‘She has made a compact with the Devil!’ a bellow came up from the scaffold as if in answer.
The speaker was the taller of the two men. The one with auburn hair, who, Wild now saw, had a long, hooked nose and big teeth that jutted forth from his mouth, giving him an almost equine appearance. His accent was borne of the southern counties, though his skin had clearly seen many more hot summers than England could provide, for it was deeply tanned. The colour, Wild reflected, of the cliffs around his native Exmouth. This was the man whose arrival he had complained about to Major-General Collings.
‘You question Hogg’s presence here?’ the major-general said, evidently reading Wild’s thoughts.
Wild looked across at his superior. ‘I am a man of action, sir. I do not hold with witch-catchers and their ilk.’
Erasmus Collings chuckled at that. ‘Osmyn Hogg frightens the people,’ he said, waving a hand at the multitude below. ‘The peasants. Soon we will move into Cornwall, into the very bosom of the King’s support. Men like you will crush their armies and burn their homes, but who will turn their hearts, Colonel? Who will bring their minds to our cause?’
‘A pact of blood and sorcery!’ the man on the scaffold called out. He paused as the crowd took a collective intake of breath. It reminded Wild of an actor on stage. ‘But where is my proof, I hear you cry!’ Hogg spun on his heel suddenly and pointed at his darker-skinned companion.
‘I saw them! Imps in her employ!’ the fat man called out in a thickly accented voice.
Wild looked pointedly at Collings. ‘Spanish?’
Collings nodded. ‘Hogg’s assistant, Señor Ventura. A convert to our faith. Quite the crowd-pleaser.’
‘I watched the witch in her cell,’ Ventura went on. He lowered his voice suddenly as though whispering a secret to the enthralled onlookers. ‘They crept in after midnight, a polecat and a toad. Puckrels of the most wicked kind.’
‘No!’ the old woman spoke for the first time. She lurched forward, beseeching the crowd. ‘It is lies! All lies!’
‘It is true!’ Ventura roared, startling the red kites and crows overhead, so that they veered away in panic. One of his pudgy hands shot out and grasped the woman by her wrist, wrenching her back roughly. He pulled the cloak from her shoulders and thrust her across the platform into Hogg’s waiting arms. ‘She suckled them as though they were her children!’
With that, Osmyn Hogg took hold of the prisoner and tore a strip of her shirt away, exposing the left side of her body. As the crowd gasped, he lifted her arm, indicating an angry-looking boil just below her armpit. ‘See here, friends. Her witch’s teat!’
‘You sure?’ someone from the crowd shouted out. ‘Wouldn’t catch me sucklin’ on them saggy old bubbies!’
The throng erupted in raucous laughter.
‘No!’ the old woman cried again, desperately drawing up the torn pieces of material to cover her dignity.
‘Exodus, chapter 22, verse 18,’ Osmyn Hogg called out suddenly, his voice rising above both the woman’s shrill cries and the crowd’s braying. ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!’
Above, on the upper floor of the White Hart, Colonel Gabriel Wild shuddered. ‘I am sorry, General, but I despise his sort. A man who lynches women for keeping cats and making poultices.’
Collings shot him a hard glance. ‘In Spain they have the Inquisition. What role do you think it plays?’
Wild shrugged. ‘To uphold Papist orthodoxy, sir.’
‘Indeed,’ the major-general agreed. ‘But why is it so vital to the Papacy? People are terrified of the inquisitors, Colonel. The mere thought of those Romish bastards puts ice in their veins.’
Collings furnished the colonel with a white-toothed grin. ‘It is a tool. A tool for obedience. And that is why I have invited Hogg to Devon.’
Wild frowned. ‘You invited him?’
‘He has spent a decade or more in the New World,’ Collings continued, ignoring his subordinate’s surprise. ‘Weeding out witches and their familiars. Eradicating them. He is strong-minded, clever, and utterly ruthless. A feared man. And now he is here to lend that power to our cause.’
Wild stared down at the scaffold. The mob’s joviality seemed to have suddenly vanished as grim reality dawned. A few dissenting voices rose above the din. One cry of mercy, next half a dozen and then a score. Quickly it became a chorus, a barrage of support for the condemned woman, and the crowd began to surge inwards.
In immediate response, a half-company of green-coated soldiers appeared from a side street to form a forbidding cordon around the platform. They unsheathed their tucks, daring the crowd to challenge the naked steel. The condemned woman was manhandled to the noose. The fat Spaniard, Ventura, compelled her to stand on a rickety stool, and took her scrawny neck in one hand and the rope in the other. He threaded the loop over her head, fastening the knot so that it fitted snugly, and gave the rope a last tug to make certain it would hold her weight.
The woman screamed. Witch-finder Osmyn Hogg stepped forward and slapped her hard. She began to sob.
‘Do you believe it, sir?’ Wild asked. ‘That he can sense a witch?’
Collings raised his bare upper lip in a sneer. ‘It matters not whether I believe, Colonel. Only that the people fear. If a handful of useless old crones must swing for the greater good, then so be it.’
‘Is it legal?’ Wild asked tentatively. ‘Hogg brands a woman a witch and she’s lynched?’
Erasmus Collings laughed. ‘I am the law here, Colonel. If I say it is legal, it is legal.’
‘And what of the local clubmen, sir? It is the kind of matter that would stir them up, I’d wager.’
The major-general casually picked at a speck of dirt under one of his carefully manicured fingernails. ‘The clubmen band together against marauding soldiers who would steal their food and ravish their daughters. This old harridan lived alone. Her loss will arouse no feelings of revolt, I assure you.’
Wild and Collings did not hear Hogg issue the final order, but knew it had been given right enough, for Ventura suddenly kicked the stool away. The woman dropped down with a violent jerk. The crowd gasped. Hogg began to intone passages of Scripture.
‘Look at them, Colonel,’ Collings said, the relish in his voice causing Wild to grit his teeth. ‘Marvel at the fear in their eyes. This whole town will do my bidding for as long as I am here.’
Wild swallowed thickly. The black eyes bore into him again, gleaming like nuggets of onyx in that pasty skull devoid of hair, brows, lashes, or even stubble.
‘Witch-finder Hogg is more useful to me than your whole regiment,’ Collings said with a smug smile. ‘Do not forget it.’
Down below, the condemned woman danced. The drop from the stool had been no more than two feet, and had not come close to killing her, so she dangled there, twitching and thrashing and jerking. Her face was rapidly swelling and her tongue lolled, the whites of her eyes dyed blood-red as she kicked her way to a throttled death. Another gasp from the crowd heralded the stream of urine that began to pool on the platform beneath her.
Wild had seen enough, and stalked back into the room’s cool interior.
Collings watched him. ‘Are your men ready to ride?’
Wild nodded. ‘We are ready and eager, sir.’ He made a tight ball of his fist at the thought of the one-eyed bastard he had come to hate. ‘By Christ, I shall delight in the moment when my dagger meets that knave’s stones. He will scream and I will laugh.’
‘He will be long gone by now, Colonel,’ Collings warned.
Wild shook his head. ‘He is on foot, dragging a fully laden cart, which will make him dire slow. And we have squadrons patrolling every road through the moor, which means he must tramp across open country. No, sir, he won’t have gone far.’
‘Good,’ Collings said. ‘You may have a hundred men.’
‘A hundred, sir?’ Wild spluttered, striding purposefully back to the window. ‘But they are my—’
‘They are my men, dam
n your arrogance,’ Major-General Collings hissed, thrusting a long, dainty finger at Wild’s face.
‘Sir,’ was all Wild could say, taken aback by the major-general’s sudden ferocity, and he turned away to stare down at the scaffold. The crone’s dance had ended, the life suffocated from her. She hung limp now, head canted, rope creaking gently as the townsfolk began to disperse in near silence.
‘Certain information was captured at Sourton, Colonel,’ Collings said, his flash of ire evidently cooled.
‘Information?’
‘Intelligence. We have learned that Hopton has been ordered to march into Somerset to merge his army with that of the Marquis of Hertford. Stamford, as I’m sure you can imagine, is eager to confound this plan by striking the enemy first.’ Collings’s eyes, tiny and black like a pair of apple seeds, seemed to stab through Wild. ‘He is mustering our forces at Torrington, and I will not allow you to traipse across Dartmoor with an entire troop. You will retrieve that wagon, sir, and you will do it with one hundred men. If that is not enough, then you are not fit to command them.’
Colonel Gabriel Wild blanched. He despised Collings, loathed his weak body, his penchant for intriguing and his low birth. But, for all that, he feared him. ‘I will bring back Captain Stryker’s head, sir,’ he said simply.
Collings snorted his disdain. ‘His sword, will suffice, Colonel. And my ammunition.’
Near Dartmeet, Dartmoor, 28 April 1643
‘I have it!’ exclaimed Simeon Barkworth as he turned the long, black feather in his hand. ‘Sgarbh.’
Beside him, marching at the front of the predominantly red-coated company, a tall, wiry, leather-faced man shook his head in mock exasperation. ‘Fucking Scotch gabble. I shall never untangle it, long as I live.’
Barkworth glared up at Sergeant Skellen, eyes bright with indignation. ‘Not Scots, you spindly great bufflehead. And you’ll no’ live long if you call my accent gabble again.’
‘Gaelic,’ the voice of a younger man broke into the conversation.
Lieutenant Andrew Burton was four or five paces ahead, looking over his shoulder to speak, and William Skellen met his gaze with a confused frown. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but I’m not sure them savages have the taste.’
‘Not garlic, Sergeant,’ Burton replied with a withering expression. ‘Gaelic.’
Barkworth proffered the company’s second-in-command his shark’s grin. ‘Aye, sir. Sgarbh is the word for Great Black Cormorant.’ The little Scotsman waggled the feather in front of him. ‘That’s what this is. It’s a big old seabird.’
At that, the man at the very head of the company looked back for the first time in more than an hour. ‘You remember when we first met, Simeon?’ Stryker asked. ‘Discussing birds of prey.’
Barkworth chuckled, his damaged throat grinding like metal files on iron. ‘I taught you the difference between a buzzard and a red kite, as I remember it.’
Stryker nodded. ‘That’s right.’
‘While he kept us in a cell, as I remember it,’ Skellen muttered.
Barkworth glared up at the loping sergeant. ‘Be lucky I did’nae skin your hide soon as my lord Chesterfield took you in.’
‘Enough,’ Stryker ordered, his tone more exasperated than angry. He glanced at the feather clasped between Barkworth’s thumb and forefinger. ‘Rare?’
Barkworth shook his head. ‘But it’ll have cost him an angel or three to get enough o’ these for a whole regiment.’
‘Wild is clearly a man of means,’ Burton put in.
‘Not only for such a flamboyant field sign, but for their kit as well,’ Stryker said, thinking of the equipment they had taken from Colonel Wild’s cavalrymen. Equipment that now jangled in piles on the heavily laden wagon that trundled at the centre of his marching column. ‘Their weapons are fine indeed.’
An image of Gabriel Wild came to Stryker then. Those glassy eyes, glittering with impotent rage as the colonel was trussed up below a tree with the rest of his near naked troopers. That had been almost two days ago, and he wondered if Wild had made it back to civilization. Since that time, Stryker had led his company – three officers, including himself, two sergeants, two corporals, two drummers, forty-nine musketeers, thirty-six pikemen, and the as yet unranked Simeon Barkworth – ever westwards on the road that would ultimately take them across Dartmoor and into Cornwall. That road, of course, had not been a great deal more significant than a rural bridleway, and the wagon, its wheels slipping and sliding on the slick terrain, had proven a significant encumbrance.
Happily for Stryker, though, the men had not seemed to care. They had stopped at the hamlet of Ilsington on the first night, having climbed high up on to the moor, and, after making some unfortunate but necessary threats to the villagers, they had taken plentiful supplies for the onward journey. The wagon would now haul sacks of dried meat and fish, and scores of biscuits that Skellen grumbled were as hard as the Devon granite.
They had spent the next day with full bellies and refreshed legs, drinking from streams, gazing out over the magnificent views, and comfortable that they would see an enemy approach from a long way off. And now, having vacated their makeshift billet in a barn at Ponsworthy, they were trudging onwards with a renewed sense of optimism.
‘And those nags are some of the best I’ve seen,’ Skellen’s droning voice cut across Stryker’s train of thought.
Stryker caught the hint in his sergeant’s tone. ‘No one rides, Will.’
‘Just thinking what a nice journey this’d be on horseback, that’s all,’ Skellen muttered, glancing back at the eleven magnificent mounts they had taken from Wild and his men. The beasts – eight bays, two blacks and a roan – were tethered in a line behind the cart.
Stryker shook his head. He had a horse, Vos, a big sorrel-coloured stallion, but he had taken the decision to leave him back in Launceston. ‘No man rides. I do not want us drawing attention to ourselves. Men on horseback are too conspicuous on these bleak horizons.’
By noon the column had reached a high point on the undulating terrain, affording an excellent vantage, and topped by one of Dartmoor’s many granite tors. Those rocky outcrops, grey-stone blemishes on the bleak plains, provided excellent shelter from the whipping wind, and Stryker ordered they rest in its shadows.
After setting a perimeter of pickets, Stryker went to where his most senior men had gathered. Many of them were lying on the damp ground, propped on elbows, but Ensign Chase was seated on a pale lump of granite. He vacated the perch on his captain’s approach.
‘Thank you, Matthew,’ Stryker acknowledged, and sat on the cold stone, his scabbard clanging against the granite.
Skellen, having lit his pipe, began to sing songs of home. Ditties speaking wistfully of Gosport and Portsmouth, of buxom tavern maids and of the crashing sea.
‘How did you know Wild’s regiment weren’t nearby, sir?’ Lieutenant Burton asked after a short time.
‘I didn’t,’ Stryker replied bluntly. ‘But it was a reasonable guess. They did not come from the Bovey Tracey garrison, for they’d have passed us on the road.’
‘They probably didn’t know there was a new garrison at Bovey at all,’ Skellen put in, before resuming his lilting tune.
A flock of small black birds raced overhead, changing direction in the blink of an eye, like a mass of speeding thunder clouds. Stryker watched them dart back and forth, amazed at the unison with which they moved. ‘So they’re a detached unit,’ he said when the birds had disappeared from view. ‘Mobile and sturdy.’
‘When it is’nae raining,’ Simeon Barkworth replied with a sharp-toothed smirk.
‘They roam where they may, watching the Cornish border, harrying our troops, carrying messages.’
‘Recovering arms caches,’ Burton added.
‘Indeed,’ agreed Stryker. ‘But if you were Wild, would you use your entire regiment for that task?’
Burton shook his head. ‘Not enough food and shelter on the moor to support that many men and horses.’
He paused in thought, taking the moment to scratch at his withered forearm with his good left hand. When he looked up, there was a new glint of understanding in his eyes. ‘Wild must be based in one of the towns on the moor’s fringe.’
‘That is my guess,’ said Stryker. ‘Newton Abbot. Exeter, perhaps.’
Skellen ended his song. ‘I’d have still used more than a dozen men though, sir,’ he said, with a rearward jerk of his head to indicate the wagon. ‘Given the size o’ this meaty old stash.’
‘They did not expect to encounter you.’
The voice was new to the conversation and the group turned to stare at the speaker. The man, the only one in the company dressed in the drab clothes of a common farmer, was sat, cross-legged, some ten or twelve paces away. It was the man who had driven the rickety cart for Colonel Wild, and who had been taken with his vehicle as part of the ambush. A man who had not met a gaze nor uttered a single word in the two days since his capture.
‘Speak, sir, if you have something for us,’ Stryker said when the carter suddenly turned away with a look of sheer terror.
The group watched and waited as the fearful man slowly forced himself to look back at the soldiers. He was of middle age and slight frame. A man whose hard existence of toil and hunger had stripped any vestige of fat from his bones. His hair was fair, though thinning badly, but his teeth and skin were in good condition. His bottom lip trembled violently as he spoke. ‘The Roundheads, sir. They had not imagined th—they would run into you.’ He swallowed thickly. ‘Y—you or anyone else, that is.’ He dug his hands into the folds of his threadbare smock and stared at the grass between crossed legs. ‘Beg pardon, sirs, I did not mean to pry. Forgive me.’
‘Speak plain, sir carter,’ Stryker replied calmly. ‘You are in no danger.’
The frightened man remained tight-lipped. Barkworth leant forward on the grass suddenly. ‘But you’ll be in rare bloody danger if you keep your mouth shut.’
The threat seemed to unlock the wagon driver’s jaw, for he forced his gaze up to meet Stryker’s. ‘The rebels, sir. They did not think to meet any king’s men hereabouts.’
Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 6
