replied, “may slip through Point Gate unhindered but you?” he said pointedly, shaking his head, “With your guns and your blades?”
Grumm sat back, pulling a sour face. Lyle stared into the flames for inspiration. “Is there another way in?”
Tom leaned forwards, the bench lurching alarmingly and knocked his pipe bowl against the brick of the hearth. “Aye, I’d say there is.”
FRIDAY
Oyster Street formed the western extremity of Portsmouth, hugging the foreshore, the town on one side, the grey waters of the harbour on the other. It was a commercial hub, smartly paved and packed with taverns and shops, with a huge pipe manufactory in the centre that seemed to hum with life, workers coming and going like bees at a gigantic hive.
Lyle took it all in as they walked south in the fledgling dawn, painfully aware that it would only take one person to recognise him and the day would quickly tumble to chaos. They moved in single file, Lyle, Amelia, Spendlove and Bella, leaving plenty of space in between so as not to be perceived as a group. Tom, leading the way, slowed his pace. “That there’s the Camber,” he called over his shoulder.
Lyle looked to his right, along the alleyway between two pubs. He could see water on the far side but it was evidently not the harbour proper, for a low-lying strip of land, complete with its own quay and buildings seemed to cut it off. This, then, was the bay he remembered, known locally as the Camber and soon he found himself hooking a right, down another of the alleys to leave Oyster Street at his back. They passed several warehouses, full, no doubt, of goods to be brought into the wharves further along the shoreline. Then they emerged at the water’s edge. Here there was a timber jetty set upon slime-clothed stone footings that might have been centuries old. It jutted into the mouth of the Camber, the dock and quay of The Point lying across the water, immediately opposite the two structures separating the bay from the rest of Portsmouth Haven. On the far side, set a short way back from the quay, Lyle saw a large tavern, its name daubed in thick letters above the door. “The Bridge,” he said aloud.
Beside him, the fisherman grunted. “Not a place I’d choose to visit.” He paced along the length of the jetty, indicating a small boat that was tied alongside. “Here. Your vessel awaits.”
#
“You mean to tell me that Samson Lyle has not made contact?”
Francis Maddocks stood over the Polish sailor, keeping his clenched fists collected at his back so as not to show his bubbling annoyance. It had taken less than an hour of daylight to locate the gun crew, for he had dispatched a score of troopers to the various inns and brothels dotting the community and such men were neither subtle, nor in hiding. Early hope, however, had quickly turned sour upon discovering that Lyle had not come to make the exchange. The revelation was as confusing as it was bitter.
Marek perched on the edge of a low palliasse to pull on his boots. Behind him the bed sheets were heaped in a haphazard hillock, out of which a slender leg protruded. “What concern is it of yours, Colonel?”
“Word reached me that you had kidnapped a citizen of the Commonwealth.”
Marek shook his head, still fiddling with a boot. “Untrue.”
“And that the taking of said citizen was enacted as a matter of ransom, in lieu of the return of a certain book. The Roman scriptures, no less.”
Now Marek looked up, his expression impassive. If the colonel and his heavily armed riders, milling about the downstairs taproom, were intimidating, he did not show it. “I would not know.”
“Scriptures,” Maddocks went on, “stolen by one Samson Lyle, former officer in the army of Parliament, latterly and commonly known as the Ironside Highwayman.”
The woman in the bed rolled over, exposing a little more skin as she made a drowsy mewing sound. Marek ignored her, though he caught Maddocks’ furtive glance and gave a wry smile. “She is available, Colonel. I’m done with her.”
Maddocks felt himself colour and cleared his throat angrily. “I know Lyle will make contact with you, Master Nowak. I would simply see the criminal dead. I am not your enemy.”
“I wish only to rest here,” Marek said, pushing up from the bed to loom over the cavalryman, his myriad scars a map of violence across his ruddy face, “until my transport arrives at the dock.”
“And when will that be?”
“This afternoon. A boat will be dispatched from the ship Diamond.”
“I will not interfere with your plans.” He glanced again at the mound in the bed, lowering his voice. “I care not for the man you have allegedly abducted. I want only to see Samson Lyle dance the Tyburn jig.”
Marek ran a hand through his hair, the gold hoop glinting in his ear and went to a side table where he perused an impressive array of weapons. “I intend to board my ship, Colonel. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
Maddocks ground his teeth so hard he feared they might shatter. He nodded sharply. “Thank you, Master Nowak,” he said tersely, “and good sailing.”
Maddocks glowered as he strode back to the waiting mounts. He could not have expected any help from Nowak but still the man’s pigheaded silence was infuriating. It had occurred to him that full disclosure of the recent whereabouts of the Vulgate bible might coax some semblance of cooperation from the slab-faced Pole but, equally, a confession that he had possessed the book at Warblington might have had the opposite effect.
“Petersfield, sir?” Captain Beck asked as Maddocks gave a slight shake of the head.
The colonel adjusted his long cape and took his horse’s reins from one of his troopers. He looked up at the plump form of Beck, high in the saddle. “It is not over until that pirate and his motley gaggle of rakehells are aboard their warship. We wait and we watch.”
Beck stared out at the weed-flecked surface of the Camber. “To the Governor’s House, then?”
“To Point Gate,” Maddocks replied once he had hauled himself up, pushing his toes through the stirrups. “We’ll search every soul attempting to pass through. If we can intercept the sly fox before he so much as reaches that foreign pope’s-turd, then we get Lyle and the golden book. Marek Nowak can do what he likes with the Chalton boy, as long as I have the honour of handing General Goffe Lyle’s head on a plate.”
Beck grunted in black amusement. “A golden book and a silver platter, eh?”
“And a dead highwayman,” Maddocks said. “Pray Jesu.”
#
The carter muttered irritably to himself as the two watchmen emerged from guard huts set at either side of the wide entranceway. There were large wooden gates behind them, strengthened with thick, black iron strips but they had been jammed open for the day’s expected traffic. The watchmen were Army personnel, pristine in the red coats and polished plate of the Lord Protector and both carried polearms topped with vicious-looking steel that immediately crossed to block the way. One of them, a burly man with a thick red beard, asked what business would concern the carter within the Commonwealth Dockyard.
“Shite,” the carter answered.
The guards exchanged a glowering glanc
e. The red-bearded man shouldered his polearm and took a step closer. “Mind your manners, my wizened friend, or pass you shall not.”
The carter gave a high-pitched cackle that made both sentries start. “Shite, lad! Dung! I am here for your dung! That is to say, the dung of your chooks.”
The second soldier – tall and gangly, with a prominent nose that glistened at the tip – tapped his helmet with a gloved knuckle. “Scrambled wits, Corporal.”
“I’ll scramble your wits, boy,” the carter hissed, leaning forward above his mud-spattered palfrey, “and that dripping beak besides!”
The tall soldier advanced, his expression murderous. “Why, you haggardly old clapperdudgeon, I’ll-”
The corporal’s pole-arm swept across his comrade’s path, clanging off the breastplate. “Hold, Stephen. He’s harmless enough.” He looked up at the carter with a wry chuckle. “Age loosens the tongue as sure as any strong drink.” His eyes, small and keen, roved over the cart. “Empty. You’re a gong farmer?”
The carter leaned to the side to peer into the bustling dockyard beyond. He could see long boathouses flanking a central thoroughfare, interspersed with rows of dwellings that were presumably built to house shipwrights, labourers, victuallers, officers and the many other tradesmen that would populate such a place. There were administration buildings, constructed in rich red brick, alongside busy workshops, brew-houses, storehouses and a multitude of other such places. It was a gigantic place, a town within a town and, with defences continually strengthened due to perpetual conflict with the Spanish and Dutch, it put him in mind of a small fortress.
He sniffed, offended. “Not any old gong. I’ve no interest in cowpats and dog turds. I am here at the behest of the venerable Doctor Phineas Welch. You’ve heard of him?”
The corporal shook his head. “I have not.”
“Then it is a sore loss for you.” The old man squinted at the peaked morions that protected the soldiers’ skulls. “I cannot tell if you yet require Doctor Welch’s services but time will surely compel you to seek him out.”
“The fool speaks in riddles, Corporal,” the taller guard, Stephen, said angrily, still smarting from the previous exchange. “Send him on his way!”
The carter shook his head. “Phineas Welch has made his name and fortune by coaxing the most lustrous locks from the most hirsute of pates.”
“He cures baldness?” the corporal asked.
“Cures?” The carter tilted back his deeply lined face to guffaw at the sky. “Purges, banishes, expels!” He tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially, dropping his tone as if spies lurked on all sides. “But his secret ingredient is the dung of chickens. To be mixed with ash, oak bark, walnut leaves and the fat of a brown bear.”
The corporal frowned. “A bear?”
“The fiercer the better! Now, you have poultry here, yes?”
The corporal shared a glance with Stephen and the pair instinctively looked back through the gateway and into the dockyard. “More than the sea breeze can contain.”
Stephen cursed at a private memory. “If I had a penny for every time I’d fouled my boots in droppings, I’d be able to buy one of these ships.”
“There you have it!” the carter exclaimed. “Divine providence at work! Praise be and hallelujah!” He winked, gathering up the reins with one gnarled hand and pointing into the dockyard with the other. “I have my wagon and my shovel. Sally forth, master soldier and let us relieve your besieged nostrils!”
#
Marek Novak could not wait to return to the high seas. He had rested well since arriving in England all those weeks ago. The blockade of Cadiz had hardly proved a great strain, for the Spanish treasure fleet Blake had intended to waylay had never arrived, the great galleons, pregnant with gold, sitting tight in the Americas, far beyond the Commonwealth’s reach. Even so, that did not render shore leave unwelcome. After months of gales and rainfall, weevil infested victuals and grinding monotony, a spell upon terra firma had been just the tonic Marek’s mind and body required. The exotic delights of the Southwark stews and the profits of pugilism only enhanced matters. Yet now, an hour before dusk, it was time to go home, to the creaking timbers and the roaring waves and a bed slung from rafters. A warship was the kind of place that a man like Marek could make his own. A little floating fiefdom, where the murky, dangerous world below decks offered opportunity for one willing to impress his captain and cut the throats of his rivals.
Yes, he thought, as he stepped out of The Bridge and buckled his sword belt, it was time to take to the sea once more. He imagined the ship Diamond waiting for them just over the horizon. “Come, my boys, let us make ourselves known to our brethren.”
At his back came the rest of his company, most pressing calloused palms into eyes assailed by the fresh breeze and bright sunlight. A heavy night had come at the usual price and more than one man vomited on the cobbles. Marek was unconcerned with their collective stupor, so long as each man had legs enough to make it to the end of the dock and board the pinnace that had moored above the mouth of the Camber. He breathed deeply of the salt air, revelled in the caws of the gulls and resolved not to dwell on a former Parliamentarian cavalry officer who had stolen his most prized possession. The arrival of Maddocks had thrown him off kilter, admittedly, with claims that Lyle intended to bring the bible to its rightful owner but Marek’s time had run out and so, therefore, had Botolph’s. A pity but not something over which to lose sleep.
He looked round at the bleary gathering, finding one face in particular. “I salute your courage, young Botolph, for you walk to your death like a man.”
The boy, wrists bound tightly at the small of his back, did not answer. On either side, Louis and Duncan, his perpetual gaolers, gave grim smiles. Their saturnine captive had grown a sparse layer of fluff upon his upper lip over the last few days, which made him look a fraction older, but it also provided stark contrast for his sickly sallow skin. He had suffered, it was true, so perhaps putting him out of his misery was, in some way, a kindness.
Marek sucked at his own whiskers, a veritable hedge in comparison to Botolph’s. “There are worse ways to die than drowning, boy, believe me. Your wits would scatter if I described the things I have seen.” He clapped his hands suddenly. “Let us be done and away, my friends. Bring him to the water’s edge.”
It was a matter of yards from the door of The Bridge to the end of Camber Dock, though they were forced to run a gauntlet of netting, discarded cordage and crab traps over the slick cobbles. Below them, bobbing in the teal waters of Portsmouth Haven, was a large pinnace, the boat dispatched from the Diamond to collect its hands. It dwarfed the only other moored vessel, a tiny skiff, with its rows of benches and banks of oars, the two boats putting Marek in mind of a whale and its calf. The majority of the pinnace’s oarsmen were absent, having slipped over to The Point’s central street, no doubt, to seek a pot of ale while the moment was opportune. One man had drawn the short straw, left behind to hail and board the passengers. He was laid out on one of the rowing benches, catching a surreptitious moment’s sleep, watched only by a pair of beggars who were huddled beneath a painted mooring post at the edge of the quay. As he led the way to the pinnace, Marek barked in irritation at the slumbering sailor, expecting more pomp and circumstance for a man of his repute. Across the short stretch of water that formed the Camber’s mouth, startled seagull chicks scattered en masse from the edges of the boats tied to the wooden jetty that served the main town. The birds screeched madly, their speckled brown bodies a blur against the grey sky.
“Alms, sir.”
Marek slowed, looking down as he noticed a single arm, slender and bony, protrude from the filthy bundle of rags at the foot of the mooring post. Two pairs of eyes glinted up at him like jewels in a dung heap. The ripe stench of excrement drifted off the threadbare scraps in nauseating waves, making Marek put his sleeve across his mouth and nose. “Get away, you filthy crones.”
The arm retracted but the beggar wen
t on, “Alms for a poor, blind veteran.”
Marek stopped just short of the reeking creatures. “Veteran of what?”
“Naseby Field,” came a voice that was weak and cracking. “Worcester and many more.”
“Very likely, I am sure,” Marek scoffed.
“Veteran of a campaign in the Hampshire hills too,” the beggar said, “at a place called Chalton. Perhaps you know it?”
Marek Nowak drew his sword. “You!”
But before he could lunge, the rags fell away like the scales over St Paul’s eyes, to reveal a man and a young girl, both crouching, both holding pistols that were primed and cocked. The man’s firearm consumed Marek’s attention, for it was large and double-barrelled and it was trained directly on his stomach.
The Ironside Highwayman stood up. He gave a wry smile, even as Marek’s men drew their own weapons. “Well, gentlemen. Here we all are once more.”
Marek did not expect to see Lyle again and the surprise only now gave way to a smouldering rage. Through clenched teeth he said, “Let us hope something is different from our last meeting, Skurwysyn.”
The beggar, Lyle, stooped briefly to pick up a cloth sack, hitherto obscured amongst the stinking rags at his feet. “You mean this?”
Marek watched the sack hang heavy in Lyle’s grip, knowing immediately what lay within. “You have it,” he said softly and the knowledge kindled new flames within his chest. “I knew it,” he tried to say, though his voice had become a deep growl. He glanced over his shoulder to the men braced for violence. “Did I not say?” He was answered by a ripple of snarls and oaths and pledges of murder.
Lyle was standing straight now, gathered to his full height. “For what it’s worth, it was stolen by a man named Whistler.”
Marek spat derisively. “I care not for the web’s threads, only for the spider.”
Lyle shook his head. “Not one of my people. I merely found him for you.” He gave a sardonic smile. “By rights, you owe me a bounty.” He shook the sack. “You can have the pages and I’ll take the cover.”
Highwayman- The Complete Campaigns Page 27
