"You are a mad cur, Lyle," Maddocks rasped as the horses wheeled about. "Foolish, blinkered and vain."
"Better a free fool than chained."
"Chained? That horse bolted a long time ago." Maddocks swiped the air with his heavy sword. "It'll be the noose or nothing for you."
Lyle laughed. "Then I choose nothing."
"The choice is not yours to make."
The colonel came again, bolting impressively forwards from a standing start, but this time Lyle was ready for him. He squeezed his thighs lightly, flicked the reins, and Star slewed away, leaving Maddocks' mount to charge into the cool air in his wake. He turned, even as Maddocks rallied for another assault, slicing his own arc above Star's tall ears in an ostentatious blur. "You may chase me, Mad Ox, but you will not take me alive! I'll fight Goffe's creatures as long as I draw breath!"
"The war is over, Lyle," Maddocks countered.
Lyle shook his head as he rolled his shoulders for the next engagement. "Not for me."
"It was Ireton killed her, Samson," said Maddocks, his tone softening a touch. "His orders. Not Goffe, not Cromwell."
"But Ireton is dead."
"Then the debt dies with him."
Lyle dipped his head as he kicked. "No."
They raced inward, closing the ground in a heartbeat, but this time Lyle released the reins, gripping with legs only, and unhooked the iron war hammer that hung beside his shin. It was two-thirds of a yard in length, the four-sided hammer counterbalanced by a lethally sharp pick, and he hurled it at Maddocks' horse. The big beast cried out as the heavy club slammed into its shoulder, and it lost its step enough to put Maddocks off his swing. The colonel's broadsword found nothing but clean air, and Lyle brought his own blade round to clatter the side of the soldier's head. Maddocks' helmet saved his life, but the force of the blow knocked him sideways so that he slid halfway off the saddle. The disquieted horse, still whinnying in pain, reared up, throwing him clear so that he finished in a heap of leather and metal in the centre of the grove.
Lyle was upon him in moments, snatching up the war hammer as he moved to stand over his stricken enemy. He held it up as Maddocks stared forlornly back, wincing with each breath. "An outdated old thing, really. Made for smashing plate armour. Has its uses, though, I'm sure you'll agree."
Maddocks spat a globule of blood that looked like tar in the night. "Get it over with."
"When they killed her," Lyle said, "were you there?"
Maddocks seemed surprised at the question, but he managed to shake his head. "I was not."
"I never saw her body. Never had the chance to kiss her cold lips or put her in the ground myself."
"Alice had a good burial, Samson," Maddocks said. "But you were on the run. A deserter."
Lyle nodded. "It was my fault, I know. And the knowledge that I was not at home when the soldiers came has eaten me alive these four years. I was not there to protect her, as was my duty." He forced a smile that seemed so at odds with his feelings. "But that knowledge has driven me too. Given me purpose that had all but leaked away in Ireland."
"Just kill me now, damn you!" Maddocks snarled suddenly, the wait for his demise crushing his spirit as he gazed up at the stars.
"I will not," Lyle said. He went to gather up Star's reins and clambered nimbly into the saddle, putting the weapons away and offering a sharp bow. "You are bested, Francis, and I will best you again, and again, for as long as you hunt me. The war is not yet done. It is a war of vengeance, against those who wronged me, chased me away from my home and murdered my wife. A war against the Protector's creatures. It will never be done."
***
The Red Lion was a modest establishment just off the Portsmouth to London Road at a village called Rake. It had stabling for half a dozen horses, lodgings enough for the same number of travellers, and a decent sized taproom stocked with good local ale and a passable claret. It was also the perfect place from which a highwayman might launch his campaign.
"What happened?" Eustace Grumm's voice came from the darkness as Lyle dismounted in the small courtyard outside the inn.
Lyle peered into the gloom. He could see the reed-thin profile of his friend leaning casually against the red brick wall, soft candlelight streaming through the windows to highlight him a touch. "It was Maddocks."
Grumm had a clay pipe clamped between his crooked teeth and he pulled it free, blowing a large pall of smoke as he spoke. "In the flesh?"
"Aye."
"Knew it were Goffe's men by the scarves, but I hadn't expected the Mad Ox to ride with them. You're sure?"
"I knew from a long way off," Lyle nodded, whistling softly for the stable hand to collect Star. "Saw his crest."
"The black lion?"
Lyle tapped his shoulder. "Embroidered into his scarf, here."
Grumm snorted. "Very nice. Must be doin' well for himself these days."
Lyle nodded. "He is tasked with hunting me down, it seems. Major-General Goffe's right-hand."
Grumm stepped out of the shadows, his eyes like white orbs in the night. "You spoke?"
"We fought."
Grumm's jaw dropped, but footsteps scraped on the yard's compacted chalk and both men turned to see a young girl appear from the stables. "Take yer 'orse, m'lord?" Bella asked with a mischievous grin.
Lyle smiled as he handed her the reins. Her role in charge of the stables was a source of great pride, but many of her customers were also victims out on the road, and the irony was not lost on her. "I am glad you made it."
She grinned. "Never in doubt. Those old buggers in armour never outrun me an' Newt." Her freckled nose wrinkled as she inspected Lyle's saddle, and she reached up to draw the double-barrelled pistol. "You didn't have the same luck though, I'm guessin'."
Lyle took the weapon from her and turned it in his hand. The piece was caked in half-dry mud, from muzzle to butt, and would need a thorough clean before it would function. "Dropped on the road. I was lucky to retrieve it."
"Dropped?" Bella echoed incredulously.
"Christ above!" Grumm blurted as he squinted at the filthy weapon. "I knows why you bloody dropped it." He thrust a spindly finger in Star's direction. "That nag'll be the death of you, Major."
Lyle followed the former smuggler's gaze. "Will you sing that same tired tune all your life, Eustace?"
"I'll sing it every time he near kills you, aye!"
"There was a moment," Lyle confessed, "after Maddocks and I exchanged fire, that I almost lost control. He panicked, looked to bolt. I could feel it."
Grumm fiddled with his straggly beard. "Damn me, Major. If you're not fighting the toughest bugger in Goffe's retinue, you're wrestling with your own mount."
Bella patted the horse. "Ah, don't mind him, Star." She glared at Grumm. "He's a sour old thing."
The old man jammed his pipe stem back between his teeth. "Not so sour as that bloody animal."
Lyle went to the horse, scratching the white diamond between its big eyes and receiving a soft nudge of its snout for his trouble. "He may be shy on occasion, but did you ever see a swifter beast? He's saved my skin more than times than I could count. I'll not turn my back on him now. Besides," he added, speaking into the animal's twitching ear, "we won, didn't we, boy?"
"Good work, Samson," Bella declared happily. "The Mad Ox is a proper fighter."
"When we rode together with the ironsides," Lyle said, tucking the pistol into his waistband, "he was one of the very best. Better than me, that's for certain."
"What's changed?" Eustace Grumm asked.
"All that fencin', I bet," said Bella. "Them hours an' hours with that glum-guts Besnard."
Lyle could not help but laugh at that. "Actually, I threw my hammer at his horse. Now come along. I need ale."
The three of them sat at the taproom's rearmost table, lit by fat beeswax candles and wreathed in smoke from Grumm's pipe. There was one other patron, slumped in a far corner cradling a pot of strong beer, but they recognised him from the villa
ge and knew he posed no threat. Grumm had fetched victuals while Bella had seen to the horses. There were some hard-edged offerings from the cheese cratch, thin strips of bacon, and good bread, cooked in the ovens on the premises, and the trio were soon enjoying a well-earned meal. If the bell jangled at the door, they would shift into well practised action. Lyle would be gone, vanished into the shadows and out through the small rear door that would take him to the woods beyond, while the others would inhabit their roles of tapster and stable-hand like a pair of players in the long-defunct theatres that had hugged the southern bank of the Thames. Eustace Grumm ran the tavern, going by the name of John Brown, while Bella was his great-niece, Lucy. It had worked for a year, ever since Lyle had returned from France with his two rather incongruous companions and a tidy fortune made at the sharp end of a duellist's blade. The charade had given them a business, a place of relative safety from the wolves of the road, and it had become the home none of them had thought ever to find. A secure bolthole away from their life of crime, and yet all the while funded by it.
Lyle took out his prized pistol and placed it on the table. He began to pick at the flaky mud with his fingernails, scraping away the road's grime to reveal the magnificent weapon beneath. When the larger lumps were scoured clear, he took up a cloth and worked at the more intricate parts of the lock.
"You threw your war-hammer at him," Grumm muttered in amusement, bits of half-chewed bread flecking his beard as he spoke. "What would Master Besnard think?"
"He would congratulate me on staying alive. And he'd tell you not to stare down that beak of yours so sanctimoniously."
Grumm crammed a chunk of cheese into the side of his mouth. "He'd advise you to pick your fights more carefully."
Lyle looked up from the pistol. "I won, didn't I?"
"Barely."
As she worked her way through a plate of bacon that was scorched crisp, Bella leafed through the pile of papers she had taken from Sir Frederick Mason's strongbox. She glanced at Lyle, her expression sour. "Like I said, Samson. Piss-all in this lot."
Lyle gnawed a grubby fingernail. "Keep looking. Sir Frederick must have been carrying something of significance for Maddocks to be shadowing him."
"Fat lot o' good he did," Grumm said happily.
"Yet the fact remains," Lyle said. "He had Walmsley in the carriage for close protection, but Maddocks was already out on the road. He tracked us so quickly, he can't have been far behind Mason."
"Lucky we jumped him when we did," Bella said.
Grumm cackled. "They was to rendezvous before they hit the Combe, I'd wager."
"You may be right," said Lyle, for it seemed reasonable. Between the villages of Hill Brow and Rake, the London Road climbed above a deep, wooded vale known as Harting Combe. In the summer months, when the going was firm, travellers could gaze down upon the Combe as they thundered along, enjoying the clean air and the stunning view. But the road south of Rake was very steep as it plunged off the high ground, becoming almost impassable during autumn and winter when the terrain was water-logged and filthy. Those on foot might still risk the shorter route, or even skilled riders if they possessed a good mount, but no heavy vehicle could begin to negotiate so sharp a gradient in such precarious conditions. They would be forced, then, to risk the low, forest-choked bridleway that curved along the foot of Harting Combe, meeting the main highway again at a point beyond London Road's steep drop. It avoided that difficult section of road, which was a blessing, but it forced pilgrims to take their chances in the dense woodland of the isolated vale, compelling those travellers of a wealthier nature to ensure they were well protected. Mason, Lyle had guessed, would be one such person, and he had decided to strike the lawyer at the Combe's southern edge, for many a coach had met with an armed escort before taking the road down into the forest’s infamous embrace. Evidently it had been a good gamble to make, for Colonel Maddocks and his troopers were almost certainly due to link up with Mason at Hill Brow. They had intercepted their quarry in the nick of time. He gnawed his lip as he considered the implication. "Why Maddocks?"
"That Mason's one o' Goffe's big wheels," Bella answered. "You said so yourself."
"But so is Maddocks." He shook his head. "Why set his best man to protecting a lawyer? No, it was not Mason himself that was significant. Rather what he was carrying. We must reflect upon our takings."
Bella shrugged. "Not much. Just a few trinkets."
"Which means," Lyle persisted, "it was the strongbox."
The girl sighed theatrically as she delved into the scraps of paper again. "How many bushels o' corn they got in store. A letter from the Major-General askin' Mason to settle a dispute 'tween farmers down at Rowlands Castle." She waved one crumpled sheet. "Message informing Sir Blubber-Belly that a prisoner's to be moved from Newbury to Portsmouth."
"What prisoner?" Lyle asked.
She shrugged. "Don't say." She looked through the papers again, pausing at one. "Now this'n is an invitation from Sir John Hippisley for Mason to attend a masquerade, whatever that is."
"A masquerade ball," Lyle explained. "A grand dance. Very popular in France. The people will wear disguises."
"Surprised Goffe would allow such a decadent thing," Grumm grunted. "Smacks of Cavalier to me."
"He probably doesn't know," replied Lyle. "Hippisley's out at Hinton Ampner, is he not? On the Winchester Road."
Bella scanned the paper and nodded. "The manor house, aye."
Grumm looked up with a mocking sneer, a trail of fat wending its way down his beard from the corner of his thin mouth. "Surprised you don't attend, Major, given your apparent lust for death." He shook his head in exasperation. "Congratulate you for staying alive, would he? Besnard would have you whipped through the streets for such recklessness."
That was true, thought Lyle. When he had enlisted with Besnard after a couple of months of listless wandering, he had been an angry, desperate, grief-stricken youth. He had sold his armour to buy food, leaving only the grimy clothes on his back, a big, wounded horse, and his much dented sword. Charles Besnard had seen him fight an ill-judged duel over an unpaid debt - one he had been lucky to survive - and had seen some spark of promise in the way Lyle had handled his blade. He had taken the Englishman on, given him and Bella lodgings, and taught him the ways of the great fencing masters. Besnard had saved Lyle, without a doubt, but he could still be a strict disciplinarian who would not have entertained or condoned the rekindling of Lyle's thirst for danger. "Come now, Eustace," he said calmly, "you know more than most about staying alive. For a righteous man, you've done your fair share of unrighteous acts in the name of saving your skin."
Grumm sat back and took a drag on his pipe. "We are not discussing me, Major."
"How many ships did your false light guide onto Clovelly rocks so that you might eat?"
That hit a nerve, for the old man lurched forwards to jab the clay stem at Lyle's face. "I was never a wrecker, damn your forked tongue!"
Lyle smiled, holding up placating palms. "A smuggler then."
"Aye, a smuggler," Grumm conceded, aware that Lyle was goading him and at pains to cool his ire, "and proud to say it. But a wrecker never. If you were any other man, Major Lyle, I'd stick my boot in your behind for such slander."
"Easy, Eustace, easy. My point is that we play the hand life deals us, and do what we must to survive."
Grumm eased back again, half disappearing in the billowing smoke. "Amen to that."
"And next time I shall open Maddocks from chest to ballock."
Grumm chuckled. "No you won't. You enjoy the chase as much as he."
Lyle offered a shrug, for he could not argue with so observant a man. He held up the pistol instead. "Look at her. Such beauty." It had been made by a gunsmith in Rotterdam, though Lyle had picked it up after a tavern brawl on the outskirts of Rennes not long after his flight from England. It had been there that he had bade his time after his world had collapsed, and there that he had learnt a modicum of French and a great de
al of swordsmanship. He lifted the pistol with both hands, for, though barely heavier than a typical English flintlock, it was longer by the length of his hand, from wrist to fingertips. He blew gently over the lock to make sure no loose powder or debris from the ride had lingered amongst the mechanism. Satisfied, he checked the strikers. There were two, which was what made this weapon so special - and so lethal. Double-barrelled handguns were rare enough, but one with only one lock was almost unheard of. This pistol had two barrels, one set above the other. When Lyle fired the piece, he need only depress the barrel release, twist the twin muzzles round, and fire again. The same lock, cock and flint would be employed, making the process swift and simple.
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.
Highwayman: Ironside Page 4
