‘Who was that man?’ Cecily asked as they passed a red-coated sentry, carefully scrutinizing the land to the east.
Stryker acknowledged his subordinate with a brief nod and looked down at the girl. He had asked her to accompany him, ostensibly in order to inspect the new horse pens, which, of course, had been her idea, though secretly he knew that he simply wished to spend time with her. The thought gave him a pang of guilt, but he stifled it harshly. Lisette Gaillard had left him again, gone off to God knew where on some clandestine mission that would doubtless require the seduction of some unsuspecting fool. ‘Seek Wisdom Gardner. A former priest, or so he says.’
‘You did not believe him?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Actually, I think I did.’
‘He seemed mad.’
‘Aye, but he was driven to it. He has been wronged in his life, so he protects himself by playing at madness. When he spoke of Archbishop Laud, his eyes were still, his words calm. I think he is sane when it suits him.’
They cleared the highest area of the tor, where the terrain was mostly empty grass, and moved down to the point where gorse and rock began to dominate. Mossy granite and blanched animal bones cluttered the slope, and as they slowly made their way to the lower ground, careful of their footing in the darkness, brown patches of bracken and the thin claws of bilberry bushes became dominant.
‘Look,’ Cecily said, indicating the black smear of a hill perhaps a mile away.
Stryker stared at the hill. It appeared darker than the sky where it blocked out the stars. Almost immediately he noticed movement on the crest, shapes slowly stirring, silhouetted by the moonlight. Horses.
At first Stryker’s heart began to accelerate, for he thought they were the vanguard of an attacking force, but quickly realized the animals were riderless.
‘That’s what I like to see.’
She cocked her head inquisitively. ‘Oh?’
‘They’re wild, not Wild.’
She gave a small snort of amusement. ‘Terrible!’
The ruins of the abandoned village stood out starkly from the rest of the undergrowth, the pale, wind-whipped stones seeming to gently glow in the darkness. Gaps where doorways had once been were clearly visible in the walls, while the odd hearthstone, flat and wide, still poked out from the soil. The walls themselves were predominantly waist high, pushing up between grasping bushes, though some were higher in places and some lower, stripped by time and plunder. Not ideal, Stryker had conceded, for corralling the company’s horses, but better than leaving them to roam free on the already crowded tor. Wild’s sleek chargers – powerful, proud, and skittish – were kept together in the largest compound, tightly tethered to some of the more robust overhanging trees, while the rest – Bailey’s emaciated nags, the two workhorses captured from the brigands, and the brace that had drawn Sir Alfred Cade’s ill-fated coach – were left loose in one of the smaller structures.
Stryker sat on one of the walls, feeling strangely relieved by the eerie silence, and listened to the skittering wing beats of bats and the crackle of decaying, dew-laden bracken.
‘What do you think happened here?’ Cecily asked after a short while.
Stryker stared at her. Her lily-white skin that seemed to smoulder in the moon’s glow. ‘Plague, famine, it’s anyone’s guess.’ He tapped the wall with his boot heel, noticing a tiny hunter spider scurrying between two grey stones. ‘But these homes have long since gone to ruin. Maybe hundreds of years.’ He shrugged. ‘They may yet prove useful.’
‘Oh?’
‘This place is too low lying to defend against cavalry,’ he said, studying the various walls thoughtfully. The former buildings seemed to be rectangular in shape, though varying in size, and were aligned lengthways down the hillside, terraced into the foot of the tor. ‘If Wild attacks from the east, we can place musketeers down here. It is a maze of breastworks. We’d cut them down as they picked their way through the bushes and stones.’
Cecily looked at him. ‘Do you always think of ways you might kill people?’
‘Only when they’re trying to kill me first.’
For a time Cecily stared out at the distant hills, watching them darken in the gathering gloom, while Stryker paced about the ruins, kicking the walls in places to test their integrity and occasionally stopping to pat the whickering horses.
‘Stryker,’ Cecily said eventually, ‘how will we ever escape?’
Stryker was several paces away from her, standing on a thick wall of coarse rubble some four feet high. He looked down at her, thinking to dissemble, but no suitable words would come. ‘I don’t know,’ he said simply. ‘We’ve all seen the glint of plate on the horizon. They’re watching us. Wild has enough men to surround us at intervals, in pairs and threes. They’re all on horseback, which means they can communicate very quickly. He’d have his men gathered and at our backs before we could put any distance between us.’
‘Perhaps he will lose interest,’ she said hopefully.
Stryker shook his head. ‘He wants the wagon.’ He felt bad for the lie, for he knew in his heart that Wild sought revenge above all else, but the guilt was too great to utter. ‘Our only hope lies with a messenger. A man who’ll ride direct to Launceston and beg help from General Hopton.’
‘I will go,’ Cecily replied hopefully.
‘No. Absolutely not.’
‘I—’ Cecily began, struggling with the words. ‘I really must be away from here.’
‘So must I, Miss Cade.’ He pointed back at the tor, the vast outcrop of granite appearing more like an ancient fortress than ever. ‘You think any one of us relishes being trapped up here?’
Pursing her lips in frustration, she said, ‘That is not what I meant.’ She shook her head, voice weary. ‘You cannot understand.’
Stryker leapt down from the wall and went to her. Cecily shrank back, startled by his sudden movement, but halted her retreat when he pinned her by the shoulders. He stared at her, close enough to feel her warm breath in the chill night air. ‘Then make me.’
Cecily returned his gaze, bit her bottom lip as if mulling over what she might say next, and drew breath to speak.
And then the guns fired.
CHAPTER 9
Beside the Road West of Two Bridges, Dartmoor, 2 May 1643
Lancelot Forrester ran the whetstone across the edge of his sword in smooth, practised movements. ‘What a beauty, eh?’
‘Captain?’ the deep voice of Anthony Payne rolled across the flames.
The evening was a sullen one for the men of Forrester’s company and their Cornish allies. They had moved east during the course of the day, scouring the road, searching for any sign of the enigmatic man known only to Payne. And they had found nothing. All the while they had been aware that the main Royalist army was far away to the west, making plans to defend the king’s stronghold on the other side of the River Tamar. Now they were camped at the edge of a little field near Two Bridges, the farthest either of their commanders was willing to travel into enemy territory.
Forrester caught Payne’s gaze on the far side of their little fire, and lifted the blade. ‘Picked it up after Hopton Fight.’ He stared lovingly at the weapon. ‘Had to prise it from a dead lieutenant’s fingers. Note the hilt. The swirling pattern is Venetian, I believe.’
‘Schiavona style,’ the gigantic Cornishman replied.
‘Quite so,’ Forrester said in surprise. ‘You know your blades, Mister Payne.’ He glanced back at the flames, venturing, ‘Not so unusual in such a warlike people, I suppose.’
Payne, his massive backside perched on a fallen tree trunk, raised his brow slightly. ‘If you refer to the rebellions of the last century, Captain, I tell you that we are loyal to the King. Be certain of that.’
Forrester could not tell whether he had caused offence or amusement, so decided to err on the side of caution. ‘Your Cornishman,’ he said warily, ‘has a keen sense of independence.’
At last Payne smiled. ‘Aye, perhaps.�
�� He rubbed broad fingers against his clean chin, shaven pale by his knife not an hour before. ‘We lead a strange existence down here, sir. We are part of the realm and yet we are our own nation.’ Payne’s big, twinkling eyes seemed to drink in the dancing flames. ‘An ancient nation. Proud and set apart.’ He glanced up. ‘And that makes us conservative in our nature.’
‘How so?’ Forrester said, setting back to work on the blade.
‘We naturally favour the monarch.’
Forrester considered the statement for a moment. ‘Most Cornish remain tenants of the Duchy, do they not?’ The Crown owned most of the land in the shire through the Duchy of Cornwall.
‘Aye,’ Payne agreed, ‘but in other ways too. Politics, industry, even religion.’
Forrester narrowed his eyes in mock suspicion. ‘The old faith?’
Payne’s big head shook. ‘Not Papism, Captain, but traditional church. Anglican. We perhaps see Puritanism as peculiar to the rest of this island. An English matter, if you will. Ultimately, though, it is this love of tradition that drives us to support the King. The rebellion will change much, and such a thought sits ill west of the Tamar.’
‘Is Devonshire so different?’
‘Aye, strange as that must sound. More so than you’d imagine, I think. They have a larger Puritan element for a start. And they fear Catholicism more, for any invasion from Ireland would likely make landfall on the north Devon coast. But most of all,’ he grinned then, exposing his neat white teeth, which shone in the firelight, ‘they’re more English.’
Forrester laughed. ‘Well I’m glad the Cornish are on my side, sir, and that’s God’s truth.’
Anthony Payne stretched out his legs, like twin mortars aimed at a breach, and unfastened his boots. He quickly tugged them free, wiggling toes the size of potatoes before the fire. ‘I think we have reached the end of the road, so to speak, Captain.’
Forrester looked at the giant sadly. ‘I am sorry we could not locate this man.’
‘Not so sorry as I, Captain.’ He picked up a gnarled branch, though it seemed more like a mere twig in his hand, and stabbed at the flames. Manic cinders burst up and out, whirling and skittering into the gaping sky above. ‘Why, if you knew—’
The bark of a fox screeched across the field, cutting across Payne’s words. It barked twice more, the shrill sound somehow chilling in the blackness. Out across the field men impulsively hunkered closer to their fires, seeking comfort in the flames and the stories they each told. Payne leant forward again to disturb the glowing embers with his charred stick.
‘If I knew what?’ Forrester prompted.
Payne glanced up at him. ‘Pay my ramblings no heed, sir. It is tiredness speaks for me.’
That was it, thought Forrester ruefully. The opportunity was gone. He sighed. ‘What now for us then? We have not succeeded in our task, and we are dangerously isolated so far east.’
Payne considered the words for a short time, and Forrester knew well the turmoil that must have afflicted the big man. ‘You’re right, Captain,’ he muttered eventually. ‘We’re of no use out here. Back to Cornwall.’
‘Or rather, to Beaworthy?’
Payne shrugged. ‘I suppose. Though it hardly matters now. Hopton ordered us direct to him so that he might speak with our bounty, as Richardson put it. But without that bounty, we must surely return to our regiments. I to Grenville, and you to Mowbray. I will arrange for a rider to make a report to General Hopton.’
‘Abject failure, eh?’ Forrester said, giving his blade one last scrape. He set the whetstone down on the leaves at his side and flicked the cutting edges gingerly with his thumb, revelling in the lethal zing the motion produced. ‘Still, I should be glad to return to the army, nevertheless.’
It was then that the silence of the night was shattered by musketry. It came from somewhere up in the hills of the high moor, faint, yet distinct. Like a far-off thunderclap, but sharper and more sporadic. The rattle and cough of dozens of firearms discharging in the darkness.
Dozens of heads jerked up from around the company’s fires. Men gritted teeth, sniffed the air and cocked ears, sensing some unknown danger. ‘Two or three miles off,’ Payne said to Forrester.
The captain nodded. ‘To the nor’-west. Sounds a fair old scrap too. What the devil are that many men doing out here?’
‘I know not,’ replied Payne, ‘and I care not.’
Forrester stared at him in amazement. ‘You cannot be serious, Mister Payne.’
‘It is a couple of patrols only, sir. They have become lost, like as not, and stumbled across one another in the darkness. But it is not our man, and I would sooner return to my master than waste my men on another fool’s errand.’
‘You think much of Sir Bevil, don’t you?’
Payne nodded. ‘I was born into his household, Captain. We grew up together. I have always been there to protect him. If we must abandon this mission, then I should return to his side forthwith.’ He tossed the stick into the fire, a shower of sparks kicking up in its wake, and delved a hand into his snapsack to retrieve a stale biscuit. ‘But do not mistake me, sir. Sir Bevil Grenville needs no nannying. He is the best commander my county can offer.’
‘A great man.’
‘Aye, the greatest fighter Hopton has.’
Forrester allowed himself a small smile. He, perhaps, knew one better. ‘Then we are agreed. We leave whoever that is,’ he waved a hand in the direction of the distant skirmish, ‘to resolve their own differences, and make direct for the army.’ He glanced at the dried biscuit still clamped between Payne’s massive fingers. ‘Besides, supplies are too short to linger out here.’
Payne grinned, took a tentative bite of what Forrester knew was a rather gritty concoction, and swallowed it down with theatrical disgust. ‘Quite right.’
Forrester leant to one side, retrieving his scabbard. After a final glance at his now keen blade, he thrust the weapon home, stopping only when hilt slammed into throat. ‘Launceston, then?’
‘Stratton for me, sir.’
‘Of course,’ Forrester replied, remembering the spy Richardson’s words. ‘That is where Grenville’s regiment have been stationed.’ He wrinkled his nose as he thought. ‘I know not where Sir Edmund has taken our lads, so it is perhaps to Launceston for us.’
‘Someone there will know where you should go.’
‘Right enough.’
Forrester reached down again, fumbling amongst the pile of belongings he had placed beside his sword. Eventually his fingers touched upon a small leather flask, and he pulled out the stopper with his most rakish grin. ‘Spiced mead,’ he whispered conspiratorially. ‘Liberated from my colonel’s billet at Launceston. Do not worry, Mister Payne, he practically declared his antipathy for the stuff, so it shan’t be missed.’
Payne offered a resigned smile. ‘And what do we drink to?’
Forrester held up the flask and shrugged. ‘To failed missions.’
‘How about to new-found comrades?’
Captain Lancelot Forrester grinned broadly. ‘Aye, Mister Payne.’ He took a hefty swig, jammed the stopper home, and tossed the flask to the Cornish giant. ‘New-found comrades.’
Gardner’s Tor, Dartmoor, 2 May 1643
Stryker grabbed Cecily’s arm and bolted back up the slope.
They passed a score of soldiers on their way, though this time the redcoats were in a state of high agitation, strapping on bandoliers and lighting match-cord. Stryker continually looked back and to the sides, anxious lest the attack be coming from this flank, but the crackle of firearms seemed concentrated on the far side of the hill. ‘They’re coming from the west,’ he rasped.
‘Could it not be drill?’
‘No,’ he replied without slowing, ‘the higher-pitched shots are small arms. Pistols and carbines. We don’t carry those.’
When they reached the tight mass of granite topping the tor, Stryker took a spare musket that had been loaded and primed for him by one of the men, and then halte
d. ‘In there!’ He pointed to the lawn corridor between the two largest stone piles. He saw the carter, Marcus Bailey, and Sir Alfred Cade’s bodyguard, Otilwell Broom, shrinking down against one of the lone standing stones. ‘You too! Get inside!’
The group made their way into the interior, Stryker in the lead, until they reached one of the small caves formed by the coming together of irregular-shaped boulders. ‘In there!’
Cecily and Bailey went first, stooping into the pitch blackness, with Broom at the rear.
‘Not you!’ Stryker snapped.
The bodyguard turned in surprise, the red inner lining of his slashed doublet flashing in the moonlight as he moved. ‘Not me?’ he spluttered. ‘Why the devil not?’
‘No hiding tonight,’ Stryker replied, a little more harshly than he had meant. He had allowed Broom to keep within the defensive circle when Wild first attacked, but that had been for Cecily’s protection, not his. This time she could keep safe within the tor, flanked on all sides by granite thicker than castle walls, and Broom was needed elsewhere. ‘Can you ride?’
‘Of course I can bloody ride,’ Broom snapped waspishly.
‘Then I have a task for you.’
‘What about him?’ Broom thrust an accusatory hand at the mouth of the cave, causing Bailey’s wan face to reappear.
Stryker looked at the carter. Even in the darkness he could see that the man was trembling violently. ‘He’s in no state, Mister Broom. With a musket in hand he’d kill one of us, like as not. And I’d wager he is no horseman. Bailey?’
‘C—Cap—Captain?’ the skinny man replied falteringly.
‘Stay in there. I’m trusting you to see Miss Cade is protected.’
The last comment seemed to put some renewed steel into Bailey’s demeanour, for he nodded stoically. ‘Aye, sir, you may rely upon me.’
Stryker looked back at Broom. ‘Take one of Wild’s horses from the pen. Ride south to the road, and then strike westward.’
Broom swallowed thickly. ‘To what end?’
Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 17
